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Dorothy Moore click image to enlarge

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

Seventeen-year-old Dorothy Moore ran downstairs to answer the doorbell at her North Second Street home one September evening. Her parents and their guests were in another room playing bridge.

It was 1928 and Moore was a freshman at Arkansas City Junior College.

She recognized the three men at the door as prominent businessmen, whom she didn't know very well. Later, they would become known as the founders of Arkalalah.

Pat Somerfield, John Floyd and Clyde Boggs dreamed up the idea of the fall festival as they sat around a table at the downtown Petroleum Club. It was to cheer up the town's residents in bleak economic times and keep kids out of mischief around Halloween.

That night, the three men told Moore that she was to be crowned the first Arkalalah queen, in a ceremony that would take place in another several weeks.

"I really hadn't paid any attention about the celebration, so I said 'thank you, let me call my mother,'" said Dorothy, now Mrs. Russell Harbaugh.

"She came to the door and greeted them and was mighty excited."

Harbaugh, who now lives in Enid, Okla., recalled the first Arkalalah recently in a phone interview.

"Of course, the whole thing was to be kept very secret," she said. "They told us that we would be told what happened next. My mother didn't even tell my father until after the guests left."

Harbaugh, 95, plans to return to her hometown to participate in the 75th anniversary of Arkalalah this year. She plans to bring her family with her.

She has vivid memories of that evening in 1928 when she was sworn to secrecy by the men who gave her the news.

"I didn't tell anybody but the boy I was going with," she said.

But somehow, a neighbor of the Moores got suspicious that Dorothy had been chosen.

"The people behind us were the Getters," Harbaugh recalled. "Doyle Getter was a newspaperman, and when he got the idea I was selected, he came over and started teasing me about it. Of course it made me mad."

Dorothy sought relief from the teasing. She went to Edith Joyce Davis, the girls' physical education teacher at the high school, "and she put him in his place."

Harbaugh said that every aspect of that first Arkalalah was "just wonderful."

"There were two or three big dances that night," she said. "They had two parades -- a big parade on Saturday and again that night."

She recalls the weather was pleasant during the day but turned cold that evening.

"It got real cold the night of the parade and Miss Barnard (a family friend) had a new beautiful fur coat," she said. "She turned it over to me to use for the parade. I believe it was mink.

"And the float, gosh, it was real fancy."

The coronation was held in the former Opera House, now is the site of the Ark City Recreation Center. It was an elegant setting, she said.

"Of course, they thought the prices were pretty high -- $5 a ticket," Harbaugh said. "My dad thought that was too much money."

Two little girls were seated at her feet after she was crowned at the ceremony, and later joined her on the parade float, she recalled. One of them was Mary Jane Mitchell, who later was crowned an Arkalalah queen, in 1934. Mitchell married Malcolm Mills, and their daughter, Margaret Mills, was crowned Queen Alalah in 1958.

That first Arkalalah, 15 to 20 young women from surrounding towns participated in the coronation and parades, Harbaugh said.

She remembered that the Traveler printed an Extra edition on pink paper coronation night. Next to her front-page picture was a side-bar story with the headline "Queen Alalah Is a Modest Young Person."

"If modesty may be conceded to be one of the greatest attributes of the true ruler, Arkansas City's queen was certainly well chosen," the article stated.

"Recently when Miss Dorothy Moore was notified that the secret committee had decided that she should represent her city as 'queen' of the first Arkalalah festival, she was told to visit one of the committee for 'pointers.'

"When Miss Moore approached the committee member she became suffused with those gorgeous blushes which are supposed to have glorified the pallor of queens of bygone ages."

Miss Moore, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Moore, was crowned on Oct. 30, 1928. That was the opening event of the first Arkalalah.