Looking Back on Jan. 3 through the years, from 2025
1925
Mort Hairston, a helper in the construction of First National Bank building, fell to his death from a scaffold while reaching for a package of glue. He had been 20 feet off the ground when the fall occurred.
1950
New officers were installed by the Collinsville Community association: chair Randolph Lawrence, vice chair Rex Snapp, secretary Oscar Cannaday and treasurer D.O. Jones. A.L. Philpott continued as legal advisor. The committee in the year before had set up a voting precinct with 35 registered voters; got some streets in Collinsville adopted into the state highway system; got signs for some streets; got the new post office advanced from fourth to third class rank; started garbage collection; helped one needy family and gave Christmas blankets to nine others. Plans in the works included getting a site for a community center and working with the County School Board to get a school there.
The Farmers Warehouse on Main street, used for 27 years for tobacco auctions, was condemned by city officials as unsafe. Inspecting engineers deemed it unsafe for either public uses or rental and determined that danger existed to people working on the northside of the building because a weak wall there could collapse at any time, thus causing other parts of the three-story building to cave in. Charles C. Broun, one of the owners, said the building would be torn down.
Patrick Henry Elementary School opened for the first time, with 658 students reporting to school there after a 16-day holiday break. The school yard was a virtual sea of mud, and students walked through it and covered the floors of the hall with reddish clay. The $427,000 school had the latest in design and technology, including a light blue and white color scheme with cheerful light colors in the walls of rooms, green chalkboards with yellow chalk instead of the old black ones, cork bulletin boards and a public announcement system controlled in the office of Principal Sue Davis.
Meanwhile, the Central Grammar School on Cleveland Avenue, built in 1904, sat abandoned.
1961
Santa Claus received a letter from Paul Toms, who wrote that he was enjoying his race cars, was wearing his new football shirt and was sleeping in his new pajamas almost every night.
1975
Mrs. Rives Brown Jr. told the Stroller newspaper column about two unusual street names: Big Jane Street came from the nickname of her late husband’s great-uncle, Henry Lester; no one knew how he got that nickname, but it was used widely. Bob Gregory Street was name for the late Mr. Brown’s grandfather, who was the early equivalent of a city engineer.
2000
The local area fared fine through Y2K – the fear that chaos would result by computer systems not working properly in the change of year from 1999 to 2000. However, Martinsville High School senior Matt Ashburn, 17, was keeping track of Y2K problems with his website, kwikware.com/y2kmistakes. After just a couple of days it listed 100.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.