MID-SOUTH MEMORIES
25 years ago — 1995
It is a story as old as time: a loyal wife is abandoned after 26 years and a younger woman moves in, with wedding bells following. Failed first relationships and second marriages are features of modern life as ”constant as the northern star,” of course. But the troubled tale of Stephen Hawking, his romances and his recent nuptials go far beyond the stuff of mere melodrama. This is a man with an Einstein-rated intellect; the author of one of the hottest-selling books in publishing history; and the world’s longest-surviving sufferer of Lou Gehrig’s disease, which has robbed Hawking of all powers of movement except for two fingers on one hand. So, it’s not surprising that his marriage to Elaine Mason Friday was a massive media event, particularly when one realizes that Hawking effectively stole his new bride from the man who gave him his voice... a voice-synthesizer for Hawking after he lost the power of speech during a bronchial infection in 1985.
50 years ago — 1970
(From Lydel Sims’ “Assignment: Memphis—“): A Memphis businessman who has not discovered the current domestic method of time-telling was introduced to it the other day by a mere mite of only four or five summers, “Let me speak to your Daddy, honey,” he said when she answered the phone. “He’s not here.” “Well, may I speak to your mother?” “She’s not here.” “When will they be back?” The child said she would ask her sitter. “They’ll be back,” she said when she returned to the phone, “right after ‘Dark Shadows.’” Thinking this was poetic reference to the coming dusk, the businessman asked when that would be. At this indication of inexcusable adult stupidity, the child grew exasperated. “If you’d just watch television,” she snapped, “you’d know when it is.”
75 years ago — 1945
Secretary of Labor Schwellenbach said Monday night that President Truman will announce a reorganization of the Labor Department Tuesday and that the department immediately will step “right square in the middle” of the explosive labor situation in the automobile industry. 100 years ago — 1920 WASHINGTON — Census figures made public today indicate that the population of Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, now is 35,897, an increase of 6,819 or 23.5 percent over 1910. Charleston has 3,007 against 1,934 a decade ago. Other figures announced are: Cascilla 161, Enid 174, Sumner 613, Tutwiler 1,010, Webb 553.