A familiar sight at Dearborn Homecoming festivals: Dave Van Dorp emceeing the activities.
DEARBORN – Dale Van Dorp, long a local luminary in Dearborn’s theater community, will be remembered June 7 in a ceremony at the Michael A. Guido Theater, beginning at 1 p.m. The public is invited.
Van Dorp, known to many in the city as the “Voice of Dearborn” including at Homecoming, passed away May 10 after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 62.
The memorial ceremony will feature tributes from friends and co-workers, several videos and selected musical pieces.
A charter member of the Dearborn Area Theater Association, Van Dorp enjoyed a long and successful career on the local stage — headlining productions such as “Camelot,” “The Music Man,” and “Peter Pan” — and also in the director’s chair.
When DATA created its Hall of Fame in 1990, Van Dorp was one of the seven original inductees.
Van Dorp worked for the Dearborn Recreation & Parks Department in different capacities for nearly four decades, and was perhaps best known for his role as the host of the city’s annual Homecoming celebration, the Music Under the Stars concerts and the Annual Tree Lighting and Sing-A-Long.