Slavic Cultural Festival

Slavic Festival starts today

This year’s Sugar Creek Slavic Festival will be different for Jack O’Renick.

It’s the first time in a quarter of a century that his good friend Charley Dumsky won’t be there.

O’Renick says he can almost feel the presence of Dumsky as the final touches are made in preparation for the Slavic Festival, which runs from 5 to 11:30 p.m. today and continues on Saturday.

“You know you’ve made an impression on people when folks are walking around down here, asking, ‘Is that how Charley would have done it?’” O’Renick says of Dumsky, who died in February at age 78. “He’s made a profound impression on many, many people.”

O’Renick and Dumsky, both former mayors of Sugar Creek, helped revive a Slavic Festival in 1986, and this weekend, during the 26th annual festival, Dumsky will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

“It already is,” O’Renick says of this year’s festival being different without Dumsky, whom O’Renick had counted among his best friends. The two men had known each other since third grade and had attended Northeast High School in Kansas City together. O’Renick received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

“We just worked on it constantly,” O’Renick says of the Slavic Festival. “We just got to where we really enjoyed doing it, and we really enjoyed having the people come down and enjoy our culture.

“Charley was Charley, and he had his ways just like the rest of us do, and that never seemed to interfere with our relationship. I always called him the real deal.”

Other festival award recipients will include the late Joe Mikula, the Sugar Creek Optimist Club and the Sugar Creek Moose Lodge. Ed Thomas, festival co-chairman for the Optimist Club, says the club has cooked as many as 1,400 Polish sausages and hot dogs in one festival year.

Look for the club’s tent at the main gate near the steps that lead up to the Mike Onka Memorial Building. The club’s proceeds go back to activities in Sugar Creek through the community’s Festival Board.

“I get to see all my old high school buddies, and I get to do a little work for the community in cooking the Polish sausage and hamburgers,” Thomas said. “It’s kind of like a class reunion every year.”

Slavic Festival coordinator Debbie Ray says she is most excited about the dancers at this year’s event. Fifty adult dancers and 35 children – all volunteers – will participate. Some of them live within the Sugar Creek area while others drive from as far away as Lawrence, Kan.

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