10 Years Ago
Week of May 30, 2013
Dalen Field
Chosen for School
The Pendleton County Board of Education voted to proceed with exercising the option-to-purchase agreement signed with landowner John Dalen for the purchase of property near Main Street in the county seat for the construction of a new Franklin Elementary School.
The board met last Tuesday evening and heard from Trey Horner of Horner Bros. Engineering and Richard Forren of Omni Associates, the firm working on the design-build approach to the new school’s construction.
Environmental and infrastructure studies of both sites (Dalen property and Entry Mountain) were reported on by Forren and Horner. Factors included water pressure, availability of three-phase power, sanitary sewer, soil and, in the case of the Dalen property, which borders the South Branch River on its southern end, flood-plain siting, among other factors.
The Entry Mountain site above town had no flood-plain issues but consists of solid bedrock at a depth of three feet. To go down five or six feet for the new school’s foundation there would be considerable rock excavation.
Both sites were rated as suitable for school construction. The Dalen property graded out somewhat better in terms of water pressure (for drinking and other potable uses as well as fire-fighting) and three-phase power accessibility.
PCHS Seniors Receive
Over $1.5 Million
In Scholarships
The annual Pendleton County High School (PCHS) senior awards assembly was conducted on May 13 in the school gymnasium. Senior students received scholarships and grants worth over $1.5 million over their four-year college education.
20 Years Ago
Week of May 22, 2003
Learning Needs
To Continue
During Summer
by
Governor Bob Wise
In the next few weeks, schools will close for summer and students will begin their vacations. There will be baseball games, camp-outs, and fishing trips. And though our youths will not be in the classroom, the vital progress of learning will continue. I am encouraged by the success of the academic year and have great optimism for the future of education in West Virginia.
Summer vacations offer more opportunities than ever for young people to pursue educational adventures.
There are too many possibilities for summer learning to list them all—4-H projects, community library reading programs, neighborhood cleanups, and day and overnight camps and sports.
These months away from the classroom should not detract from what students learn in school, but complement it. Whether a child chooses to work, attend a camp or volunteer in his or her community, education can be found everywhere.
30 Years Ago
Week of May 27, 1993
90 to Graduate
This Weekend
A total of 90 seniors will receive diplomas this weekend in commencement exercises at Pendleton County’s two high schools.
Twenty-two students will complete their high school studies at Circleville High School. Franklin High School’s 68 graduating seniors will receive their high school diplomas.
SUGAR GROVE
The locust blossoms are hanging heavy this year. The “old timers” used to say, “When the the locust blossoms hang heavy, the corn crop will be bountiful.” The farmers in our community have planted their corn and in time to come, the tale of the corn crop will be told.
40 Years Ago
Week of May 26, 1983
105 Pendleton
High School Seniors
To Get Diplomas
A total of 105 seniors will receive diplomas Sunday at graduation exercises at Pendleton County’s two high schools.
A total of 29 graduates will receive diplomas at the Circleville High School commencement program at 6 p.m., and 76 seniors will be graduated from Franklin High School at 8 p.m.
50 Years Ago
Week of May 24, 1973
New School
On Spruce Knob
Will Teach Outdoor Skills
The Woodlands and Whitewater Institute is a new school that is opening on Spruce Knob Mountain near Cherry Grove in Pendleton County. The school will teach outdoor skills such as rock climbing, whitewater kayaking and canoeing, backpacking, cave exploration, survival techniques and other wilderness and environmental subjects.
Grow Your Own
Vegetables—To Beat High Food Prices
Recent increases in food prices have made everyone aware that even in this country the supply of food can become limited. The rising cost of producing food and the limited prices they received over the past 20 years have forced millions of small farmers out of business; or as they grew older they simply quit and their children left the farm to take up other occupations.
What are the alternatives to high food prices? What is the alternative to paying a high percentage of your annual income for food as people do in other countries?
The first alternative that comes to mind is to grow your own vegetables and fruits. A second alternative is to reduce the amount of food you eat. Most Americans eat more calories than they need. They either grow fat or engage in some unproductive activity, such as jogging to prevent obesity.
Growing a home garden can be profitable. I recently checked the cost of seed, fertilizer, pesticide and other items involved in growing a garden for a family of four.
Growing one’s own vegetables can be a rewarding experience, not only from the economic point of view, but from others, such as the freshness and better quality of home garden vegetables.
There is no way that a commercial farmer can allow his produce to stay on the vine or plant until it reaches the peak of excellency and still have shelf life left. However, the home gardener’s produce is only minutes away from the table. Vegetables that the farmer harvests are days or often a week or more away from actual use.
Growing a garden is not easy, regardless of all the glowing accounts that appear in the magazines today.
Like most jobs, the more experience one has, the easier gardening becomes. Preparing soil on a piece of ground that has not been cultivated for some time can be hard work. As a garden is cultivated year after year, stones are removed, organic matter builds up, wet places and problem areas are removed or avoided and, generally, the soil becomes more productive.
If a soil test is not made and the soil has not been cultivated for several years, it is probably low in fertility. I suggest 10 pounds of 10-10-10 fertilizer be applied per 100 square feet of garden. Apply half of the lime and fertilizer before you spade or plow. Put the other half on after plowing and spading. Disk, rototill, or rake the soil to remove clods, sods, or objectionable material and to work the fertilizer and lime into the soil well.
The one most common cause of failure in home gardens is the lack of weed control. The important thing to remember is to not let the weeds get a start. A weed that is one inch high or less should be removed. At that stage they are easier to kill or remove.
Probably the best advice for the home gardener is not to procrastinate. Do the job when it is necessary and don’t plow up any more garden than can be taken care of easily!
Week of May 31, 1973
102 Will Graduate from Pendleton High Schools
A total of 102 students will graduate from Pendleton County’s two high schools at their respective commencement exercises next week.
Seventy-five seniors will receive their high school diplomas at Franklin High School Sunday night, and 27 seniors will officially complete their high school careers at Circleville High School Tuesday night.
60 Years Ago
Week of June 6, 1963
100 YEARS AGO
By LON K. SAVAGE
Editor’s Note—The following is one of a series of articles on the Civil War. Each weekly installment covers events which occurred exactly 100 years ago.
Gen. Lee Begins
Pennsylvania Invasion
General Robert E. Lee began 100 years ago this week an invasion that would end at a little Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.
The invasion was a gamble by the now world famous Confederate general to carry the Civil War’s heaviest fighting outside of Virginia and, hopefully, to end the war quickly somewhere near Washington. Lee and other Confederate leaders had given long deliberation to the all-important decision, and now it was time to act.
On June 2, therefore, Lee’s army of 80,000 began leaving their trenches at Fredericksburg and slipping quietly northwestward along the bloody Rappanhannock and Rapidan rivers of central Virginia where so much of the fighting had occurred during the past year. Richard Ewell’s corps led off the movement, marching smartly to Culpeper that day, 30 miles to the west. Two days later, Lee, himself, rode to Culpeper, leaving one corps at Fredericksburg to protect Richmond 50 miles to the south.
As Lee moved, his Federal counterpart, “Fighting Joe” Hooker looked on in some puzzlement from the other side of the Rappahannock River. Was this, Hooker wondered, to become the much discussed Confederate invasion of the North? He sent out one of his subordinate generals, General John Sedgwick, to answer his question.
Sedgwick acted promptly. After laying pontoon bridges across the Rappanhannock, his army crossed and felt its way toward Fredericksburg. Lee’s men who still were there responded violently; there was fighting, and Sedgwick fell back across the river, satisfied that he had the answer. It was his opinion, he told Hooker, that the bulk of Lee’s army still remained at Fredericksburg.
But Hooker remained suspicious. He wired President Lincoln June 5; it appeared, he said, that Lee was moving northward via Culpeper, leaving behind a rear guard at Fredericksburg. “I am of the opinion,” he wrote, “that it is my duty to pitch into his (Lee’s) rear…”
Lincoln fired back his reply the same day: “If he (Lee) should leave a rear force at Fredericksburg,” he wrote, “tempting you to fall upon it, it would fight in entrenchments and…man for man, worst you at that point, while his main force would in some way be getting an advantage of you northward.”
“In one word,” the President continued, “I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence, and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.”
So Hooker waited and watched, gradually edging his army to the northwest to stay parallel with Lee’s army. His tactics had been decided for him; as Lee moved, he would move, carefully staying between Lee’s army and Washington.
And so the two armies glided northwestward on each side of the Rapidan River, the one facing the other, and both moving inexorably toward the town of Gettysburg.
Next week: Lee Enters Maryland.
70 Years Ago
Week of May 28, 1953
The
Mountaineer Gardener
by JOHN HAMMER
If you’ll recall your childhood days, I imagine many of you will remember that the coming of the butterfly was a sign that it was time to start going barefooted. This sign may be good for the children of today—but it also is a sign to gardeners that trouble is ahead for cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and similar crops.
There are several different kinds of butterflies, but it’s the small, white ones that cause gardeners to worry. If you’ll watch these little fellows on a warm day, you’ll see them fluttering around in the garden and every now and then, they look like they almost light on a cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower or kale plant. When they almost light, what do you suppose they’re doing? Actually, they’re laying eggs. In a few days, these eggs hatch and there’s the worm that will eat 24 hours each day if you do not kill it.
Do not wait until you see worm damage to start fighting these worms, but start now!
If you control these worms—which is perfectly easy to do—you will not only get more cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kale, but you’ll get these vegetables earlier, and to me, probably most important, they’ll taste much better. If one of these plants has to struggle along trying to grow and feed worms at the same time, it will take it much longer to develop and you can be sure it will not be tender, crisp, and mild in flavor.
