MID-SOUTH MEMORIES

25 years ago — 1997

Perry Steele has sometimes filed as many as 14 different W2 forms at income tax time and estimates he's held almost 80 jobs in the last 20 years. ''I've done just about every kind of job you can think of except maybe surgery,'' says Steele, now working on a temporary assignment counting computers as an inventory control worker for the Memphis Board of Education. Like more than 2.3 million Americans, Steele, 39, is part of a growing workforce of ''temps,'' employees who one worker calls the ''nomads of the '90s." Carol Smith, 51, of Millington ''was a casualty of corporate downsizing'' after 28 years as a secretary for Delta Air Lines. After two years as a temp, she has turned down offers of permanent jobs and wouldn't go back. ''I like to maintain my freedom and flexibility. I'm in charge of my life now.'' For Steele, a permanent job has been almost a lifetime goal.

50 years ago — 1972

CAPE KENNEDY, Fla. – Electric power surged into a mammoth Saturn 5 rocket Monday as the six-day countdown began for Apollo 16, a manned science expedition to the mountains of the moon. The launch team started the countdown clock at 8:30 a.m. aiming for a launching of the Saturn 5 next Sunday at 12:54 p.m.

75 years ago — 1947

What a big boy Memphis has grown to be! It wasn't two months ago that you knew him when was only 50.87 square miles big. Then the Legislature said he could take in President's Island and Easley Bottoms in connection with the Tennessee Chute harbor development. So today Memphis is almost 80 square miles in area..

100 years ago — 1922

CLARION, Pa. – The airplane in which Capt. Roald Amundsen left New York this morning on a cross-continent flight to Seattle, was wrecked this afternoon at Miola, a small village of four miles east of here. While the explorer and his four companions were badly bruised in the wreck, none were seriously hurt.

125 years ago — 1897

The Madison Heights baseball club yesterday won the game with Leath High School 12-6. Features of the game were the pitching of H. Rawlings and the batting of R. Gamble and Dee Branch.

BRANDON DILL/SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL April 15, 2016: Germantown Vice Mayor Forrest Owens taps the helmet of Germantown city administrator Patrick Lawton during a groundbreaking ceremony at the site where the former Saddle Creek fountain will be restored behind the Germantown Civic Club Plaza.