MID-SOUTH MEMORIES

25 years ago — 1995

Little Rock – The Whitewater grand jury Thursday indicted Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and two of President Clinton’s former business partners. The 21-count, 48-page indictment did not name President Clinton, or his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, but it did accuse their Whitewater partners — James Mcdougal and his former wife, Susan Mcdougal. They are charged with conspiring to defraud federal regulators in the operation of the nowdefunct Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, which had been owned by Mcdougal.

50 years ago — 1970

Hollywood – Martha Raye leaves in October for her sixth tour of duty in Vietnam. As an entertainer? Not primarily. “If there’s a soldier sitting around with a guitar in the evening, I might sing a few songs,” she says. The raucous comedienne goes as a nurse — a surgical nurse. “There are no jokes in surgery,” she notes. A registered nurse since 1936, she’s Lt. Col. Martha Raye of the Army Nurses Corps Reserve and serves with the Special Forces — the Green Berets. It’s the third war for Raye who enlisted in the Nurses Corps in 1939. “I went as a nurse but, being an entertainer, could do both,” she said. After World War II and Korea she became a reservist.

75 years ago — 1945

Crowded sidewalks and overflowing parking lots marked the end of the two-day victory holiday in Memphis yesterday. “It was the biggest shopping day crowd we’ve seen in many months,” Inspector Hal Allen of the Police Department said. “There were more motor vehicles in town than there have been since the war started.” Department store business was especially heavy. Some of the shopping was attributed to the approach of the school season.

100 years ago — 1920

The Clover Farm Dairy plans the erection of a $250,000 plant on the park known as Hodges Field at Somerville and Jefferson, it was learned yesterday. The field is being used as a baseball diamond.

125 years ago — 1895

Several cases of smallpox are reported today on Cow Island, located in the Mississippi River 20 miles below Memphis.

THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL Bobby Jack Mcelya, left, watches as his first-round opponent Dudley Smith washes his ball before teeing off in the Kids' Golf Clinic at Overton Park on Aug. 18, 1953.