ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – On Saturday, November 11, folks can tour the Abilene Municipal Cemetery and learn a bit about a few of the most influential Abilenians who have been buried there over the last 137 years. But this is no ordinary tour. Local university actors and actresses will be in full period regalia, portraying the people who shaped Abilene into what it is today. Their performances are informed by historical accounts, journal entries, and the personal testimonies of their loved ones.

“It’s always something that we learn from it. Through the struggles that they faced and the way that our city changed or our country changed,” said Abilene Preservation League Executive Director Josh Black.

$10 tickets are on sale now on the Abilene Preservation League website, or you can pay $15 at the gate, though children ten and under get in free. All proceeds go to benefit the league’s mission of local historical preservation.

Actors’ roles include the namesake of Dyess Air Force Base, Col. William Dyess, Abilene Socialite and education pioneer Nellie Paramore, and Dr. William Butler, Abilene’s first African-American doctor, among others.

“It makes history a living thing that you can experience, and it makes the people from 100 years ago or more a very real person,” Black said.

The guided tour lasts one hour and departs every 15 minutes from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. during the event. The Abilene Municipal Cemetery is located on the 800 block of Cottonwood Street, and visitors are encouraged to come in period-accurate dress. The stories told will cover people from before Abilene’s founding in 1881 and well into the 1950s and 1960s.