20 Years Ago
Week of May 15, 2003
SUGAR GROVE
Opportunities Exist for Divesting of One’s Guilt
Thunderstorms have dominated the weather for the last week causing streams and rivers to run muddy and full. Every stream of water in the world – a branch, a creek or raging river – has one purpose, to flow toward the sea. When the stream stops that endeavor, it becomes a swamp. Likewise, when a person loses his/her purpose and stops pursuing it, stagnation like a swamp occurs. When life ceases to be a journey, it becomes an unhappy burden. With a purpose in life, one can be whatever one wants to be. Goals must be set and a list of things made for success and the willingness to work for it. Even as mistakes are made and obstacles come by, one must keep going. One must not get discouraged and give up. Remember that the purpose of the journey is to reach the goal. Supplies to take along this journey would be honor and self-respect. Honor is the habit of doing the right thing. It means abiding by the moral law or as one commonly knows them–The Ten Commandments. Simply stated, it tells one that one must not hurt one’s fellow man needlessly. One must not take undue advantage of anyone. Seize moments. There is an endless stream full of moments, so many that one could never count them all, and all of them are ones for the taking. Use opportunities to divest oneself of all that guilt that one is carrying around. Gather it up, wrap it with care and send it Federal Express to that person who can never get enough of the stuff! Forgive. Smile. Teach. Explore. Lift. Laugh. Run. Give. Appreciate. Enjoy the moments as one continues one’s journey through life.
Week of May 22, 2003
Pendleton Has Highest
College-Going Rate
In Area
The Pendleton County Board of Education has learned that Pendleton County has the highest college-going rate—56.32 percent—of any county in the eastern panhandle.
Indeed, Pendleton County’s college-going rate is exceeded among rural counties in West Virginia only by Randolph (59.59 percent), Upshur (61.29 percent) and Taylor (75.52 percent).
30 Years Ago
Week of May 20, 1993
DAHMER
The last day of school at the end of the school term in the mid-twenties at the Dahmer one-room school was an event to look forward to when the parents and others would come to see and hear a program given by the scholars under the direction of the teacher which consisted of recitations by the younger pupils.
Sometime ago a little girl asked, “Grandmaw! When you were a little girl, where did you go on vacation?” “Child, I never had a vacation. We worked all summer long.”
The red-headed woodpecker numbers are very low here in Pendleton. The bluebirds are nesting in a number of bird houses on the Everett Mitchell land. So far Everett has only seen one chipmunk in Pendleton in his travels and that was on Hardscrabble.
40 Years Ago
Week of May 19, 1983
DAHMER
“A voice in the woods” is a fine way to describe the song of the ovenbird. You may pass through the woodland where the ovenbirds are singing and yet not see any. Its song in western Virginia has very little change of emphasis. Teach, Teach, Teach, etc. Because of its song, it is often called the teacher bird. The nest is shaped much like an old fashioned oven, hence the name ovenbird.
This year has been one of the poorest mushroom seasons for a coon’s age. If any can be found, Stanley Propst can find them. On one day earlier this season, he found 145 mushrooms, but this is just chicken feed compared with a few years ago when he found almost the unbelievable amount of 4200 mushrooms or morels.
60 Years Ago
Week of May 23, 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.
Attack on Vicksburg Fails; Siege Opens
Federal Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s corps commanders synchronized their watches 100 years ago this week and departed to their individual commands. Their orders, written by Grant: to open an attack on Vicksburg, Miss., at 10 a.m. that day, May 22, 1863.
It would be, they hoped, the successful climax of 20 days of lightning warfare. In those 20 days, Grant’s army had marched 130 miles in enemy territory, had split Confederate forces in two, had won five battles, had driven the Confederate army of Gen. John C. Pemberton into Vicksburg and had then surrounded that all-important city. The Federals had lost only 2,000 men; Pemberton had lost 14,000.
Now, it was time to end the job. A furious cannonade opened fire on the 20,000 Confederates, who waited in a strong network of trenches, embankments and forts surrounding the city.
The first of Grant’s 40,000 troops went forward all along the line at 10 a.m., and not a Confederate was to be seen. But as they neared the entrenchments, the Confederates rose up and fired volley after volley into the charging Federals, knocking them down en masse.
More Federals came on all along the three-mile front. Eventually, some of them broke through, scaling embankments with ladders and pushing over the Confederate parapets with their battle flags waving.
But the gains were only temporary. In the few places that their line was broken, the Southerners counter-charged and drove the Yankees back again with heavy loss. At one point, charging Texans drove the Federals from a captured fort with bayonets.
On the left, Gen. John A. McClernand, commanding one of Grant’s corps, thought he had won an important position in the battle and called for reinforcements. Grant sent them, and they went into battle to suffer only more casualties and gain nothing. By evening, Grant was forced to withdraw.
It was a decided defeat for Grant. He had lost 500 killed, 2.500 wounded and 147 missing, while Pemberton’s total loss was not over 500. Because of it, Grant realized that Vicksburg could not be taken by further frontal attacks, and there was nothing to do but lay a siege. The siege began immediately.
Heavy guns were brought down the Mississippi. They opened fire in what was to become, during the next few weeks, a daily diet of shelling on the beleaguered city and the trapped soldiers and citizens inside it. Grant’s men dug in only a few hundred yards from the Confederate lines and prepared to wait it out.
On the 25th, a truce was called, and both sides went onto the battlefields, burying the dead and carrying the wounded to the rear. After three hours, the fighting resumed.
Inside the city, the citizens and troops found themselves with a limited supply of food and with no way out of their predicament except by fighting their way out. Grant, writing just outside the city, reported accurately to Washington: “The fall of Vicksburg and the capture of most of the garrison can only be a question of time.”
Next week: Port Hudson Attacked.
Female Workers
Being Surveyed
A garment industry for Pendleton County may be a possibility if an adequate labor supply is indicated by a labor survey now being conducted in the county.
The West Virginia Department of Commerce has requested that a survey be conducted whether enough women would be available to supply the necessary labor to operate a garment factory in this area.
The survey will be underway today and will be continued for the next two weeks. It is being conducted by Pendleton Industries, Inc., a non-profit corporation which was organized to try to promote the industrial development of the county.
96 to Graduate from County High Schools
Commencement exercises next week will bring to a close four years of high school study for the students in Pendleton County’s two high schools.
The commencement program for Circleville’s 33 high school seniors will be held next Wednesday night, followed by the program at Franklin High School Thursday night when diplomas will be awarded to 63 students. Both programs will begin at 8 p.m.
70 Years Ago
Week of May 14, 1953
Rating
Of Four Schools Raised
It has been announced by Arlie Blizzard, Assistant Superintendent that the following schools of the county have been originally classified or raised their classification during the 1952-53 school term:
Original — First Class: Entry Mountain, Onego, Reeds Creek; Second Class: Carr, Cherry Hill, Dahmer, Dolly, Huffman.
Raised To—First Class: Brushy Run, Friends Run, Goshen, Mallow.
Other Schools Previously Classed — First Class Model: Franklin Grade; First Class: Brandywine, Circleville High School, Circleville Elementary, Dixie, Franklin High School, Laurel Hill, Schmucker, Sugar Grove, Upper Tract.
Second Class: Seneca.
Altogether twenty-one schools are now classified in the county and no school has been reduced in or lost its classification. Out of the total number of schools in the county, only thirteen are unclassified and a number of these may be expected to be added to the classification next year.
“As a result of the cooperative effort of all concerned, the schools of the county have enjoyed a good year and these classifications along with a number of other things attest to this fact,” County Superintendent Floyd J. Dahmer said.
Several Off
For Military Service
The following Pendleton County men were ordered to report for induction into the Armed Forces on Wednesday, May 13, 1953:
Curtis Lee Crites (Volunteer), Kline; Welton C. Rexrode, Franklin; Ford Mallow, Key; John Merl Thompson, Riverton; James Clinton Propst, Franklin; Loy Edward Full, Brushy Run; Dolan Ray Grogg, Sugar Grove; Willard Allen Warner, Cherry Grove; Foster Bland, Onego; Billy Sheldon Swadley, Brandywine; Calvin Leroy Smith, Sugar Grove; Thomas Albert Warner, Circleville; Bruce Dove Newcomb, Cave; Stanley Lee Mitchell, Port Republic, Va.; Harlan Eugene Eye, Franklin; Bruce Grayson Moyers, Franklin; Charles Woodrow Elza, Circleville; Carl Eugene Rexrode, Franklin; and William Frederick Evick, Franklin.
EDITORIALS – – –
THE CLASS OF ‘53 – – –
This month high schools all over America will graduate hundreds of thousands of young men and women and send them out into the world to make their futures. What kind of futures will they have? In the world of chaos and tension of today, their future isn’t bright.
Yesterday nineteen of the young men of this county were called into the service. Before long, unless the world situation improves, all of the physically fit boys of the class of ‘53 will be called—the cream of the crop. For many it will interrupt furthering of their education. For others it will delay their preparations for a trade. For still others it will postpone marriage and the raising of a family.
The girls who graduate share the same insecurity with the young men; the parents of the children share it, for — “they also serve, who only stand and wait.” After the boys return—those who will return—they will go through a period of readjustment which will further prolong their goals in life.
For many of the graduates of ‘53 it is, indeed, a disheartening and gloomy future they face but, in the American tradition, they will make the most of it. Many of the boys—those who are using their heads—will go on to college and acquire all the education they can get before they are called to arms. By doing so, they will be of greater service to the country in military uniform, and the road will be shorter when they get out.
In the service the young graduates’ education will be broadened by travel and by contacts with other men from every part of the country. He will have many enlightened experiences and hear many new ideas propounded. He may even be chosen for a specialized course of study.
So, the outlook need not be as dark as it first seems. The young people of America will race into the future with courage—as they always have. They have faced darker times and they have always come through with flying colors. The girls—the ones who are worth waiting for—will be waiting. And, as an old Chinese proverb says, “Great hardships are followed by great blessings.”
