Want to go?
WHAT: Paul Laurence Dunbar Birthday Celebration
WHERE: 219 N. Paul Laurence Dunbar St., Dayton
WHEN: 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Saturday, June 25
COST: Free
INFO: 937-224-7061 or www.daytonhistory.org
During Paul Laurence Dunbar's short life, he wrote more than 400 poems, six full-length novels, many plays, short stories and lyrics. Imagine how much more he could have accomplished had he lived past the age of 33.
Celebrate Dunbar's birthday by learning more about this beloved poet.
Here are three tips to make the most of the event.
1. Begin at the Visitor Center entrance at the corner of Paul Laurence Dunbar Street and Edison Avenue.
“We started to manage this facility a year ago, and we’ve tripled the participation rate during that time,” said National Park Service ranger Gregg Smith. “It’s a partnership with the Ohio History Connection and the National Park Service. This Birthday Party will be a nice community event.”
2. Don't miss short film.
The National Park Service wants to make sure people don’t forget literary giants like Dunbar. A short film fills in many fascinating details of Dunbar’s rise to fame. It documents his devotion to his loving, supportive mother.
One of his poems reveals how he was “Encouraged”:
“Because you love me I have much achieved,
Had you despised me then I must have failed,
But since I knew you trusted and believed,
I could not disappoint you and so prevailed.”
3. See famous bicycle, other artifacts.
Artifacts and snippets of his poetry fill the building, including a bicycle he bought from the Wright Cycle Shop. He used it to ride back and forth to his job as an elevator operator in downtown Dayton.
See a quilt embellished with the covers of his many books. The tour continues outside under the grape arbor to the home he purchased for his mother.
The home includes a side lot and a barn where he kept his horse and buggy. It’s a state memorial owned by the Ohio History Connection and managed by the National Park Service.
“The furniture is original to the house. All the wallpaper was redone around 2002; but the style, including wallpapered ceilings, is very close to how it was decorated. He paid $4,100 for the home,” Smith said.
Dunbar's typewriter sits on a small desk in his bedroom at the home he purchased for his mother. PAMELA DILLON/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
The magic was created in his bedroom upstairs on a Remington Standard Typewriter No. 6. It sits on a tiny desk with an oil lamp, a swagger cane hooked over the chair.
The Birthday Party will include tours of that home, hot dogs and chips, veggie burgers, salad, cake and ice cream. There will also be music, storytelling and readings of his poetry.
Dunbar’s legacy is much like one of his most famous poems, “The Seedling”:
“… Little folks, be like the seedling
Always do the best you can;
Every child must share life’s labor
Just as well as every man
And the sun and showers will help you
Through the lonesome, struggling hours,
Till you raise to light and beauty
Virtue’s fair, unfading flowers.”
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