MID-SOUTH MEMORIES:
25 years ago — 1997
CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE, N.J. – A 68-year-old man who performs feats of strength as part of his own personal physical fitness crusade added another one to his resume: lifting a refrigerator with three women on it. Maurice Catarcio also ripped decks of playing cards in half, tore a license plate and bent a steel bar into a U-shape during an unpaid 15minute exhibition in a parking lot. It was all in a day’s play for Catarcio, who has survived prostate cancer and a heart attack to become a kind of Hercules for the older set. He calls himself ”The Magnificent Maurice.” ”It shows people with the same adversities I’ve faced that if they’re honest, they can do it,” Catarcio says, meaning improve their health, not lift a refrigerator. Catarcio is a longtime state GOP committeeman whose 9-to-5 job is as chairman of the Cape May County Bridge Commission. He has been a bodybuilder and weightlifter since 11, when he was given his first set of barbells
50 years ago — 1972
PLEIKU, Vietnam – Trapped in enemy-held territory for 13 days after their helicopter was shot down, five Americans — including an Army major from Humboldt, Tenn. — stayed alive with the help of a South Vietnamese soldier who vanished six hours before they were rescued. The three United States Army advisors and two helicopter crewmen told their story Sunday in a hospital here. They were rescued Saturday, more than a week after being given up for dead.
75 years ago — 1947
Mass picketing disappeared yesterday from the Memphis telephone strike scene after Chancellor Bejach ruled pickets be limited to a maximum of three at each building entrance. The court also restrained strikers from “mass assembly” in the vicinity of Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co. buildings. He made the ruling in Chancery Court after a hearing yesterday morning for a company-sought temporary injunction against three telephone workers unions. 100 years ago — 1922
There was not as great a drop in the Mississippi River at Memphis as expected, the gauge yesterday registering 40.6, a fall of but four-tenths in the 24 hours ending yesterday morning. The fall at Memphis will probably increase some today and by tomorrow morning it will get close to 40 feet.
125 years ago — 1897
Mrs. C.C. Bradford, president of the Denver, Colo., Federation of Women’s Clubs and Miss Ella Harrison of Carthage, Mo., president of the Missouri Equal Suffrage Association, who are in Memphis, were entertained yesterday by Mrs. Clarence Selden.