April 3
100 Years ago – 1925
The Henry Bulletin’s front-page article “Reckless Tendencies of Times Condemned by Local Ministers” stated that on Sunday the preachers in Martinsville delivered sermons on the “present day laxity. Modern dresses, language, cosmetics, dancing, suggestive pictures, smoking by women and like harmful customs were shown to be undermining Christian standard of right living. The prayerlessness of the modern home, Sunday desecration for pleasure, and irreverence for God, Holy places, sacred things and womanhood are evident examples of the curious folly of present-day sinners. …”
75 years ago – 1950
The Martinsville Retail Merchants Association held its annual Ladies night at Club Martinique. The main speaker was Percy B. Braylor of Roanoke. An Elk’s quartet of Tom Honore, John Floyd, Carroll Getgood and S.E Fishel Jr. performed. A trio of Mrs. Tom Honore, Mrs. Paul Zimmerman and Miss Ernestine Stultz sang.
Stanley W. Bowles’ construction company began work on a new $50,000 trucking terminal on West Fayette street, between First and Second streets, for the Virginia-Carolina Trucking Line. Neighbors along Fayette street had tried to prevent the construction of the terminal by buying the property from its owners, who wanted $35,000, but only came up with $31,000 in pledges. Roy C. Stone, one of the property owners, said the offer for sale expired two days before, because that was the date another property they could have used in Danville expired.4
Between 100 and 200 firefighters from the counties of Patrick, Carroll and Floyd fought a fire that destroyed between 400 and 500 acres of forest in Patrick County.
Dr. Franz J. Polgar gave a show at the high school auditorium, demonstrating memory feats, telepathy and hypnotism. About 250 people were in the audience.
50 years ago – 1975
The Martinsville Drive-In Theater’s district manager Ray Bentley of R and C Theaters announced that the drive-in would no longer show X-rated movies. The “X” rating meant no one under 17 admitted, and the drive-in would not even show movies on which the X rating was for violence, not sex, because owners didn’t want people to assume they were still showing pornography. The drive-in had stopped showing X-rated movies in July after community outcry and attempts to charge the theater in court with obscenity. The obscenity charge did not stick because the movie that was taken to show in court, “Orgy of Revenge,” was deemed to have been confiscated during an illegal search, but the theater owner decided to go along with the tide of public opinion, even though the drive-in’s audience was only half what it was when the theater was showing porn.
25 years ago - 2000
Three Kosovar families had been in Martinsville for a year. Nancy Moore was one of the people who helped them settle in here. Six of the Hajrullahu family lived in a house on Forest Street; eight Bela family members lived on Chalmer Street; and the four Mehmetis lived in Terrace Garden Apartments in Collinsville.
A 15-year-old boy and a 17-year-old boy broke into the wrong home: that of Martinsville Police Officer Coretha Gravely. She wasn’t at her Laurel Drive home at the time, but her sister went to the house and encountered the teenagers. They ran off, and she called the law. Officers found the kids hiding in ravines near U.S. 58. They were charged with breaking and entering and grand larceny and taken to the juvenile detention center in Danville.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.