June 2
By Holly Kozelsky and Pat Pion
100 Years ago – 1924
Constable D.H. Harris made seven arrests of people from Danville who were drinking and joy-riding. A woman jumped out of the car and ran away with the liquor but was caught. Meanwhile, 26 students were graduated from Martinsville High School in a ceremony held in the auditorium of the new Methodist Church. At the Ridgeway high school, the commencement program featured the song “Voice of the Woods,” drill “The March of Months,” song “The Call of Summer,” drama “Oh, What a Family” and finally the song “Softly Fall the Shadows of Evening.”
75 years ago – 1949
Twenty-three seniors were graduated in commencement exercises at Spencer-Penn High school. Helen Miles was the valedictorian and Marie aker the salutorian.
The Martinsville-Heny County Bar Association was formed on this day in 1949, with M.H. MacBryde JR. as its first president.
Young taxicab driver Elnoie Tarpley of the Redd and Seay Taxi Service on Main Street was the winner of the Rotary Club’s Courtesy Contest Award. He was nominated by Mrs. Lloyd Swain of 506 East Church Street Extension. She wrote that he regularly drove her 3-year-old daughter to kindergarten. The child requested that he always be her driver “‘because he gets out and helps me in, and is always nice to me and helps me out.’ … He always gets out regardless of the time or weather, opens the doors and offers assistance. He is completely honest and trustworthy.”
1960
The private, segregated Prince Edward School Foundation of Prince Edward County revealed their budget of $348,500 for the following year, and announced that students attending the whites-only elementary schools would pay $340 the following year with high-schoolers paying $265. The foundation operated two whites-only high schools and six whites-only elementary schools and had been funded for the current year by voluntary contributions. A campaign for funds to finance construction of a new consolidated Prince Edward Foundation high school began the following month. Groundbreaking had already taken place. The supervisors of Prince Edward County had abandoned public schools rather than submit to a federal court integration order.
The proposed Prince Edward County budget for the next fiscal year contained a line item for $270,000 for educational purposes to provide $100 grants for school age children of all races. That, along with grant laws which already existed in Virginia to support attendance of a child at a private, non-sectarian school with $150 for high school and $125 for elementary school, would help pay for next year’s Prince Edward School Foundation’s recently announced tuition charges. One thousand seven hundred white children at the time attended the private school. There was no formal education program within Prince Edward County for the approximately 1,800 school-aged black children.
50 years ago – 1974
Jimmy Frith, the 15-year-old son of J. Burness Frith, jumped his bike over a row of 15 trash cans, a total distance of 25 feet, 8 inches, the culmination of 4 years of practice. Next, he was turning his attention to racing. “My folks want me to quit jumping over things,” he told the Martinsville Bulletin, in an article by Marti Vogel, published June 2, 1974.
25 years ago - 1999
Scott Grindstaff of Bassett announced that he would run for Henry County Treasurer. He was 36 at the time and had been an assistant cashier and managing officer of the Collinsville branch of Patrick Henry National Bank. [In 2024 he is the still the Henry County Treasurer.]
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.