Flashback: Tracking NRV history

The Roanoke Times file 1937 “Floyd Grange, No. 760, a farmer’s fraternity, was the first grange to be organized in southwest Virginia ... in 1928.” The grange hall was in the former Falling Branch school house, above, which was purchased for that use in 1929. feel free to reword the part not in quotes. This is the photo that ran with the bit about the grange.

1987 (25 years ago)
-“The controversial family life curriculum has surfaced again in Montgomery County.”
-“As of now, New River Valley area players better be on their best behavior and at their best when they take to the baseball field. The Cincinnati Reds may be watching.”
-“Saying it’s ‘time for new leadership,’ Gov. Gerald Baliles appointed four new members to the Virginia Tech board of Visitors Thursday and underscored his resolve to get the university back on an ‘academics first’ high road.”
-“ ‘Menagerie,’ a collection of new work by local artists, is compared to a five-course meal by Fine Arts Center director Nancy Newhard.”
-“The huge dredging equipment is long gone, and a new generation of ducks is swimming around with the oldtimers, but work on the Virginia Tech Duck Pond is far from over.”
-“Beginning Wednesday, Blacksburg will have a new birth control facility – the Montgomery County Center, a branch of Planned Parenthood of Southwest Virginia, based in Roanoke.”
-“When architects and engineers at Mills, Oliver & Webb of Blacksburg travel to Guantanamo Bay to work on Navy contracts, they have to watch their steps.”

1962 (50 years ago)
-“The dentist got his first look Saturday at most of the teeth in Shawsville … The teeth – and their owners – were out Saturday to greet Dr. John S. (Jack) Surface, the first full-time dentist the town has had in 50 years.”
-“Citizens who have outside toilet facilities here [Dublin] will be required to install septic tanks or connect with the town sewer system.”
-“St. Albans Hospital in Radford has been accepted as a member of the Roanoke Blue Cross Plan…”
-“A public hearing date of Aug. 8 has been set by the State Highway Department to discuss the location of some 16 miles of Interstate 81 in Montgomery and Roanoke counties between Christiansburg and Dixie Caverns.”
-“Gunsmith, clockmaker and master mechanic by the age of 14, Prof. Claudius Lee of Virginia Tech, now 90, has received a certificate of appreciation from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.”

1937 (75 years ago)
-“Miss Elsie Dyke, 17-year-old Richmond visitor, yesterday killed a three-foot rattlesnake while on a hike in the mountains near Pulaski.”
-“Nineteen [Pulaski] business houses yesterday started closing their places of business at 5 o’clock in order to give their employes[CQ]time for recreation during the warm months.”
-“The Irvin West Construction company, of Statesville, N. C., has been awarded the contract for Pulaski’s new theatre…”
-“Pulaski experienced its warmest day of the summer today with thermometers touching 96 degrees shortly after noon.”
-“A total of $17,404.28 was expended in Giles county during the period July 1, 1936 to June 30, 1937, for the care of indigent people…”
-“A terrific rain and windstorm hit the Eaton’s Chapel section of the county [Giles] late yesterday afternoon, doing considerable damage to lands, corn, crops and gardens.”

1912 (100 years ago)
-“Mr. Dave Long has let the contract for the lumber for his new forge and machine shop [in Whitethorne], and as soon [as] the lumber comes, work will be vigorously pushed on this undertaking.”
-“Mr. J. J. Burns of New York representing the ‘Redemption’ is registered at Hotel Cambria and will present his pictures at the opera house this week in Christiansburg.”
-“Mr. Chas. L. Phillips, owner of the Salem Mattress Factory, has been awarded the contract for furnishing three hundred and fifty mattresses for the V. P. I. at Blacksburg.”
-“At the afternoon session … yesterday the Board of Visitors of V. P. I., the resignation of President P. B. Barringer as head of the institution was presented to the board and accepted.”
-“Messrs. Flanagan have sold to Swarzchild and Sultzberger, of New York, one of the largest cattle brokers in the United States 4,200 export cattle … at the price of something over $100 per steer …The cattle were purchased in Montgomery. Pulaski, Wythe, Smith [CQ]and Washington counties.”

-Compiled by Roanoke Times librarian Belinda Harris

Leave a Reply Cancel reply