Stories from the past
50 years ago
Government and farm leaders were introduced Thursday to Spreckles Sugar Company’s new Imperial County agricultural district manager, J. Byron Larsen, at various meetings in Imperial Valley.
Plans were revealed by Larsen for Spreckles Sugar to contract with about 40 Valley growers for 7,000 acres of sugar beets next season.
He added that the market value for these beets will be more than $2 million if prices next season are the same as they are this year.
40 years ago
In 1956, Nellie Ruth Mansfield and her husband Arthur Freeman Mansfield talked of dying one day and the need for a final resting place. Their choice of sites was Memory Garden, a peaceful section of Imperial Valley between Imperial and Brawley with the promise of a lasting memorial for their children and their children’s children.
Today, Nellie Ruth Mansfield, now 78, is bitter. The death of her husband Friday morning had been hard enough.
Arthur Freeman Mansfield, 87, was buried shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday. Nellie had forgotten about the pictures. Her crippled step-daughter in Kentucky had asked that photos be taken of the gravesite. Nellie sent her son to complete the task.
Tuesday, when her son arrived at the grave, he found flowers had been destroyed or stolen. Seven standing wreaths were stripped. The binding ribbons were scattered over the cemetery. Each bouquet had been pulled apart. The petals of each flower was damaged.
“All we wanted were some pictures to send to my step daughters and for me to keep. In less than six hours these people completely desecrated my husband’s grave,” Mrs. Mansfield said.
A spokesman for Lemons-Wiley funeral home, which handled burial arrangements for Arthur Mansfield, said vandalism at Memory Gardens has been going on for years.
30 years ago
Calling it his “last hurrah” as a member of the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors, outgoing Director John Benson Tuesday unveiled a new drought insurance proposal aimed at the San Diego County Water Authority.
Benson proposed breaking off water transfer negotiations with the Metropolitan Water District and offering to provide San Diego up to 250,000 acre-feet of water in dry years in exchange for a small insurance payment in wet years and payments of $175 per acre-foot in years when the water is used.
The water would come from a well field to be built along the All-American Canal to recover water that has seeped out of the canal over the past 50 years.
The board of directors took no action on the proposal because the item was inadvertently left off the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting and so could not legally be acted upon.
20 years ago
Apparently Jerry Springer has been banned in Guam, and some kids from Montana are afraid of squirrels.
At least one kid, anyway.
These revelations were heard in May when a group of 10 students from Westmorland traveled to Washington, D.C., to join a group of hundreds of students invited to take part in a tour of the nation’s capital.
The kids were part of a gathering of eighth-graders from all over the nation and Guam invited to Washington, D.C., each year by the Close Up Foundation.
The students had to earn the privilege as well as the money needed to go.
When the students were informed a member of the Westmorland community died serving his country in the Vietnam War, they visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington to do a “rubbing” of his name.
Florencio Marquez was the name over which the students placed a piece of paper and rubbed with a pencil so the inset letters of his name would remain white while the rest of the paper became charcoal gray from the carbon in the pencil.
The students took two rubbings from the wall. One was delivered to the Marquez’ family.