10 Years Ago
Week of March 3, 2016
Pendleton County High School Recognized for Graduation Rate
Pendleton County High School was one of 47 other high schools across the state recognized for a greater than 90 percent graduation rate for the class of 2015.
Lambert Hired As Grant County Superintendent
Pendleton County school superintendent Douglas Lambert has been offered a three-year contract to serve as superintendent of Grant County Schools commencing on July 1.
20 Years Ago
Week of March 2, 2006
SUGAR GROVE
Warm Homes and Modern Appliances Can Easily Be Taken for Granted
Snowflakes are swirling through the community with the wind blowing sharp temperatures. It is cold with the promise of colder temperatures. Indeed, one is blessed to have warm homes and modern appliances, which easily become taken for granted.
Blessings abound when one turns on the tap and fills the bathtub with warm water, turns the thermostat up another notch for comfort when the temperature falls, uses the electric blanket that warms the bed at night, and the automatic washer and dryer that perform at the turn of a knob.
Many remember back when water was carried from a pump in zinc buckets for household use. Sometimes the pump handle would be so cold that hands would stick to the metal. The trip back through the snow was a hated chore, especially when the icy water would slop over one’s legs.
Imagine wash day when water had to be carried and heated over a fire. Clothes would be hung outside to freeze stiff. (It’s no wonder many people have arthritis in their fingers.)
Only those who have experienced the joys of an outside toilet know the sheer agony of the nightly visits in the snow. Usually an older sibling carried the lantern. A lot of families made use of the chamber pot at night, rather than trudging through all kinds of weather to the Johnny house.
There was nothing more comforting than the kitchen stove. The firebox needed to be filled every day in order to enjoy the warmth.
Imagine when the refrigerator was first introduced to the home. Many a housewife smiled at the ease of opening the door to foods that stayed fresher longer.
No doubt about it, there are many who are thankful for the modern conveniences.
30 Years Ago
Week of March 7, 1996
DAHMER
Whistling Girl and Crowing Hen Usually Come to Bad End
Whistling appears to have become a lost art. Perhaps you the older ones have noticed it too. The simple thing we used to do for amusement around a wood stove on a cold winter evening was amazing.
Now TVs, tapes and advanced technology are the amusement in the home.
Getting back to whistling, the late Gilbert Rumors, who was a mechanic at the Ford Garage in Franklin, whistled a lot working on the job. For others feeling a little sad, whistling to the tune of the “Old Rugged Cross” was soothing.
At the one-room Dahmer School, Russell Blizzard would sometimes place both hands near the face and put his two little fingers into his mouth to whistle. This whistling sound was like a shrill blast from a policeman’s whistle or emergency alarm.
A game was to eat three crackers and see who could be the first to make a whistling sound. Some mothers discouraged their daughters from whistling for it was not lady like.
There is an old saying which goes like this. “A whistling girl and a crowing chicken hen always come to some bad end.”
Part of this statement may not be true. At the late Estella Dahmer home, a crowing female hen, acting like a male rooster, soon got the axe.
40 Years Ago
Week of March 6, 1986
American Chestnut Tree Almost Extinct As a Result of Blight
Spindly and forlorn stand the young chestnut trees, their brown, ragged-edged leaves rattling in the bitter winter wind, their scarred trunks marking them for inevitable death.
These are special trees. They are American chestnuts that have sprouted from irradiated seeds placed in the ground by Stronghold Inc., a nonprofit corporation that administers the 3,000-acre park on Sugarloaf Mountain, an historic bump in the Frederick Valley 30 miles northeast of Washington, D. C.
The irradiation experiment, an effort to develop a blight-resistant tree, has been going on since the mid-1960s under the guidance of Dr. Albert Dietz, a retired research chemist who lives in Troutsville, Virginia. He has devoted much of his life to trying to restore American chestnuts to the landscape of the eastern United States.
American chestnuts used to be the grandest trees in the east, dominating forests from Maine to Alabama, their broad boughs inspiring poets and painters.
Chestnut wood was light, workable, and rot-resistant, used for everything from houses to furniture, power poles, and railway ties. The bark was used to tan hides. The savory nuts were food for wildlife, livestock and people.
Then came the blight that mowed them down, gradually, starting at New York’s Bronx Zoo in 1904 as a result of an imported Asian fungus and spreading inexorably north, south and west. By the 1950s, the once dominant giants were all but extinct.
An estimated 3.5 billion chestnut trees, covering some nine million acres, perished in what Dietz calls “the worst natural disaster ever experienced by our nation.” If all those trees were alive today, he says, the market value of their timber would be $44 trillion.
Fortuitously for Dietz and Stronghold, the town of Dickerson, Maryland, near Sugarloaf Mountain, is the home of the company that irradiates their seeds. For a small fee, Stronghold, Inc., mails thousands of chestnut seeds and seedlings each year to members of its American Chestnut Program in the eastern United States. They plant them and report annually on each tree’s growth.
While a few other scientists are experimenting with irradiated seeds, others are relying on genetics to develop a hybrid tree that would resist the fatal fungus.
“It looks right now like a very straight-forward breeding problem,” says Philip Rutter, president of the Minnesota-based American Chestnut Foundation. “Essentially, we’re going to bring the tree back. We could have trees in the woods in 15 years.”
50 Years Ago
Week of March 4, 1976
Girls Physical Education Gets Boost at Circleville High School
The Circleville High School girls physical education class enjoyed a field trip to Golden Lanes bowling alley in Petersburg to cap their recent study of bowling as a recreational sport.
The girls were instructed in bowling skills and scoring and practiced with plastic bowling pins in the gymnasium before making their trip. All students seemed to enjoy their first experience of bowling by rolling gutter balls, as well as spares and strikes.
Other girls physical education sports have been greatly helped by the Circleville PTA. A mini-vault added this year is used for vaulting as well as an aid in tumbling.
Hurdles purchased will be used this spring in the study of track and field events. The new phonograph bought jointly by the PTA and the school will be used in folk dance classes when emphasis will be placed upon folk dances of other countries.
The physical education classes offer group as well as individual sports with emphasis being on sports such as tennis, bowling and archery which can be used as recreational pursuits in later life.
Team sports of basketball and volleyball will always be favorite sports with the girls. Their dream is a varsity girls sports program at Circleville. Hopefully this year will be a reality beginning with girls varsity basketball team in the fall of 1976.
DAHMER
March came in like a lamb with the coltsfoot showing its yellow-ray flowers, and due to the unusual warm weather, the sugar maple season has been a poor one.
The late John Dahmer was referring to this section, when he remarked, “what grass grows in March will freeze back in April.”
Circleville High Wins $200 Prize In Essay Contest
Circleville High School was presented with the $200 second prize for having the second highest percentage of participation in an essay contest sponsored by NBC’s affiliate station, WSVA, in Harrisonburg, Va. A total of 117 essays were submitted by Circleville students for an 86 percent participation.
Riverheads High School in Greenville, Va., had the largest participation, and Central High School in Woodstock, Va., placed third.
Three essays were submitted by Franklin High School students. Winners were Trent Pitsenbarger, first, Jon C. Harding, second, and Etha Mae Shrader, third. Prizes were $75, $50 and $25, respectively, in merchandise, bonds or cash certificates.
The three top essays will be selected from the 20 schools participating in the contest to be entered in the national finals. Area judging will be done by the Humanities Department of Blue Ridge Community College.
The subject of the essay is “What Is An American?” National winners will be awarded $25,000 in college scholarships.
60 Years Ago
Week of March 3, 1966
New Health Center Opens Here; Services To Help Many in County
A new, broad spectrum of health services became available to the lower income families of Pendleton County Monday when a Community Action Health Center opened in Franklin. The office is located in the basement of the Board of Education building on Walnut Street.
Health services to be made available under the new program include the teaching of proper nutrition and dietary practices, home and personal hygiene, disease prevention measures, dental health and home care of the ill.
Mrs. Hurl Mitchell of Sugar Grove has been employed as the health coordinator for the program.
Presbyterian Church Here Will Observe 100th Year
The Franklin Presbyterian Church, as an organized congregation, will be one hundred years old on August 19, 1966. Plans are being made to observe an historical event sometime before the end of the current year.
When the church was organized by a commission of Lexington Presbytery, it was known as the Pendleton Presbyterian Church. An old log church, located about 1/2 mile south of Upper Tract, was the scene of the event.
The congregation began worshipping in the old Union Frame Church about 1808-09. This building was located on High Street in Franklin. The first brick building was erected about 1876. The present edifice was built in 1923-24. The church has 236 active members. The yearly contributions to the financial program run around $22,000.
70 Years Ago
Week of March 1, 1956
Olin Bible Is New Parish Farm Superintendent
Olin Bible of Buffalo Hills has been employed as superintendent of the Pendleton County Parish Farm, County Clerk Luther H. Eye said yesterday.
Eye said that Mr. and Mrs. Isaiah Murphy had informed the county court that they could not continue to manage the county farm after March 1.
The 402-acre farm is located at Upper Tract, and at present has 21 inmates. Seven of them are from other counties.
Eye said the court was reluctant to accept the resignation of Mr. and Mrs. Murphy as they have been doing a good job. They have been in charge of the property for approximately 29 years. They said, however, that their advancing years and physical condition did not permit them to continue with the work.
Bible managed a large dairy farm in Maryland for a number of years and recently has been in charge of the Skidmore farm located in the Buffalo Hills area.
The new superintendent will take over the active management of the parish farm today. He moved his family into the property yesterday.
