Forum Flashbacks: Thursday, Dec. 26, 2019

FORUM FILE PHOTO
FORUM FLASHBACKS: Orval Heywood played his 200th round of golf of the year in 2004 at the Mozingo Golf Course. Heywood, 84, played often since his retirement over 20 years ago.

25 years ago

• The Maryville R-II School District’s proposed 1995-1996 calendar has been reviewed once by the board of education and is on the agenda for a second reading at the Jan. 4 meeting. …
  The proposed calendar includes two notable differences from this year’s calendar.
  The district has taken steps to bring closer to equal the number of days in the first and second semesters.
  In the past, the first semester ending has coincided with the start of Christmas break.
  Under the proposed 1995-96 calendar, however, the first semester would end on Jan. 11, 1996, nine days after students return from Christmas break on Jan. 2, 1996.
  “It isn’t really fair when the semesters differ as much as they do,” Maryville R-II Board of Education President Robert Colville said during the board’s last regular meeting. “When you have a course that is a semester course and one semester is shorter than the other, you are putting a lot of pressure on that person who is teaching the class during the short semester.”
• They came with suitcases, duffel bags, clothes bags, boxes and pillows. There were 151 members of the Maryville Marching Spoofhound Band getting ready — along with 34 Band Boosters Parents, 19 chaperons and other family members — to head for balmy, sunny Florida.
  They tied ribbons of green, yellow, red, purple and brown on all their luggage and instruments; lined them up and waited for the five Heartland buses to appear. Each bus would be color-coded to match the ribbons.
  “We’re ready to go,” Band Booster Treasurer Dave Weigel said. “After all this hard work and planning, I think we’re all ready to go.”
  Following a tremendous fundraising effort by members of the marching band and their supporters, which included various donations from organizations, local businesses and individuals, the group left around 1 p.m., Monday, to head for Orlando, Fla. The trip will take more than 24 hours and the group plans to reach their destination around 3 p.m., today.
  The Marching Spoofhounds will be presenting three performances during their visit to the east coast. The group will be giving performances Thursday and Friday and will march in the Citrus Bowl Parade, Saturday.

15 years ago

• Marvin Murphy has been involved in the sport of softball longer than many people in Nodaway County have been alive, and his contributions to the game, especially in the pitching department, are as numerous as the lives he has touched.
  All of those years devoted to the sport he loves so much will pay individual dividends for the 72-year-old Maryville resident when he is inducted into the Missouri A.S.A. Hall of Fame for Meritorious Service during ceremonies on Feb. 12 in Rolla, Mo.
  “I never, ever dreamed that anything like this would happen,” he said. “This is quite an honor. I saw it happen to other people, but never thought it would happen to me. It almost makes me speechless to know I’ve done it.”
  But those whose lives in which he’s played a lasting part are not shocked at all.
  “He’s Mr. Softball in Northwest Missouri,” said Jerry Archer, who coached the King City girls last season and who has had two girls learn from Murphy. “I don’t know what softball would be in this area if it wasn’t for Marvin. He has been a tremendous asset for the game.”
• There are a whole lot of fair-weather golfers out there. They only play when the temperature is just right, the humidity isn’t bad, the wind isn’t blowing and they can get a tee time in the middle of a Saturday afternoon between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
  But every once in a while, you find a rare fellow like Maryville’s own Mr. 200, Orval Heywood.
  In sixty-degree heat with a stiff wind in his face on Thursday, Dec. 30, Heywood teed it up at Mozingo Lake Golf Course for the 200th time in 2004.
  When you consider how many of those days were too hot, too cold, too windy or too something else for most golfers, you realize Mr. 200 has played in a lot of bad weather. Heywood couldn’t say what the temperature was on the coldest day he played only that: “It was pretty darn cold.”
  Heywood began his golf career in 1982 when he retired. He was 62 then, so some easy math tells you that the big toothy grin of his is spreading across an 84-year-old face.

5 years ago

• All it took was a piece of mail to get Andrea Mason thinking about different ways to educate her students.
  Mason, a third-grade teacher at Horace Mann Laboratory School, received a publishing kit in the mail, complete with a sample book and instructions on how to get one published.
  As part of a unit on writing personal narratives, Mason decided to have each student write about his or her experience at Horace Mann and send it off for publication. Each student wrote a page worth of copy and drew pictures.
  The process was simple, Mason said. All the class had to do was write the book, compile the pages, send off permission slips and have parents submit order forms.
  “I just happened to order a couple kits thinking we could write about something different,” Mason said. “It took a long time and kids voted on everything.”
  Funding was provided by the orders. Each parent paid $20 for the original book.
  In a following unit, Mason had her students write letters of thanks to the military.
  “After they saw the outcome of our Horace Mann book, they wanted to write a book about why we’re thankful for our troops,” Mason said. “It was their idea. We were overwhelmed with the words the students used.”