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Webb City is now among the original Route 66 cities to have an historic neon sign relit. As the sun set Saturday night, a crowd assembled on South Jefferson Street to see the lights of the Webb City Florist sign come on.
Rich Dinkela, president of the Route 66 Association of Missouri, said he had discovered the Webb City Florist sign years ago when he was just a “road geek.”
And he pointed out that the concrete bed of the original Route 66 lays beneath the asphalt on Jefferson Street.
He recalled getting to know Marcia Musgrove, the former of the business, and then working with her friend and successor, Courtney Smith, to get started raising $6,000 to rehabilitate the sign.
Smith thanked Dinkela and other association members for making the project a success.
She spoke about the value of maintaining the Route 66 heritage and the obligation she feels to keep the decades-old Webb City Florist business serving the community.
Rich Dinkela, president of the Route 66 Association of Missouri, talks about the organization’s mission to relight historic signs on Route 66.
Attendees linger by the sign after it’s relighted.
JOMO Jazz entertains during the party.
Current and former owners: Marcia Musgrove, Courtney Smith, Mark and Ann Parker, and Lynn Shelley. Mark and Lynn worked for their parents, Loretta and Mervin Parker, when they owned the business, and then Mark and Ann bought the business.
The Webb City Sentinel isn’t a newspaper – but it used to be, serving Webb City, Missouri, in print from 1879-2020. This “newspaper” seeks to carry on that tradition as a nonprofit corporation.
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