Two representatives of the Louisiana Smoked Meat Festival Association board were guest speakers at today’s (Tuesday’s) meeting of the Ville Platte Rotary Club.

    Renee Brown and Samantha Guillory addressed rotary club members to talk about the 25^th anniversary of the festival. Brown said this year,  the festival has pushed up its dates by one month to June 2 and 3 to avoid some of the hottest times of the year. Also, most of the events will be taking place at the Ville Platte Grand Pavilion area. A permanent stage has been built for the event and for other users of the facility.

  Guillory said veterans will be able to attend the opening ceremony and events with no admission charge. There will be a hospitality center inside the civic center. Also there will be a traveling museum of veteran’ s memorabilia that will be at the civic center that weekend. Since it is the 50^th anniversary of the Viet Nam War, a special presentation will be made to the families of deceased Viet Nam vets from Evangeline Parish.

   It was announced there will be a carnival coming back for the children to enjoy during the festival. Musical entertainment includes Nashville headliner Aaron Tippin that Saturday night. One of the highlights is the smoked meat cook off where there is usually an average of 30 teams participating with some 150 entries for the judges to review.

   The two speakers were the guests of Rotarian Bob Manuel.