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H.C.R. No. 6
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
1 WHEREAS, The luminescence of myriad stars has long shone
2 forth from the city of Kilgore; and
3 WHEREAS, Among the brightest of those lights has been Van
4 Cliburn, the renowned classical pianist, who lived there in his
5 youth; in addition, Kilgore was the birthplace of Alice Lon, a
6 vocalist who won widespread popularity as the Champagne Lady on The
7 Lawrence Welk Show in the 1950s and who went on to perform for two
8 decades in nightclubs and in concerts; and
9 WHEREAS, For 18 seasons, the actors and actresses of
10 Kilgore's annual Texas Shakespeare Festival have brought the
11 splendor of the Bard's plays to the stage, in what has been
12 acclaimed as the best Shakespeare festival in the state; equally
13 dedicated to their craft are the famed Kilgore College Rangerettes,
14 who have dazzled audiences overseas, at the 2001 presidential
15 inaugural parade, and at every Cotton Bowl since 1951; Kilgore
16 itself has also been the star of the show in an episode of the
17 television travel magazine Show Me Texas; and
18 WHEREAS, Once a quiet rural community, Kilgore saw its name
19 blazed across Texas with the discovery of oil around the city in the
20 fall of 1930; situated near the heart of the East Texas oil field,
21 the largest such field in the lower 48 states, the town at one time
22 boasted a downtown block with the densest concentration of oil
23 derricks anywhere on the globe; in the late summer of 1931, as
24 tumultuous conditions continued to beset the new boomtown, the
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