Baldwin City ? Frederick Krebs knows legendary Kansas journalist William Allen White rather intimately. He has portrayed him more than 200 times as a member of the Kansas Humanities Council Speakers Bureau.

Saturday night at the Famous Kansans Chautauqua in Baldwin City, an audience met both men.

“I’ve know about White since I was a kid, but I didn’t realize he was so influential nationally,” said Dave Hill, co-chairman of the committee that brought the Chautauqua event to Baldwin City this year.

“This was the third performance I’ve seen, and the talent of the performers is phenomenal,” he said. “They know so much. It’s living history.”

Famous Kansans Chautauqua on the Baker University campus is sponsored by the Kansas Humanities Council. The event takes place twice a year at various cities in the state.

The Chautauqua is a revival of the educational and entertaining traveling tent programs that were popular in rural America in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Each evening of the four-day event featured a first-person historical characterization of a famous Kansan, including poet Langston Hughes and temperance leader Carry A. Nation.

When Krebs isn’t in the classroom, he travels the nation portraying Chautauqua-style characters.

“I think we all have gifts,” Krebs said. “This seems to be mine.”

Krebs said he has read White’s two main collections, a biography and White’s autobiography, published after his death in 1944, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1946. He said he enjoys learning about and portraying White because of the way he lived his life.

“In many ways White was charged with inconsistency,” Krebs said. “He had reason in mind, and kindness and justice. He spent a lifetime working on their definitions.”

White was born in Emporia and achieved worldwide fame as the editor of the Emporia Gazette. He had Progressive ideals as revealed in his editorials and essays, which made the Gazette one of the country’s most influential and respected small-town newspapers. In 1896, his editorial “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” earned nationwide attention.

“Fundamentally what White believed is that citizenship involved volunteerism and service,” Krebs said. “He said we have a duty to be kind to each other, to live by the Golden Rule.”

Darlene Jacob, of Lawrence, said, “I enjoy the whole history and coming together as a community.

“I’ve heard him speak several times. He’s always energetic and really knows the person he is portraying.”

The event began Wednesday and continues through today, when people can meet John R. Brinkley, the controversial doctor who lived in Kansas from 1914 to 1932. He is known for formulating a goat gland operation, establishing a KFKB radio station, where he prescribed medicines for patients who wrote to him. He also ran for governor of Kansas.