March 4 back through time
By Holly Kozelsky and Pat Pion
100 years ago – 1924
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Leaderman and Mr. Nick Prillaman were riding in Mr. Leaderman’s Cadillac when the that vehicle became helplessly stalled on the Southern railroad track near Reidsville. The men tried to stop the train by signaling to it when it was about a half mile away from the stuck vehicle, but the train plowed through, shoving the car some distances along the track and damaging it beyond repair. The Leadermans and Mr. Prillaman were driven to Reidsville by a passing car and from thence returned to Martinsville.
75 years ago – 1949
Patrick County Post 105 of the American Legion held the Patrick County Oratorical Contest at the High School auditorium in Stuart.
W.L. Wilkinson of Barrows Mill road was fine $10 and court costs for having an unlicensed dog. Elmer Rhodes was supposed to be in County Trial Justice Court on the same charges, but he didn’t show up, so, according to the Martinsville Bulletin, the judge told Game Warden E.T. Lemon, “Arrest him and lock him up.”
A group of high-ranking engineers toured the Philpott Dam site area, including Gen. G.J. Nold, chief of the eastern division of U.S. Army Engineers, and Col. George T. Derby of Norfolk, district engineer. Slate rock had been blasted in preparation for the construction of a 220-foot-high dam across the Smith River, extending almost 1,000 feet from Henry to Franklin county.
1960
The Fieldale Home Demonstration Club met at Fieldale Baptist Church. Mrs. Morris Eggleston was hostess. They enjoyed a presentation by Frank Fulton, Trust Officer of First National Bank, on estate planning. They voted to sponsor the X-Ray Mobile Unit during the month of May.
50 years ago – 1974
Ten-year-old Angela Chappell of South Askin Street did well on a 25-cent investment. Her teacher, Hubert Poole, gave each student a quarter and challenged them to see who could make it grow the most. Angela washed dishes to earn more money, added that to the quarter, bought woven loops to use on a small hand loom and hired people to make potholders. After selling the potholders and paying expenses, she made $10.72.
25 years ago - 1999
Computers were new, and Mount Olivet Elementary School teacher Lee Eden was teaching students how to use them. A Martinsville Bulletin article showed her helping Andria Gilbert and Emily Wardle look up weather reports, then type in forecasts on the computer.
Standards of Learning (SOLs) were brand new, and the Henry County School Board unanimously approved making SOL tests count as three-quarters of the final exam grades for students. Those end-of-term exams made up 20% of a students’ final grades.
Nine-year-old Kandis Joyce died after battling leukemia. She had been a patient at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unite at Duke Medical Center in Durham, N.C.
PHOTO: Sallie Hall Slate takes the strings off the cured sticks of tobacco and arranges the leaves in the forming cylinder rest Sallie and her son Timothy Alan Slate pack the leaves down, removed the cylinder, and "sheet" the leaves as the final prep before the move to the sale barn, Patrick County, 1978; Photo by Carl Fleischhauer, Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project collection, 1977-1981 (AFC 1982/009), Library of Congress.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin accessed on microfilm at the Martinsville Branch Library.