Lucky Pittsburg State alumni in Wichita getting a special fried chicken delivery tonight
If you live in College Hill, you might pick up the aroma of fried chicken and German potato salad wafting through the air tonight.
But smell it is all you’ll be able to do if you’re not an alumni of Pittsburg State University.
Members of the school’s alumni association are making the 150-mile drive to Wichita on Wednesday evening to distribute from the Blessed Sacrament parking lot 160 packaged chicken dinners from Chicken Annie’s, one of the half dozen or so famous fried chicken restaurants that the Southeast Kansas area is known for.
I wrote a guide to the biggest ones, which also includes places like Chicken Mary’s and Barto’s Idle Hour, last fall. Chicken Annie’s, though, is the original and has been operating since 1934, meaning that generations of PSU graduates have dined there over the years.
The school recently put out a call to alumni in the area asking for RSVPs for the meals, said Stephanie Swezey, a coordinator with the alumni association, and they sold out quickly.
People who attended college in Pittsburg remember trips to those fried chicken restaurants fondly, she said, and alumni crave the taste of their school days.
The association came up with the chicken delivery event as a socially distanced way to keep up with alumni, Swezey said. Usually, they host gatherings in cities with high alumni populations during the year, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, those events have been on hold.
They’d organized similar chicken dinner deliveries in Kansas City and in Northwest Arkansas, and Wichita caught wind.
“We had those planned and advertised them, and then we immediately heard from some alumni, ‘When are you coming to Wichita? When are you bringing chicken to Wichita?’”
Now, Tulsa alumni are demanding their turn, so they’ll be next, she said.
Swezey said she even heard from a few non-alumni who begged to get in on the Chicken Annie’s delivery, and she made a few exceptions.
“We’re just happy to bring a taste of the Pittsburg area to Wichita,” she said.
The lucky alumni who reserved a spot and paid their $10 will be picking up their dinners, which will each include three pieces of mixed chicken, a side of German potato salad, and a side of German coleslaw, starting at 5 p.m. tonight at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament parking lot, 3800 E. Douglas.
This story was originally published October 28, 2020 at 2:40 PM.
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