100 years ago in The Record
Monday, Nov. 19. 1917
“Troy has again ‘gone over the top,’” The Record reports after the Collar City surpasses its $66,000 goal for the Y.M.C.A. War Work fundraising campaign. Campaign chairman Howard S. Kennedy predicts that the city’s final total for the campaign will pass $70,000. As of press time for our evening edition, the total is $67,433.25 The Y.M.C.A. has a national goal of $35,000,000 to fund its cultural services to American soldiers at home and in Europe. Mayor Cornelius F. Burns congratulates the fundraisers at this afternoon’s rally luncheon. “The citizens at large should be proud of the way Troy is bearing its burden of heavy quotas,” he says. “I cannot see why it is that we are assessed so heavily, far greater in proportion than many of the communities about us, but if it is our duty, we shall certainly meet it whenever the occasion arises. “As an example of the patriotic spirit shown by our citizens, recall the parade of Thursday night [November 15]. Who ever heard of such a procession, which as the banner heading it proclaimed was composed of Hebrews, Protestants and Catholics? It was an unprecedented example of the true spirit animating all alike.” Kennedy adds his own congratulations. “It was highly gratifying to see when I arrived here this morning, seventy-five men waiting to do anything they might be called on in bringing this campaign to a successful conclusion. That’s the spirit you have shown all week and it is indeed a pleasure and a privilege to work with such men.”
Killed in action
Malcolm Gifford jr. is not a Trojan, but The Record reports that the Hudson man had many friends in Troy who are shocked by today’s news that he was killed in action somewhere in France on November 8. Gifford, age 21, attended the Hoosac School and was the quarterback for the 1916 Williams College football team before enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force on February 3, two months before the U.S. declared war on Germany. He served as an artilleryman with the Forty-Third Howitzer Battery. “It was while on the firing lines that he met his death,” our reporter writes, “He wanted to get with the American forces in France, and undoubtedly would have had his wish had he lived.” Gifford last visited Troy in January, after he withdrew from Williams to join the military. From Europe, he corresponded with his Troy friends and “during the past month expressed great interest in the young men from here who are in training and will in all probability” follow him to Europe.