- REPUBLIC, Mo. Dan Keeslar, in spite of undergoing many days where he barely got two hours of sleep, losing his job as a construction manager and finally suffering a whopping $130,000 deficit on the wake of the rain-drenched Battle of Wilsons Creek he masterminded in June, admits "I would very much like to attempt another event in the near future."
In spite of the unfavorable financial results, the chief organizer of the Wilsons Creek 2000 program considers it "a step in the right direction of the new improved version of Civil War reenactments."
And even though he answers "not even close" when asked if he was happy with the outcome of the event, he concedes that it was "as successful as it could have been, based on the weather conditions."
Earlier in the year, Keeslar created Mid-America Battle Reenactments Inc. and had to give up his job as a construction manager in order to have the time to coordinate Wilson's Creek properly. He did so with the hope that "we would be able to get this event under our belts, learn from our mistakes and move on to the next event, do the same and move on to the next... getting better with each one."
He says, "Our goal wasn't to get rich, it was to get better and better until we could go in, design an event which would cater to the area and the amount of expected attending, manage the overall operation from beginning to end and just become very professional at what we did. This approach would be in contrast to the 'let's reinvent the wheel' approach that almost all events operate under today," he explains.
"I don't mean to downgrade any other event or any other organizers, but I feel there's a lot more to offer the reenacting community and the spectator community than we're doing at present," he adds, noting that "the local economy is in good shape and there's a lot of construction going on, so I hope to have another job in four to six weeks."
The event promoter still envisions a planning organization with "a full-time staff working on the event from beginning until end, therefore folks wouldn't have to worry about did this get done and by who and did we think of everything, etc."
But if he is to accomplish that objective, Keeslar will need help. Unless the reenacting community or some other unexpected white knight steps out of the wings to shore up the effort, the corporation he created just this past March might not survive. Keeslar summarized why in a statement he re-leased via the Internet a couple of weeks after the event: "I now find that I am more than $130,000 in the hole."
That's the deficit left by the Wilsons Creek program, without a doubt a most admirable living history effort in virtually every respect except its bottom line primarily because some five inches of rain over the weekend kept most spectators away.
Keeslar had estimated his breakeven point at approximately 16,000 tickets sold, and "with a market of more than 500,000 people in a 30-mile radius to draw from, we should have very easily broken even," he reasoned.
He noted that when a similar event was held in the same area of Missouri in 1991, more than 66,000 tickets were sold, and "with inflation factored in and no extra parking fee added in, our tickets were actually cheaper than in 1991." However, this time "the rains came and came and came," he wrote.
Still, not everyone stayed away from the site a few miles outside the city of Springfield. Close to 5,500 reenactors and 451 horses participated, and thousands of determined spectators showed up every day. "We were very lucky to get what we did," agreed Keeslar, who added: "With the weather so terrible and the mud being so deep, I just thank God that we received what we did get." And feedback, both from spectators and reenactors, he noted, "has been overwhelmingly positive."
Next time, Keeslar speculated, "I would do more signage. I would have less straw and hay. I would want to do the mailings to all participants myself, so that I could better control information being sent out and when they would receive that information."
But before any of that can happen, Keeslar trusts that reenactors will reach out to him. "What we really need is help from the reenacting community. If every reenactor that attended the event would just send in $10 each, that could eliminate almost one half of our debt. Since I still have almost 5,000 shirts left over... I feel that we would be able to recover completely if we could just get this much help... I strongly believe that reenactors will want to help take care of reenactors, if given the chance," he wrote.
Keeslar is a nine-year veteran captain of the 4th Missouri Volunteer Infantry, a unit of the 1st Missouri Battalion affiliated with the Missouri Civil War Reenacting Association, of which Keeslar himself is a board member.
He also hopes that people send for commemorative event T-shirts, which sell for $8 each, plus a $3 shipping & handling charge. The organization can be reached at 1415 West Westview, Spring-field, MO 65807-4655.
The organization received donations of more than $4,000 in the first four days after its plight be-came known. One man "who isn't even a reenactor" stepped forward and gave $500 "because he was so moved at what he had experienced and witnessed during the Sunday afternoon battle," said Keeslar.
