Forum Flashbacks, April 20-26
FORUM FILE PHOTO
25 YEARS AGO: Eugene Field Fun Fest – “Lucky” the clown has the attention of 8 1/2-month-old Abby Hayes at the annual Eugene Field Fun Fest held Friday night at the school. As you can see, Abby is happy about all the attention she is getting from Lucky. She is the granddaughter of Bonnie (holding Abby) and Joe Hayes (background). The parents are Coby and Teresa Hayes of Maryville. An excellent crowd was on hand for the Fun Fest.
5 years ago
South Nodaway’s High School Scholar Bowl team will be making its way to a national competition this weekend after winning the 275 Conference Scholar Bowl last month.
The high school will send seven students on Friday to Rosemont, Illinois, to compete against 150 other Scholar Bowl teams from across the country at the National Academic Quiz Tournament’s Small School National Championship. Kaci Billings, Sarah Burke, Connor LaBryer, Kaylin LaMaster, Caden Peek, Anna Poeppel and Elizabeth Turpin will represent the school in the competition. Team members not going on the trip are: Sydney Billings, Brooklynn Bennett, Jaiden Flora, Allie Wolf and Maddi Pedersen.
Coaches Julie McConkey, Renee Turpin and Kortni McCreath have been working with the students to prepare for the upcoming competition. …
This is the third time that South Nodaway has qualified, but the first time a team will be attending the competition. The team may face familiar teams at the competition, as Mound City, Plattsburg and St. Pius X will be sending students to Rosemont.
15 years ago
Throughout the past 90 years, Ellis Shackelford lived his life knowing that divine intervention guided him.
Reliving the past through Shackelford’s vast memory transports a person to another place and time — a time of simplicity, a time of hard work, a time of war. …
As a young man serving in the army during World War II, he recalls life’s hardships of leaving his newly wed wife for war, enduring training and trekking across Germany, of gunfire, causing death and, all the while, avoiding it. …
Shackelford’s first commitment to combat was at the Brest Seaport in the western part of France. He said he and his fellow troops chased the Nazis for 40 miles and, through intelligence reports, discovered there were enough enemy troops to overrun them. They used self-propelled M-70s, mounted with 105 howitzers in repeated motions to try and make the enemy believe there were more soldiers firing on them than there actually were.
On another close encounter with death, Shackelford recalls how he and another soldier believed German planes were going to begin firing at them, so they ran for a haystack.
“We could actually see bullets flying all around us,” Shackelford said. “And the only casualty was when one soldier lost his little finger.” …
It was nearly the end of the war — April 1945, when the Sixth Armored Division was sent to Buchenwald, a German concentration camp to liberate the prisoners of war.
The prisoners had been forced to work long, hard hours. They were not fed properly and suffered from many diseases. Before being rescued, 40 to 60 (people) died every day from exposure, exhaustion and disease.
25 years ago
When Fred Breit was a young boy growing up in Parnell, he recalls hearing stories that city officials wanted to replace septic tanks with a central sewer system. On Wednesday, the 49-year-old mayor finally saw his boyhood rumors become on step closer to reality.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it is providing Parnell $423,000 in financing for a central sanitary sewer system project. The staff at Midwest Assistance Program (MAP) assisted in completing the documents for the USDA Rural Development $140,000 loan and a $238,000 grant.
“Our day has arrived,” Breit told residents, federal, state and local officials and the entire school body of the Northeast Nodaway Elementary School who gathered at Parnell City Park for the formal announcement, in conjunction with the Earth Day Celebration. …
Parnell’s new central sewer system will benefit 86 families and the school system.
100 years ago
HOPKINS VOTES FOR ELECTRICITY
Hopkins voted yesterday, by an overwhelming majority of 327, to get its electricity from the Maryville Electric Light & Power Co. Only fourteen votes were cast against the proposal, there being 341 in favor of it.
C. C. Hellmers, manager of the Maryville plant, said this morning that electricity would probably be available in Hopkins within two or three weeks, depending upon the weather. On March 27 the Hopkins light plant burned with a loss of approximately $25,000. Jake Dragoo was the owner of the plant and had $20,000 insurance on it.
Immediately after the fire the town officials of Hopkins gave Mr. Hellmers assurance that Hopkins would probably vote to get its electricity here and preliminary work was started then to get material on the ground for erecting the line into Hopkins.
The Maryville plant is now serving eighteen towns, including Maryville, in Northwest Missouri with electricity. Two other towns, Sheridan and Hopkins, will be served soon, making twenty towns getting electricity from Maryville. The material for the Sheridan line has been shipped and work will begin soon. The Continental Gas and Electric Corporation, which owns the Maryville plant, is now serving 133 towns in Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska.
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 26, 1923, edition of The Maryville Daily Democrat-Forum, which later would become the The Maryville Forum.
