Jan. 19

1925

Federal taxes in 1925: The tax-filing time was between Jan. 1 and March 15. People who had to pay taxes were single people with net income of $1,999 or more or gross income of $5,000 or more; or married couples with net income of $2,500 or more or gross income of $5,000 or more. The tax rate was 2% normal tax on the first $4,000 after the personal exemptions and credits; 4% normal tax on the next $4,000; and 6% on the balance of net income.

1950

This Ad: “Congratulations to the new Clark Hardware Upon the Opening of Your New Store. We were glad to serve you in installing your new bathroom. FOLEY & WILSON, 23 W. Main, Tel. 3155.” Other companies which had played a role in the construction of the store and took out similar ads were Lester Lumber Co., Burch-Hodges-Stone Inc. and builder W.J. Puckett. Clark Hardware advertised that it offered small shelf hardware, paints, thinners, ammunition and cooking utensils.

1961

A single-engine plane crashed into the top of Bull Mountain, four miles northeast of Stuart. The pilot, Aldine Patton, 37, of Hickory, N.C., suffered only minor injuries. He spent the frigidly cold night wrapped in several coats and a rug in the cabin of the crashed plane. In the morning, he walked to the farm of William East, about 2 miles from the crash, for help. He said it had been so foggy he couldn’t see the mountain; he crashed into tree-tops. He crashed just a few hundred yards from where an Army bomber had crashed in March 1944, killing all 11 people on board.

ATF agents warned that drinking bootleg liquor is dangerous because of the risk of lead poisoning and that traces of lead had been discovered in moonshine whisky from the Martinsville-Henry-Patrick areas, but  no deaths had been reported so far. Eight people died and 30 were hospitalized in Winston-Salem during 1960 because of contaminated moonshine. The lead came from automobile radiators many moonshiners used on their stills to condense steam vapor into liquid whisky.

The five men nominated for the 1960 Distinguished Service Award were Jack Bouldin Jr., 32, WMVA commercial manager; Robert L. Canupp Jr., 31, manager of Martinsville Office Supply Inc.; Frank D. Fulton, 36, trust officer and vice-president at First National Bank; Raymond W. Loman, 34, district manager of Southern Life Insurance Co.; and Dr. H. Marvin Midkiff, dentist. Each of the nominees also did a great deal in and for the community. Fulton was the Young Man of the Year winner, receiving a mantle clock. He was a Boy Scout leader on both the local and district levels; a deacon, elder and treasurer at Anderson Memorial Presbyterian Church; vice-president of the Kiwanis Club; and was the chairman of the 1959 United way fund drive.

Belva Stone of Ridgeway set a Henry County record for ladies’ bowling: 161 in one game, from seven spares and one strike.

1975

Bassett Furniture Industries set up a special $50,000 fund (worth $293,000 today) to help eligible employees with major emergencies, during a time when Bassett’s employees were working only 21 hours a week. Individual plant managers would screen applications for loans. Robert H. Spilman was the president.

2000

SAFETY NET Inc., a private charitable foundation, gave $100,000 to help the families of area textile workers who had been laid off from their jobs, and the Henry County Board of Supervisors had pledged another $100,000, all to be distributed by the Salvation Army. During a 5-week period the Salvation Army gave $64,100 of that amount in aid to 42 families.

Howard Lee Crook was sentenced to two life terms in prison plus 93 years for the carjacking, abduction and shooting of Shannon Wright. Angela Dawn Willis was sentenced to 12 years and 12 month in prison after she entered guilty please to carjacking, robbery and accessory after the fact to attempted capital murder. Wright, 23, on Aug. 7 was abducted from the Maxway parking lot, shot in the back of the head and let for dead in the back of a car on Stoney Mountain Road near Axton. Crook, with his 5-year-old son in the car, drove her there, and Willis followed them from Bassett to Stoney Mountain Road in another vehicle.

— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.