Scouting’s CEO
25 years ago: 1988
Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s award-winning column will move to the Metro page beginning today. The column will run on Page B1 Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, a new column by award-winning reporter William Thomas will appear on the Metro page. Both writers will scour the Mid-South to ensure that the specialness of our region and its people are celebrated daily in The Commercial Appeal.
Ms. Johnson and Thomas are both members of the Scripps Howard Hall of Fame, having won the annual writing award three times. They are both winners of the Ernie Pyle Award for human interest reporting. Ms. Johnson has won the National Headliner Award for commentary, and Thomas’ writing about the outdoors has been saluted by the Tennessee Associated Press Managing Editors.
50 years ago: 1963
Memphis library officials, rubbing a budgetary bruise, will begin jogging the collective memory of Cossitt Library patrons today. They have moved a desk near the main entrance of Cossitt, from which all books will be checked out.
In addition, signs are being placed at strategic points throughout the library, explaining that the librarian on duty at this desk will ask for a polite peek into shopping bags, brief cases or other containers big enough to carry a book. Library Director C. Lamar Wallis said yesterday the library is losing between $2,000 and $3,000 a year in books whose borrowers move or leave town, and “at least that much again, probably more” in books that simply disappear, without being checked out.
75 years ago: 1938
Citizens of Brunswick, Shelby County, will hold a barbecue today to celebrate the opening of the new L&N Railroad station that replaced two boxcars from which railroad business had been conducted since fire destroyed the depot several years ago. Mrs. William A. Bledsoe of Brunswick will be in charge of the affair.
100 years ago: 1913
LAWTON, Okla. — The Apache Indians who have been held as prisoners of war at Fort Sill for 19 years, have left for the Apache Reservation in New Mexico where they will be freed.
125 years ago: 1888
The process of washing the rock-paved streets by means of a fire hose attached to a fire plug is heard nightly now. It is still an experiment.