June 9
By Holly Kozelsky and Pat Pion
100 Years ago – 1924
Mrs. R.S. Brown came home recuperated after a spell as a patient at Lucy Lester Hospital.
75 years ago – 1949
Candidate for governor Remmie L. Arnold of Petersburg addressed the Kiwanis Club at Club Martinique; his talk was broadcast over WMVA. Arnold’s platform was a protest in a stated sharp rise in state taxes from year to year since 1936. He was the third gubernatorial candidate to speak to the Martinsville Kiwanis, following State Senator John S. Battle and Francis Pickens Miller, both of Petersburg. The fourth candidate, Horace Edwards of Richmond, also was scheduled to speak. (John S. Battle, Democrat, would win the election.)
1960
Jerry Jenkins, 17, of Route 2, Ridgeway, whose graduation from Drewry Mason High School was the next night, had had perfect attendance for all 12 years of school.
50 years ago – 1974
Belleview, built in 1783, was designated a Virginia Historic Landmark. The house, between Ridgeway and Horsepasture, was built by John Redd (1755-1850), a pioneer settler of Henry County and a member of the county court for four decades. Mrs. Kennon C. Whittle was living in the house at the time. Her husband, the late Justice Kennon C. Whittle, undertook restoring the house in the mid-1950s. John Redd was Whittle’s fifth great-grandfather. Whittle and his father, Stafford Gorman Whittle, who died in 1919, were trial lawyers and judges. Stafford Whittle served on the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals from 1901 to 1919, and Kennon Whittle, from 1951 to 1965.
Someone wrote into the Stroller column in the Martinsville Bulletin wondering why there hadn’t been any beauty pageant lately. The Stroller “heard and read that pageants have been on the decline all over the country in recent years and there are several theories as to the reasons. One is that serious young people of today tend to sneer at them as time-wasting, frivolous activities. Another is that they have become so commercialized that if the sponsors or franchises don’t take in a potfull of money they could lose their shirts. Some are sponsored by nonprofit civic clubs which hesitate to undertake them because they are so time-consuming. As far as we can recall, there hasn’t been a Miss Martinsville pageant since 1970.”
25 years ago - 1999
Eduardo Guerrero, then 15, was recognized for having learned English much faster than kids usually do. The Fieldale-Collinsville High School student had lived in Mexico City for 13 years before moving to Collinsville. He was entered into the English as a Second Language program at the school and received a tutor.
Magna Vista High School senior Josh DeFriece was finishing up his semester of Oh Henry! Internship with Dr. Tom Berry of Commonwealth Surgical Associates in Martinsville. “Most of what I saw involved cutting the stomach open,” DeFriece told the Martinsville Bulletin.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.