Forum Flashbacks: March 14-20

MARYVILLE DAILY FORUM, MARCH 14, 1999
25 YEARS AGO: Everybody Dance Now – Washington Middle School students and teachers perform to “YMCA” during the annual seventh and eighth grade variety show Friday afternoon. The program featured a variety of musical performances, skits and dance numbers. A tribute to Karl Nanninga was also included.

25 years ago

Maryville Daily Forum, March 17, 1999

Music and prayers are once again filling the chambers of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.

With the peeling of the bells and the Dedication of the Altar, a new era was rung in for the Conception Abbey Tuesday. Nearly 50 bishops, archbishops, abbots and provincials took part in the service which marked the end of the renewal project which spanned nearly 20 years. …

For the monks of Conception, returning to worship in the Basilica is a homecoming. For the past three and a half years, they have been meeting for prayer in a small room in the monastery. Abbot Gregory Polan noted that although it is possible to pray anywhere, it is important to have a place distinguished by its sacred surrounding.

“This is what the Basilica is intended to be: an inspiring and uplifting house of prayer, not only for the monks, but also for all who come to pray with us,” Polan said. …

The invited guests who joined in celebrating Mass were struck by the changes in the renewed Basilica, which was originally built in 1891. The new floor plan brings the monks closer to the rest of the worshipers. In contrast to the old brown walls and dark surroundings, cream colored walls and windows stream light into the church. …

General contractor Augie Huber attended the dedication. His company has worked on stabilizing and refurbishing the church for over three years.

“When you live with a project as long as we have lived with this, you develop some very special feelings for it,” Huber said. “The building is special, but the spirit of Conception is what makes it special.”

Although the renewed Basilica has been transformed to reflect changes in monastic life during the past century, the community has taken special steps to preserve tradition. The new altar is made from the original Italian marble altar. Stones from the very first colony house which preceded the monastery and first monastery church, located in the abbey cemetery, are housed inside the altar.

50 years ago

Maryville Daily Forum, March 15, 1974

What do you say to a barking egg?

Lyle Farquhar, a former banker who quit the business to return to school so he could someday teach art, fashioned a fake-fur, sunny-side-up egg for his sculpture class. He placed it in the hall in the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building and then situated himself behind a display case to watch the fun.

As students, faculty and staff approached the egg, it barked. Not only that, as they attempted to walk away from it, it followed them.

“Man Eating Egg,” Farquhar’s sculpture, works by remote control; the reason he was stationed in the hall was to turn the mechanism on and off.

The barking was recorded on a tape recorder at the city pound. Farquhar said he did not anticipate any problems getting 45 minutes of barking sound at the pound, but when he got there, the dogs were more interested in his tape recorder than in sounding off. So Farquhar barked at them.

“I kept looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching this fool barking at the dogs,” he said. “I got a few barks of my own mixed in with theirs.”

The egg moves through the use of a football-shaped wheel which lifts the egg up and forward as it rolls. However, it only moves forward, and Farquhar had to move it back to the wall every 15 minutes or so ….

While some art students registered shock at the barking, moving egg, most of them have been numbed and expect the unusual rather than the usual. But music students and faculty, staff workers and some visiting high school students expressed varied reactions ranging from fear to amusement.

100 years ago

Maryville Tribune, March 17, 1924

EPIDEMIC OF MEASLES IN COUNTY OVER

_______________

The measles epidemic in Nodaway County during the month of February was much greater than during the previous month, there being 285 cases reported in the county during February, and only 175 cases during January according to the County Health Department reports. During January of 1923 there was only one case of measles in the county.

None of the twenty-three deaths in the county during the last month, however, were caused by measles, or any other reportable diseases. The births in the county during the last month exceed the deaths by twenty, there having been forty-three births recorded.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The 50-year and 100-year flashbacks are courtesy of the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project from the State Historical Society of Missouri, accessible at shsmo.newspapers.com.