MID-SOUTH MEMORIES
25 years ago — 1996
The Desoto County Board of Supervisors approved funding Monday for a new community center and library in Walls, clearing a major hurdle in a campaign that has been off and on the front burner for two years. The board voted 5-0 to commit $233,000 from the general fund contingency account, raising the amount for the project to $810,000, as estimated by the architect and the First Regional Library System. ”It's a great day for Walls,” beamed developer Hal Crenshaw, who donated the 2.3-acre site north of Goodman Road and east of U.S. 61 where the library/community center will be built. ”I think it's going to be a nice-looking building — something the people in Walls can be proud of. The building will have a large vista-type window looking over the Delta. I think people will be comfortable there in the library or attending functions.
50 years ago — 1971
The Memphis Symphony Orchestra's concerts of Dec. 5 and 7 will be dedicated to the memory of Troy Beatty Jr., the first president of the Memphis Orchestral Society, who died on Nov. 9. Mr. Beatty, who was 76, was chosen president in 1953, when a group of civic and music-minded Memphians banded together to form the society as a sponsoring organization for the MSO, then being hatched as the Memphis Sinfonietta. He was president until 1956.
75 years ago — 1946
HAMMOND, La., – Services for Gus Coates were about to get underway at Poole Funeral Home here Monday when a stranger showed up at the chapel, took a long, curious look at the body, and then told dumbfounded attendants: “I'm Gus Coates. That's not me in that casket.”
He explained how he read Monday morning of a pedestrian, struck by an ambulance near here late Saturday night. As he was explaining all this, a second Gus Coates, moved by the same curiosity, appeared to view the body. The funeral home postponed the services.
100 years ago — 1921
NASHVILLE – Persons convicted of violating the liquor laws of the state in the future cannot hope for any sympathy from Gov. Alf A. Taylor unless they are able to obtain recommendations for clemency from the trial judge and attorney general in the county in which they are convicted.
125 years ago — 1896
”Women as Breadwinners” was the subject of a paper Mrs. T. J. Latham delivered yesterday to the Nineteenth Century Club. The idea that it is unseemly for women to work is a thing of the past, along with the idea that women should only listen and not speak, she said. Parents of every social class should train their daughters for the possibility they may be breadwinners. Many capitalists boast of cutting costs by hiring well-educated women and paying them a fourth of what a man would earn for the same job. The importance of organization and cooperation among women in their fight for equal pay cannot be over-emphasized.