Forum Flashbacks: April 13-19

FORUM FILE PHOTO
25 YEARS AGO: Pinewood Derby – Chris Brown (left) and Brandon Gumm, both 14-year-old Life Scouts from Maryville, launch their cars during the Otoe District Pinewood Derby.

5 years ago

The Maryville R-II School District announced Wednesday morning the appointment of Philip Pohren as the Eugene Field Elementary principal for the 2018/19 school year.

According to a school district news release, Pohren is currently the principal of Field Elementary in the Chillicothe R-II School District. He has been a building-level administrator for 12 years, the last 10 in Chillicothe serving as building principal at both Central and Field Elementary schools.

15 years ago

More than 160 people wearing orange shirts were seen running through the streets of Hopkins Monday morning.

North Nodaway middle and high school students, their teachers and nearly 20 adult volunteers, armed with chain saws and trailers, rakes and work gloves tackled the sticks and debris left by the ice storm in December.

In the fall, North Nodaway seventh grade students, along with middle school history and character education teacher Jeremy Ingraham, attended an emPower Plant Conference in St. Joseph, sponsored by Heartland Foundation’s Service Learning Opportunity.

At the conference, the students were encouraged to develop some kind of volunteer activity and apply for a grant to help implement their plans.

The students began brainstorming for ideas and after the ice storm hit in December, they knew what they wanted to do. Continued bad weather postponed the project for quite sometime, but spring weather has brought the opportunity for them to realize their dreams.

With the $10,000 grant the group received, they were able to purchase eight chain saws, 20 tie down straps, 20 log chains, 20 rakes, gloves, safety glasses and the bar oil and fuel needed for the pick-up effort.

Twelve trailers and trucks were volunteered for the project and by the end of the long, hard day, more than 60 loads of debris were hauled from the city lawns and unloaded.

25 years ago

Maryville Public Safety has a new weapon in its fight to keep residents informed about inclement weather in the area.

Classic Cable has installed a switch that will allow Public Safety to interrupt programming to inform viewers about potentially dangerous weather.

“We dial up a certain phone number then we have an access code that opens up the cable system for our announcement,” (Public Safety Director Keith) Wood said. “Then we code out and the cable comes back on.” …

Wood said the system would be used “pretty liberally,” but added that it was not the intention of Public Safety to “annoy” residents who are watching television at home. Wood said the system will be used to advise the public of approaching storms or tornados. It will also be used to announce when the emergency snow routes are in effect during the winter.

100 years ago

PLAN FOR HOUSING TRACK MEET GUESTS

————

OVER A THOUSAND

VISITORS MUST

BE CARED FOR

Preparations were started today to care for the thousand or more overnight visitors to the annual Northwest Missouri High School contests and track meet to be held here April 26, 27 and 28 under the auspices of the State Teachers College.

Residents of Maryville will have to open up their homes more than they ever did before and furnish beds for the visiting high school contestants. All persons, who will furnish lodgings for contestants, are asked to call the Chamber of Commerce immediately stating the number they can take care of. Persons who have rooms to be used only in an emergency are requested to also notify the Chamber and these will be placed upon a separate list and not used until the others are exhausted. Those in charge have requested that the rooms be listed before next Wednesday.

A new system is being used this year in caring for the rooming problem. As soon as the list is compiled of persons who will rent rooms for this occasion it will be turned over to the assignment committee at the college. All entries to the events must be in by next Tuesday night. The entries then will be assigned in advance to rooms, using lists furnished by the Chamber of Commerce. The room assignments will then be sent to the superintendents of each school, so when the contestants arrive in Maryville they will know in advance the exact location of their rooms. The Maryville residents will also know in advance just how many and who their visitors will be. This will greatly facilitate the rooming problem. The committee have asked that persons listing rooms will not give them to anyone else except those assigned and that someone be at home the evening the guests arrive.

Preliminaries are underway in nearly all the high schools in the nineteen counties of the district to select contestants for the contests here. There will be more contests and a greater variety of them this year than ever before. All advance indications point to a record breaking crowd here this year.

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.newspapers.com. The original article ran in the April 13, 1923, edition of The Maryville Daily Democrat-Forum, which later would become the The Maryville Forum.