10 Years Ago
Week of March 6, 2014
Entrepreneur,
Family Matriarch
Shirley Yokum…
Shirley Yokum is one of the most formidable and accomplished businesswomen not only in Pendleton County, but in this part of eastern West Virginia. With her husband, Carl, she created and then presided over a small empire of business ventures which are synonymous with the commercial side of tourism in Seneca Rocks. She is also the proud matriarch of a large and accomplished family.
Shirley was born on Jan. 2, 1920, the oldest of the six children of Byron S. Bland, Sr. and Erma (Harper) Bland. Before Shirley’s birth, Byron Bland then, 24, playfully cautioned his 23-year-old wife, “Don’t let that baby be born on New Year’s or else we’ll have one every year.” As it turned out, their six children were born in seven years—and “none of them were twins,” Shirley points out.
On her mother’s side, Shirley also is a descendant of the Sites family (as in the Sites Homestead, which Jacob Sites built in 1839). Of her father’s side of the family, Shirley says, “My great-great-granddad came from Scotland or Ireland, I don’t know which. I’ve been to Ireland but not to Scotland.” On her mother’s side, Shirley recollects that, “My grandmother and her brothers owned different parts of Seneca Rocks.”
Her mother’s family lived, she recalls, “in the field across from the 4-U Motel.” Shirley’s parents were enterprising owners of a general store which opened in 1924, S. L. Bland & Son. It was started by Shirley’s dad and her grandfather. It was situated “in the middle of the Y” near the other store in Seneca Rocks, Harper’s Store, which dates from 1902.
Shirley grew up upstairs in the family’s living quarters. The store was classic in the sense that it was a true general country store that sold a little bit of everything, from food and gasoline to clothing. The clothing was practical, and diverse, everything from shoes and boots to hats, caps, pants and “those old long stockings we all wore.”
The store was moved to its present location in 1938, when the county road was made to run between the two stores at the intersection in order to accommodate “all the traffic.”
Shirley and another area businesswoman, Louise Bowers, the owner of Macksville Mart, reminisced about Shirley’s parents.
Shirley recalls that her dad took care of keeping the books and “doing the figures.” Her mother, described by Louise as “a brilliant woman,” had a knack for sizing up people for clothes. At a glance, she knew what they needed and what sizes they wore.
Shirley took over the management of the family store after her father’s death, expanding it over time into what it is today. What it is today is one of two landmark stores (the other being Harper’s Old Country Store) in one of the busiest tourism corners in all of eastern West Virginia. Shirley says, “My dad would be shocked at what I did to his store.”
Shirley went to the same one room school her father had attended, the original Seneca School. Its original location was at the Cave Hole “down below the rocks,” although it was relocated to a site just above where Bub Yokum (one of the late Jack Yokum’s children) lives today.
Shirley graduated from Circleville High School in 1938. She was the salutatorian in a class of “maybe 20.” Makeshift classrooms were set up “in the darndest places,” including a local minister’s garage, and the new school didn’t open until the fall of 1938, by which time Shirley was attending business school in Akron, OH, and staying with an aunt.
However, Shirley was dating Carl Yokum in 1935, when that 19-year-old young man built 11 cabins overlooking the North Fork River behind the present location of Yokum’s Restaurant. Shirley believes they were the first privately owned rental cabins in the entire area. Thus, they were one of the first, perhaps the first, commercial enterprises to capitalize on the tourist trade in Seneca Rocks.
SUGAR GROVE
Elementary Teachers
Possess Undeniable Qualities
March…it’s funny how when one is a child, one thinks time will never go by, but once one gets to be about 20 years of age, time passes like one is on the fast train to Memphis! Wasn’t it just January? Here it is March. At this rate, the Christmas decorations will be soon out in the stores.
The weatherman is calling for a storm warning with up to 12 inches of snow following rain and sleet. (Despite that, the snow drops have been blooming at the late Hugh and Gertrude Mitchell homestead). That meant no school on Monday, again. Speaking of school, the following suit was brought against Stone of the South Fork area by Frederick Upp, schoolmaster in the year 1761:
“To schooling three children six months and reading in church as by agreement, $6.08. To schooling two children three months in 1761, $2.00. To my improvements you bought for 20 pounds, $66.67. To schooling four children for George Propst six months, $12.60. To schooling two children for Thomas Miller six months, $5.17. To schooling two children for yourself and reading in church, $6.00. Total 30 pounds, 12 shillings, 6 pence ($102.08). Credit by cash, $52.00.”
This suit was sworn to in Frederick County, 11th June 1763.
How to recognize an elementary teacher allows one to enjoy and reflect on this particular career.
- Keen hearing…can detect whispered answers from the back of the classroom.
- Diagnostic Abilities…can take one look at Debbie Sue and tell whether she really has the stomach flu or if she hasn’t studied for the social studies test.
- Love of Nature…especially enjoys hiking in the woods with students, with the worst behaved student as the “buddy for the day.”
- Wealth of knowledge…knows the second verse of the “Star Spangled Banner” and can name all seven dwarfs.
- Compassion…keeps crackers in the desk for those who came too late to eat breakfast.
- Consistency…gives dirty looks to children who are running wildly in the grocery store, smashing loaves of bread.
- Energy…can introduce the long/i/ sound with the enthusiasm of Robin Roberts on Good Morning America.
- Radar…can lead 27 students to the city hall and know which one stepped off the sidewalk into the flower bed.
- Organizational skills…never forgets the fluoride rinses, the library time or the computer lab schedules.
- Thriftiness…never throws anything away knowing that someone will need it someday.
- Generosity…always purchases what children are selling at yard sales or fundraisers.
- Quickness…can eat lunch, call a parent and use the rest-room in a 22-minute period.
- Agility…can maneuver a crowded hallway with a dozen library books and a full cup of coffee.
- Sentimentally…always cries on the last day of school.
These characteristics of an elementary teacher are only recognizable if school is in session. With the weather conditions this year, school absenteeism has been quite common.
30 Years Ago
Week of March 3, 1994
SUGAR GROVE
Winter Smoke Rising from the Chimney
Brings Winter Visions
Of Comfort
Smoking chimneys are a pleasing sight. Heating the home is back in style. Way back when, wood was the only source of heat for the early settlers. Eventually, folks went “modern,” turning to gas, electricity, or oil to heat their homes. The warmth that only a wood fire radiates, conjures up thoughts of family gatherings…of freshly baked bread…bowls of hot soup…a pot of brown beans…and reflections of the day. Savings by burning wood that would eventually rot, one can recycle the ashes back to the soil and thus keep a little of the past alive. There is a special comfort in seeing the pile of neatly stacked wood beside a home on a cold winter day. Smoke acts as a weather vane or a barometer. To see wood smoke drifting lazily into the distance, or as it spirals from the chimney over the rooftop makes us all soak up the warmth in the thought that life is truly a cycle.
60 Years Ago
Week of March 5, 1964
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.
Grant Is Promoted
To Highest Command
President Lincoln had never met Ulysses S. Grant, and few in Congress had ever seen him. Despite that fact, 100 years ago this week, Lincoln named Grant to the highest office in the United States Army, and the Senate confirmed the nomination within 24 hours.
And at long last, the Union army had its general—the man who would lead the Federals into a final, relentless assault on that formidable Southern opponent who had proved the undoing of all Grant’s predecessors—Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Congress, in late February, had to pass a special act to revive the rank of Lieutenant General for Grant, but it did so quickly, and Lincoln immediately signed the act into law. On March 1, Lincoln sent Grant’s name to the Senate for appointment to the job so created, and the Senate confirmed it the next day. Thereby, Grant became the third American to hold that rank, following George Washington and Winfield Scott. And he became the fourth man to lead the Federal armies in the Civil War—after Scott, George B. MClellan and Henry W. Halleck had all failed to destroy the Confederates in Virginia.
Grant received orders in Nashville on March 3 to report to Washington, and he immediately realized what was about to happen. Before departing, he got off a quick letter March 4 to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, praising Sherman and Gen. James B. McPherson for their help in his ascent. The help these two men had given him, Grant wrote Sherman, “entitles you to the reward I am receiving.”
And as the humble little man boarded a train for Washington, the Civil War went into its final phase, a phase of simple and brute force applied constantly against a dwindling Confederate force. There was only one way such warfare could end.
The new phase had been expressed best by Grant, himself, earlier in the war when asked by his staff physician, Dr. John H. Brinton, about his philosophy of waging war. Waging war, Grant had replied, was really quite simple; you just “find out where your enemy is, get at him as soon as you can and strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”
That was the philosophy of war Grant was bringing to Washington as his train moved toward the Northeast. It was this type of war that had won the Mississippi and at Chattanooga. Amazingly enough, it was a type of war that had never been tried in the East.
Something of Grant’s ability in war was expressed a few days later by Sherman in his reply to Grant’s March 4 letter. Grant’s great asset, Sherman wrote, “is the simple faith you have always manifested…This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. When you have completed your last preparations, you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chattanooga; no doubts, no reserves; and I tell you it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew, wherever I was, that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place, you would come, if alive.”
Next week: Grant and Lincoln meet.
70 Years Ago
Week of March 4, 1954
Cave Post Office
Is Discontinued
The Post Office at Cave was discontinued February 28 as a further step in the Post Office Department’s economy drive.
Mail which was formerly addressed to Cave should now be addressed to Blue Grass or Franklin. The address of those living between Blue Grass and Cave will now be Blue Grass, while mail should be addressed to Franklin for those living north of Cave.
Approximately 86 persons were formerly served by the Cave Post Office.
Sugar Grove Gets Phone Service; Smith Creek Project Underway
Installation of the telephone in the home of V. L. Hoover last week marked the completion of the C&P Telephone Company’s expansion program in the Sugar Grove area of Pendleton County.
There are fifty telephones on the newly completed line which extends from Brandywine through Sugar Grove to the home of Gordon Todd approximately 1-1/2 miles south of Sugar Grove.
Local people living in the Sugar Grove area cooperated with the telephone company by digging all the holes and cutting the right of way.
One hundred twenty-five miles of open wire, 400 poles and 3,814 feet of aerial cable were used in providing this extended service.
Also underway at the present time is a project in the Smith Creek area.
There will be approximately 40 telephones on this line which will be completed sometime in the spring.
