Looking Back with Lora Stull
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send your username and password to you.
One Hundred Years Ago
(From the Mount Ayr Record-News,Thursday, September 20, 1922.)
Quite a little excitement was caused here Saturday afternoon by the capture of three fellows who had escaped from the jail in Albany, MO the evening before.
They had been sentenced to serve a penitentiary term for robbery and were being held in the jail at that place until they would be taken to Jefferson City, MO, but about nine o’clock Friday evening, during a band concert, they managed to unlock their cell door, bound and gagged the guard and made their escape.
They came up as far as Grant City on a hand car and there they stole a Ford car in which they drove to Mount Ayr. On account of car trouble and muddy roads they abandoned the car there and boarded the freight to Kellerton.
Word had been received regarding the men who had escaped and the conductor on the freight train suspected them and when the train stopped to wait on the other freight just west of town, he suggested that they were being looked for and had better hide in a refrigerator car until they reached the main line.
The men at once climbed into the car and the conductor immediately locked them in and sent word to Marshall Burchett to come and get them.
The Lamoni Chronicle last week contained an account of a hold-up at Andover, S.D. in which is told the experiences of three Mount Ayr boys, Lee Bastow, Elvis Millsap and Alva Cowell have thrilling experience on way to harvest fields.
The young men left Mount Ayr about three weeks ago for the wheat fields in the Dakotas, where they expect to work during the threshing season.
The freight train on which the hold-up was staged pulled into Andover, S.D. about 10 o’clock. The gunman alighted from the train at Andover when the train stopped and warned his victims not to get off the train until it reached Milbank if they valued their lives.
The harvest hands had been robbed of $235 and were determined the hold-up artist should not get away so easily. So, they jumped from the train about a mile east of Andover and walked to a farm house, telephoning the facts of the hold-up to the authorities at Andover.
The bandit eluded his pursuers for sometime, but finally he emerged suddenly around a corner where he had been hiding and a desperate battle ensued. The bandit was evidently bent on not being taken alive.The bandit was armed with a gun in each hand besides another one in his hip pocket and a good supply of shot.
Several businessmen ran to the sheriffs aid who shot and killed the bandit and there was nothing on his person to identify him. He had practically nothing in the way of money before he stagged the robbery, as that found on his person tallied very accurately with what the boys had reported being taken from them. He carried a gun shot wound in the small of his back, some 8-10 days old which had not had medical attention.
Births: A daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Groves…A son was born Friday to Mr. and Mrs. Bert Saltzman…August 15, a son, George, to Mr. and Mrs. George Young…August 15, a son Melvin, to Mr. and Mrs. Glen Curry…August 17, a son, Edward, to Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Young…September 7, a daughter, Linda, to Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Lay.
Obituaries in this edition were: Kate Egly Merritt and Florence B. Thorne Niece.
Seventy-Five
Years Ago
(From the Mount Ayr Record-News,Thursday, September 18, 1947.)
Class officers elected for the year. With two weeks of school already past, the annual election of class officers was held Friday.
The freshman officers are: President, Raymond Hutchinson; vice-president, Sallee Tufty; secretary, Harriet Kilgore; treasurer, James Taff. Sophmore officers are as follows: President, Clair Eason; vice-president, Dean Stuck; secretary, Rose Drake; treasurer, Phyllis Johnston; reporter Mary Ellen Pine. Junior class officers are: President, Harold Cooper, vice-president, Laurance Bishop; secretary, Catherine Conant; and treasurer, Richard Kirby. Senior officers are as follows: President, Cyril Greene; vice-president, Jim Eason; secretary Gene Sickels; and treaurer, Sammy Sickels.
Marriage: September 7, Ruth Freestone and Wendal Robison.
Obituary in this edition was, Mary Walters Stuck.
Fifty Years Ago
(From the Mount Ayr Record-News,Thursday, September 28, 1972.)
This will be in next week’s paper.
Twenty Five
Years Ago
(From the Mount Ayr Record-News,Thursday, September 4, 1997.)
How to meet the challenges of the “baby boomer” generation reaching retirement age and the stress this will put on Medicare and Social Security systems was one of the topics discussed in a public forum with Senator Charles Grassley in Mount Ayr Thursday.
Preliminary enrollment figures show some increases and some decreases for Ringgold County schools in the 1997-98 school year. Mount Ayr Community school enrollment including junior high and high school students whole grade shared, fell back to 799 this year after an increase to 815 last year. This is the 3rd largest total in the past ten years. At Diagonal enrollment is 172, up nine from the preliminary figures for enrollment this time last year. In Clearfield school district a total of 71 students are attending elementary school this year, up four from last year. Figures for Grand Valley elementary school show 45 students, down from 66 at this time last year.
Larry and Debbie Foltz spent Labor Day laboring to spruce up the front of the Small Corral building in Mount Ayr.
The couple painted the top of the ornate building which houses the restaurant using a boom truck, volunteering their time for the project.
Obituaries in this edition were: Craig Allen Shields, Albert Clair Kirkpatrick, Benjamin Curtis Dodge, Donald Henry Harvey, Richard Tennant Prentis, Lloyd Wayne Hensley and Flossie Woollums Bush.
Ten Years Ago
(From the Mount Ayr Record-News,Thursday, September 20, 2012.)
Candidates have been named for homecoming royalty for Mount Ayr set for September 24.
Queen candidates are as follows: Maggie Jennett, Hannah Fletchall, Caitlyn Giles, April Shields and Madi Hosfield. The king candidates are: Shane Swank, Jonathan Triggs, Braydee Poore, Levi Martin and Zane Sickels.
When the Republican Party was holding its national convention in Tampa, FL recently, Ringgold County had an alternate delegate participating, and that was Tracee Knapp.
A Ringgold County family–The Shaha family–was one of the Heritage Farm award winners at the Iowa State Fair. A Heritage Farm, is a farm of at least 40 acres that has been owned by one family for 150 years, who work the land, and make a living on what it produces.
Caleb Baker of Clearfield a 2001 graduate of Mount Ayr Community high school, is making a name for himself as a NASCAR crew member. He is the front tire changer for Ty Dillon, driver of the #3 Bass Pro Shops Chervolet in the NASCAR Camping Truck World Series.