Forum Flashbacks: May 4-10
FORUM FILE PHOTO
25 YEARS AGO: Musical Performers – Readin’, Ritin’ and Rockin’ the night away were Horace Mann Elementary students during a musical performance Tuesday night at the Charles Johnson Theater. Pictured above are three students doing the once popular dance, The Stroll. From left to right, Orry Tunell, Kasi Hernandez, and Traci Harr. All three dancers in the fourth grade level. The musical, entitled “Readin’, Ritin’ and Rockin’,” was performed by Horace Mann first through sixth level students. The musical is based in a school and the story line emphasizes the importance of education. Songs like “Love in Any Language,” “Boogie Right on to School,” “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Lunch Room Swing,” “Forgetful Blues” were some of the songs performed by the students.
15 years ago
Questions remain unanswered following a meeting Wednesday concerning a $15.5 million bond proposal and future plans for a Northwest Missouri State University Alumni Center.
Nodaway County Commissioners agreed that legal representatives for Northwest Foundation, whose members want to build the alumni center, need to meet with the commissioners and their legal counsel to discuss the wording of the million dollar resolution that must be presented for the commissioners’ signature.
Presiding Commissioner Joe Baumli said the wording of the resolution is important, both for the alumni center project and surrounding neighbors who oppose the project.
“I feel we heard a lot of valuable information from both sides of the issue today,” Baumli said. “We want to weigh all the factors carefully. This is property that could be valuable not only to the university but the entire community.” …
During the meeting, Orrie Covert, Executive Director of Northwest Foundation and (president Jim) Blackford came under verbal fire from property owners in the area surrounding land where the alumni center would be built — at the southeast corner of Fourth Street and College Avenue.
Property owners presented a petition with 21 signatures stating that they are opposed to the construction of the alumni center.
Covert responded, saying the foundation has been a part of this neighborhood since 1980 and has been good neighbors.
“We want to continue to be good neighbors — and we’re not just saying that,” Covert said. “We know the foundation probably will not get everything we want out of this project and the neighbors won’t either. We just need to work together as much as possible. I feel that the actions taken by the Foundation show that we want to work with the neighbors.”
On April 23, commissioners informed the bonding agent representing the foundation that they would not sign the resolution until issues had been resolved concerning the alumni center.
25 years ago
Diane Houston, director of the Maryville Public Library, has been informed by Sara Parker, Missouri state librarian, that a grant of $40,500 has been awarded to the Maryville Public Library to fund 50 percent of the cost of installing an $81,000 elevator within the library’s planned new vestibule of the remodeled MPL. …
Currently, Houston, the Library Board of Trustees and a 23-member Library Advisory Committee are engaged in a public campaign to raise $400,000 to finance a more-than 5,000 square foot addition as well as other improvements. Among the improvements include meeting ADA criteria by making the library accessible to the handicapped through the new vestibule entry on the library’s north side.
The elevator will provide interior barrier-free access for all individuals, both patrons and library staff, using the lower and main floor areas of the 86-year-old building as well as the planned new addition, Houston said. …
The $400,000 Library 2000 campaign to enlarge the library building will provide space to enlarge the periodicals collection on the main floor and enlarge the children’s collection and redesign it for Story House and other programming. Also, study areas, larger reference area, space for public access computers, and additional seating will be realized through the expansion.
100 years ago
MUCH PRAISE FOR CROY’S (?) BOOK
A reception the like of which has not accorded any other novel for many months, is being given by book reviewers of the latest novel, “West of the Water Tower,” anonymously written, but guessed by some critics to have been written by Homer Croy, a former Maryville boy. The scene of the novel, Junction City, Mo., is unquestionably Maryville, or at least any Maryvillian would think so in reading the book.
One reviewer has said it was better than Sinclair Lewis’ “Main Street.” Another would have been proud to have claimed authorship to it, and all are high in their praise of the new story.
Several reasons have been assigned for its being written anonymously. The reasons of some reviewers are given below. From an authoritative source the Democrat-Forum has received the information that it is in a large part autobiographical. Many of the experiences of the youthful Guy Plummer are thought to be actual school experiences of Homer Croy.
The book will soon be off the press and ready for distribution. The book stands a good chance of winning the $2,000 Harvard prize. …
James Craig, writing in the New York Evening Mail in discussing the anonymous authorship and reason for such, has written the following:
“For some reason not altogether clear the name of the author has been withheld from the title page of the new novel, ‘West of the Water Tower’ (Harpers). The motive must have been compelling for had we written the book we should have probably quarrel with the printer for not setting the name in type large enough to meet our idea of what was just and proper.
“If we were permitted a guess at the causes of the author’s modesty, it would be that he was writing too close to home for his own comfort. It is a story about people living in Junction City, Mo. The postal guide does not list any Junction City in that state. The book indicates that it was not far from Kansas City and remarks that its water supply was taken from the One Hundred and Two River. This reviewer happens to be familiar with that trifling stream, flowing through a small section of Northwest Missouri (If a husky farmer lad hadn’t pulled a certain naked youngster out of a deep hole in it one day in the summer Bryan was first running for President, this review never would have been written). So the number of possible Junction Cities is strictly limited.
“At any rate, we would rather be able to claim the creation of Adrian Plummer than to be able to claim authorship of any novel we have read in many weeks. And if we could we would sign that book if we knew the whole population of Junction City would be waiting us at the state line the next time we visited Missouri.”
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 May 7, 1923, edition of The Maryville Daily Democrat-Forum, which later would become the The Maryville Forum.
