Forum Flashbacks: Sept. 2-8
FORUM FILE PHOTO
100 YEARS AGO: “I’m Proud I’m a Working Woman” A Labor Day picture posed especially by Mary Pickford. “The hodcarrier,” she says, “bears the first burden of industry. Salute him, for he is the vanguard of labor.”
5 years ago
Aside from raising Nodaway County’s collective blood pressure for a few anxious seconds Saturday morning, an earthquake that rattled across the nation’s heartland from southwest Texas to Illinois did little, if any, damage locally.
In fact, after the initial shock, local residents almost immediately started cracking wise on Facebook and other social media platforms. One meme showed a suite of white plastic lawn furniture sitting in a yard with one chair tipped over and a caption that read, “I survived the Maryville earthquake.”
Reported responses by other folks verged on disbelief, since earthquakes are so rare in northwest Missouri – at least until now – that the best words used to describe their frequency might be “never” and “non -existent.”
15 years ago
The banks of rivers in Nodaway County felt the pressure.
One county highway bridge was shut down because water covered it.
Lawns grew rapidly and streams could be found flowing through alleys and streets in Maryville at times. …
A spokesman for the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill reported that this area received a record amount of rainfall for August, and data is kept back to 1894.
Rinafall for the Maryville area was reported at 12.49 inches in August, the weather service spokesman said. The next closest, he said, was 12.13 inches in 1903, though more than 10 inches fell in 1982 and 1989.
25 years ago
The smallest community ever to host The Moving Wall held an opening ceremony Monday that will live forever in the memories of those who were there.
One speaker after another strolled to the podium under the bright Labor Day sun to address a crowd of nearly 600 people in Skidmore as the miniature version of one of the most visited sites in the United States, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, opened for viewing near the Nodaway-Holt Elementary School.
“I’ve had the honor of being with this wall more than 50 times,” Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and keynote speaker Sammy Davis said. “And this is the first time I have ever spoken at a ceremony where the number of people in attendance was greater than the number of people in the town. That says a lot about the people here.”
100 years ago
I’m Proud I’m a Working Woman
By Mary Pickford
AMERICA’S HIGHEST PAID WOMAN WAGE EARNER
I’m proud I belong to the ranks of American labor. True, I’m more fortunate than most, inasmuch as I elected to work for an industry which has become notable for the liberal wages it pays.
But I’m prouder of my work than I am of my earnings. It’s not so strange, however, that the harder I work, the better I do my work, the greater my recompense.
And to work and EARN, in my opinion, is much more ennobling and noble, than merely to invest and RECEIVE.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The 100-year flashback is courtesy of the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project from the State Historical Society of Missouri, viewable at shsmo.org/collections/newspapers/mdnp. The original article ran in the Sept. 5, 1921, edition of The Maryville Tribune, a predecessor of The Maryville Forum.
