Feb. 11 through time
1924
Faith Wilson of Martinsville won the gold medal awarded by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for best essay on “How Total Abstinence Increases the Margin of Safety from Accidents.” Miss Mary Barbour won honorable mention.
1949
Henry County resident Edgar Hugh Perry, 25, was one of two enlisted Navy men killed when a four-motored Navy Privateer plane crashed near the Patuxent, Maryland, Air Force base. It was two weeks after he spent a furlough with his wife, Mrs. Sadye Perry, of Pleasant Grove. The couple had a son, Douglas Perry. Edgar Perry’s siblings were Dixie, Emily, Wesley and John Perry.
1960
An unidentified driver of a vehicle was sued in Martinsville Circuit Court. A judgement was entered against “John Doe” in the amount of $2,800 for driving on the wrong side of the road, forcing the oncoming vehicle off the road. This was the first case of its kind heard by the Martinsville Court, pursuant to the adoption of Virginia’s new non-insured motorist law.
Polio cases were increasing. That, coupled with rising hospitalization costs and a drop in revenue, left most Virginia chapters of the National Foundation in the red, including our Martinsville Chapter, which had about $10,000 in debt.
Kroger offers double Top Value stamps on Tuesdays. They have Hormel’s Best Wafer-thin Sliced Bacon for 49 cents per pound and Brush Creek Mountain Grown Peaches, four 2-1/2 size cans for $1 in their Tuesday/Wednesday sale this week.
Governor David Lawrence of Pennsylvania fell off his milking stool this week at the State Farm show. To his credit, he got back on the stool and finished milking the cow.
1974
The 200 employees of Roy Stone Transfer trucking company who had been laid off because of slowdowns caused by the national trucking shortage were called back to work on Feb. 11. They missed 3 days of work and pay. None of them were on strike; the strike was by independent drivers.
Franklin Auto Parts Inc. of Bassett started operating out of a new location next door because a fire destroyed its building (on Rt. 57 across from W&B Chevrolet) over the weekend. Donnie Webb was the store manager; Jerry Hundley was the chief of Bassett Volunteer Fire Department. Hundley estimated $100,000 damage to the building and $50,000 to $75,000 to the merchandise. Bassett firemen Palmer Lowery and Gene Hall and an unidentified fireman from Collinsville were hospitalized for smoke inhalation.
1999
The Martinsville School Board gave Clearview Elementary School Principal John Vartenisian permission to continue planning to make his school a year-round school for the next school year. Clearview now is an Early Learning Center and has been for many years.
More than 550 area residents had their bone marrow typed in the “Have a Heart for Kandis” campaign in the Armory. Kandis Joyce, 9, of Martinsville had leukemia and underwent an experimental cord blood transplant in December but would need a bone marrow transplant if her body rejected the cord blood transplant. A transcript from a WDBJ-7 news program on a Virginia Tech website said that hundreds of people showed up to that typing event to get their blood tested and their names listed on a national bone marrow transplant list, but Kandis died at Duke University Medical Center in March 1999.
Seven local people addressed the Henry County School Board requesting that the board change its policy to allow outside groups into the schools to distribute religious literature, but the Board did not make any motion toward making that change. Speakers included Harold Tripley, a member of the Aiken Summit Wesleyan Church board; Sandra Hodges, member of Ridgeway Church of God; and David Marcum, pastor of Aiken Summit.