Flashback: Tracking NRV history

This bridge, built in 1892, is on the north fork of the Roanoke River, near Ironto in Montgomery County. Roanoke Times file photo, 1973.

1987
(25 years ago)
-“For the first time, Radford University’s baseball team will play a game at home on campus.”
-“Junior center Bryant Stith scored 30 points and pulled down 19 rebounds as Brunswick County posted a 55-41 win over Radford in Friday night’s semifinals of the Group AA boys’ basketball tournament.”
-“A log building at a quiet crossroads in southwest Montgomery County marks the site of the now mostly forgotten community of Rough and Ready.”
- “Everywhere Floyd County’s players turned Saturday they saw red Suffolk uniforms streaking by them on the way to numerous layups and a Group A state title.” Suffolk won 89-64.

1962
(50 years ago)
-
“Mrs. R. Lee Humbert and Mrs. Edgar W. Russell Jr. of Blacksburg have accepted an invitation to judge the National Council Flower and Garden Show … at the National Guard Armory in Washington on March 14.”
-“Carl Tacy got the traditional winner’s ride from the hysterical Pulaski rooters after the handsome young coach’s charges had salted away the Group I-B championship Saturday night.”
-“Fortunes in 1962 basketball at many Southern Conference schools appear to hinge on football players, and Virginia Tech is no exception.”
-“A seismological station to detect underground nuclear explosions will be built here at Virginia Tech.”

1937
(75 years ago)
-“G. C. Bowling, owner-manager of the Maple Shade Inn, Pulaski hotel, heavily damaged by fire Saturday, today stated that he would make an announcement within a few days regarding the future of the hostelry.”
-“Seniors of the local high school [Glen Lyn] will sponsor an oyster supper in the Community house April 8. The proceeds of the supper will be used to help defray expenses at commencement.”
-“The Parent-Teacher association will sponsor organization of one or more Girl Scout units in Pulaski…”
-“Eight veterans out for Virginia Tech’s varsity nine are making the road to first team positions a rough and rocky one for 24 other candidates…”
-“The Pulaski post of the American Legion voted a donation of $500 last night to go toward the purchase of Christmas lighting equipment for the town.”
-“White Rock school house [in Floyd County], a three-room building erected about twenty years ago at White Rock … was destroyed by fire Friday afternoon.”
-“One of the oldest houses in Blacksburg, the brick dwelling on Church street, in the early days of the town the home of the late Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lybrook, is being torn down.”

1912
(100 years ago)
-“Coach Reiss had the [Virginia Tech] base ball men down at the ‘Dutch Barn’ for an hour or so in the afternoon this week…”
-“To the solemn tolling of the bell of the court house in which he presided so ably and so fearlessly, the body of Judge Thornton L. Massie was placed in state in the large central court house this afternoon [in Pulaski]…” He was killed in the Carroll County courthouse shootout.
-“The toll house at St. Albans Bridge, owned by Mr. Lewis Harvey, burned down Sunday morning…”
-”Reports from the country districts [in Montgomery County] tell of roads, hub deep in mud from the melting snow and frequent rains, streams that are out of their banks and farmers disconsolate because the usual spring work is at a standstill.”

-Compiled by Roanoke Times librarian Belinda Harris

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