Forum Flashbacks: Sept. 29-Oct. 5
FORUM FILE PHOTO
25 YEARS AGO: Family Fun – Brittany Loch takes a whack at a hockey puck … at St. Gregory’s Sunday afternoon. The slapshot (was just one) of the numerous activities held at the Family Fun Festival.
5 years ago
As part of the municipal election in April, Maryville voters chose to increase property taxes to help fund the Maryville Public Library.
As a result of that increase, the library created the new position of Youth Services Coordinator. As of Sunday, Elizabeth Argo will fill that position.
A 1992 graduate of Northwest Missouri State University, Argo’s degree is in communication, but she hasn’t done anything communication-related throughout her career. Instead, her ventures tend to be more related to family and community services, including her most recent position as a service coordinator with Nodaway County Services.
Argo said she was excited to be returning to the library, as she worked there for six years prior to being hired at Nodaway County Services.
“I have a passion for early literacy,” Argo said. “I like helping families to assist their children in reaching their potential.
“I want families to know that they are their children’s first teachers so that they can set the tone for learning in the home. It’s something that’s really important to me.”
15 years ago
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A jury will not hear expert testimony that a woman accused of killing a pregnant woman and cutting the baby from her womb suffered a mental illness that caused her to believe she was pregnant, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner granted the prosecution motion to disallow testimony from Ruben Gur, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Gur had testified in earlier hearings that previous head injuries contributed to Lisa Montgomery’s alleged role in the December 2004 death of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, of Skidmore.
In their motion last month, prosecutors said Gur’s “testing methods were scientifically invalid” and Montgomery’s “brain is not abnormal.”
Opening statements are scheduled to start Thursday in Montgomery’s federal trial on a charge of kidnapping resulting in death. Prosecutors have said the trial could last three to four weeks.
Prosecutors have said if Montgomery is found guilty, they will seek the death penalty.
25 years ago
Landowners in Nodaway County fighting the Friends of the Wabash Trace Nature Trail received a major boost Friday when a decision was filed in Circuit Court Division I from their lawsuit against the organization.
Fifteen plaintiffs were given ownership of strips of land on their property from the court, while it was decided that plaintiffs William L. and Carol Kay Calfee, Dennis M. and Judy L. Fast, and Farmers Elevator Company of Hopkins, Inc., did not fit all the grounds that were filed in the lawsuit.
The court also found that the Friends of the Wabash’s three countersuits had no grounds, and dismissed them.
“We weren’t surprised by the decision,” plaintiff Bud Boyles said. “We would have been disappointed with any other decision. The basis of our case was clearly stated in the Missouri Constitution and the Missouri laws.” …
The case, which began over a year ago, started when the Friends of the Wabash Trail bought a strip of land stretching from the Iowa border to Maryville from a St. Louis-based railroad.
The railroad sold the land to the Friends of the Wabash with a quit claim deed, but the landowners in the area argued that they, not the railroad, owned the land. The railroad had gained the land by condemnation over a century ago, but landowners argued, and the court agreed, that the railroad lost all claim to the land as soon as they abandoned the land.
Boyles said a very basic lesson had been taught through the court case.
“Two of the things it proved, as an attorney in the Indiana case has said before, was ‘Don’t sell something you don’t own,’ and ‘Don’t try to take something that is not yours,’” Boyles said.
100 years ago
ELEVEN YEAR OLD MAURICE BERG IN ON BIG WINNINGS
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Wins Sweepstakes for All Breeds at District Baby Beef Show — Gets a Gold Watch
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High honors at the third annual district baby beef show held this week at the St. Joseph Stockyards went to Maurice Berg, son of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Berg of Maryville, who won the (top prize). … Maurice carried home with him $55 in cash prizes and a gold watch.
The sleek beauty on which the young stock breeder carried off the big prize, also won first in the county show held at the Gray pavilion last Saturday. The (Aberdeen-Angus steer) is a 17-months old purebred and has been fed for 180 days on corn, oats, molasses feed, hay and grass. During the time on this feed he made a net gain of 470 pounds.
Laverne Butts of Ravenwood won second prize of $20 on Aberdeen-Angus stock. In the Shorthorn class, Dale Dorman of Graham won fourth prize of $10; Max Wray of Hopkins, sixth prize of $5; Dale Acklin of Graham, eighth prize of $5. Each of the Nodaway County exhibits in this division received a special of $5 each from the American Shorthorn Breeders Association.
In the special prizes of silver medals given by the Institute of American Meat Packers, given for the best bred animal showing the highest degree of the standard characteristic of its species, Max Wray won a silver medal for the best Shorthorn, and Laverne Butts for the best Aberdeen-Angus.
While the cattle were being judged F. R. Marcell of the Marcell Laboratories Company took a series of moving pictures of the animals, exhibitors and of the crowds in attendance and the parade of baby beeves in the driveway of the horses and mule market. The films were taken for the St. Joseph Stockyards Company to be used in a campaign for more and better beef cattle in northwest Missouri.
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 Oct. 4, 1922, edition of The Maryville Tribune, a predecessor of The Maryville Forum.
