100 YEARS AGO — 1918

T.A. Bradley, who lives about four miles from Danville on Lexington Road, had an unusual experience with his tobacco crop this year. He has one field of two acres which he set three times because the plants were destroyed by grasshoppers twice and the third planting was badly damaged. Mr. Bradley has never experienced anything like this and he is now convinced that grasshoppers like a “chew” pretty well. His tobacco was planted near a clover field and in all probably this is accountable for the onslaught by the grasshoppers.

Negotiations, surveys and plans for the purchase of land which have been in progress for eight years by the L & N Railroad Company to build a dam southeast of Cozatt’s at the telegraph and water station west of Parksville have been almost completed. When the dam is erected it is not believed there will ever be any shortage of water in that area. The dam will be about 300 yards long, 100 feet wide at the bottom, 30 feet high and 30 feet across the stop. When it’s completed, it is believed the water will cover six to eight acres.

 

Speaker of the House of Congress in Washington City, Champ Clark of Missouri, made a speech at a Red Cross meeting describing his experience in Perryville during the Civil War. “I was only 12 years of age and worked on a farm owned by Mrs. McCall. I was in hearing of one of the bloodiest battles during the war between the States…Gen. Bragg was on the Confederate side and Buell on the union side. Mrs. McCall and her servants cooked all night before the battle and I carried water, knowing the scarcity of it and the great battle at hand. Just at sunrise on the warm October morning, I heard a cannon roar and then the shots from smaller guns. It raged all day long with the thermometer at 100 and the only water available was a small spring which ran a stream several inches in diameter on a farm belonging to an old lady known as the widow Bottom. The armies fought over this spring like tigers and in a short while there were hundreds of dead bodies around it, some in blue and some in gray.”

 

A wrong impression has been made in Danville and Boyle County by the publication of the U.S. Fuel Administration’s call to the people to cease the use of automobile driving for pleasure on Sunday applies to church going, when such is not the case. People having no other way to attend church may use automobiles to go to and from church services. In fact, church going in America is considered a necessity, as this is a Christian nation and our success in the world war which is now in progress depends upon the American people’s loyalty to God and to the church as much as to force of arms. The past two Sundays, very little automobile driving for pleasure has taken place in Danville, but the people are driving to church. The person, however, who runs his automobile on Sunday for pleasure, while he may not be arrested, will be considered a slacker.

 

75 YEARS AGO — 1943

 

A total of 1,546 students have enrolled in the 11 Boyle County schools. Louis Owens has been named principal of East End Consolidated School, succeeding Harlan Betts. Owens has been a teacher at Perryville school for the past 14 years. The number of high school students returning to school failed to come up to expectations because many of the older high school boys have been called to military duty, or expect soon to leave. Others have stayed at home to help on the farms.

 

Applications will be received at the Red Cross office between 1 and 5 p.m. today from colored women who wish to join a new Home Nursing class for members of their race, announced by Miss Pearl Gaines, R.N. The class will be taught by Alice Adams, colored registered nurse now on private duty, who taught a previous Home Nursing class here. The group will be limited to 20 students.

 

Benny Sheene has been missing for a year and a half but his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Morris Sheene, of North Fourth Street, have learned their son is alive and is a prisoner of the Japanese in the Far East. They were informed that further assistance in contacting the young serviceman would be obtained through the Boyle County chapter of the American Red Cross. Benny Sheene was attached to and serving with the Patrol Squadron 104 and was apparently left in Manila during the evacuation of April 1942.

 

50 YEARS AGO — 1968

 

Danville has been awarded a Federal grant of $78,000 to be used as a planning grant for the city. Danville leaders from all segments of the city have been making plans as to the best manner in which the city could b modernized, improved, made more liveable and more beautiful and pushed into the 21st century.

 

The Mystics of Danville, one of eight combos that performed in the finals of the 1968 WHAS Crusade for Children Combo Contest. The group is composed of Michel Hughes, Debbie Kay McCowan, Tommy Coates, Charles Chenault, Jimmy Simpson, Jimmy Jones and Ben Kinley.

 

The Boyle Fiscal Court approved the recommendations of the Danville and Boyle County Planning and Zoning Commission that land on both sides of Hustonville Road in the area of the intersection of the road with the proposed Danville bypass be rezoned from agricultural to commercial.

 

Kentucky Gov. Louise B. Nunn has given assurances that Jacobs Hall, the historic main building on the campus of Kentucky School for the Deaf, will not be demolished.

 

25 YEARS AGO — 1993

 

The Junction City Council received four letters of apology from juveniles who had broken into the concession stand at the city park. “I want to tell you about a stupid and dumb thing I did with my friends,” one letter started. The juveniles who vandalized the park wrote that they had learned their lesson and vowed not to get in any more trouble. The young boys were placed on curfew and required to do six hours of community service under the supervision of Fire Chief Jimmy Gipson. The boys helped clean up Junction City Park for Railroad Days.

 

Since Centre College had the previous two NCAA Woman of the Year winners in Kentucky, Cheryl Hart didn’t think she would win this year’s award. However, the 39-year-old Danville woman was wrong. She has been named Kentucky’s NCAA Woman of the Year, the same honor Marcia Mount won in 1991 and Kim Monaghan in 1992. Hart returned to college in 1991 at age 28. She had three seasons of athletic eligibility remaining and ran two seasons of cross country and one of track at Centre. Hart, who has sons ages 8 and 11 had a 3.7 grade-point average while majoring in English and won several academic awards at Centre. She’s had a lead role in several West T. Hill Community Theater plays and is a member of the Danville-Boyle County Parks and Recreation Board.

 

Thom McAn employees have learned their jobs will be gone in January because of the decision to close the distribution center. In the first 10 years of operation, the plant shipped 105 million pairs of shoes. When the 10th anniversary was marked in April 1991, teh plant had 119 employees; the turnover rate was about 2 percent; and 62 of the original 80 employees still worked for the company.