Contributors and volunteers are needed for Chandler’s CityFest on July 10, an official with the city’s public library said.

The event at Winchester Park “will feature a minimuseum with displays of items relating to Chandler’s history,” Librarian Nancy Bertholf said. Anyone who has items they would like to display, or who would like to help with the museum, should call me.”

Organizers of Chandler’s 50th anniversary celebration have already lined up a 13-hour event that features a fireworks presentation, hot-air balloon launch, antique car show, and a disc golf tournament.

Booths are scheduled to open at 9 a.m., and music from Rick Daily is scheduled throughout the day. The balloon launch is planned for 5 p.m., and Tony Douglas and The Shrimpers is set to perform three hours later. A fireworks presentation will end the celebration.

Money raised during CityFest will help finance the creation of a city museum, the contents of which are housed at the Chandler Public library, a branch of the Henderson County Clint W. Murchison Memorial Library.

Originally housed in a bookmobile, the Chandler branch was moved to Broad Street in 1983 and relocated again 13 years later to its current building at 900 State Highway 31. It is expected to become a city department by Chandler’s next fiscal year, but Henderson County commissioners have told the city it would continue to allocate $18,000 a year for the Chandler branch.

Chandler contributes over $8,000 a year to its branch. As a branch library, it is unable to receive state funding, grants and access to databases, Bertholf has said.

CityFest marks 50 years of Chandler’s incorporation.

Its history, though, dates to 1880 when the Texas and St. Louis Railway established a station on land donated about 31 years earlier by Alphonso Chandler, for which the town was renamed. It was originally called Stillwater.

Officials haven’t decided whether to expand the library or move the historical collection, which includes Sen. Ralph Yarborough, Jackie Kennedy, and other collections and memorabilia. The late Yarborough, Democratic senator, was born in Chandler in 1903. He taught school in Henderson County, practiced law in El Paso and Austin, was a Texas judge and assistant attorney general, World War II veteran in the U.S. Army, and an author.

Yarborough was in Kennedy’s motorcade during the president’s assassination in 1963 in Dallas.

To contribute to the July 10 museum or to volunteer, call Bertholf at 903-521- 5962 or the library at 903- 849-4122.