Looking Back Through the pages of the Wapakoneta Daily News

100 YEARS AGO, DECEMBER 30, 1920

FREE CINDERS- Call at City Fire Department at once.

With some of the city and county road scraping equipment, Bert Boltz, local street contractor, and his crew of men are making a very fine improvement on Auglaize Street. The street is being scraped of all loose snow and ice to better traffic conditions. The equipment was put in shape for the work at the Weber blacksmith yesterday and this morning.

75 YEARS AGO, DECEMBER 30, 1945

MM Gilbert Kantner, South Pine Street, received a telephone call Christmas Day from their son, William Kantner, WT 2- c, US Navy. He told his parents that he arrived at Philadelphia from Tokyo Bay on December 23. He is expecting to be home some time in January.

 Among those discharged from the service through the Separation Center, Indiantown Gap Military reservation, on December 26, was T- 4 Gerald Devore, 211 South Blackhoof street.

 Major Clyde Berry, MD, who recently returned to Wapakoneta after an absence of three years and four months in India, is now ready to resume his local practice of medicine. He left here in August 1942 to go on a malaria control mission in India. Dr. Berry was assistant theater malariologist in the China- Burma- Indian theater. He was on the general staff of the Ramgard training center training Chinese for malaria control work in the India sector and was on the staff of the 178th Station Hospital surgical section, for 18 months. Enroute home Dr. Berry sailed the Pacific for 54 days in company with 345 mules, 72 enlisted me and one other officer. Miss Dorothy Brown, who herself saw some military service that took her to Italy. Will be associated with Dr. Berry, beginning January 2.

50 YEARS AGO, DECEMBER 30, 1970

 A Bright New Year Ahead— Time’s right to wish you and yours a Happy New Year and to extend our warm thanks. City Bakery— Iola— Mert— Darlene— Betty— Harold and Helen— re- open Jan. 5

 Happy New Years— Wapak Laundromat— Alex and Agnes Edelbrock, Ron and Arlene Edelbrock, Floyd and Nettie Davis. Cor. Wood and Middle Sts.

 We echo the chiming of the New Year bells with best wishes to all for a future filled with peace, happiness, and prosperity. With sincere gratitude for your loyalty. - Carter’s Wrecking & Salvage, Wapak Iron & Metal, Corner N. Water and E. Silver Streets.

 Herb Lunz supplied the wheat, his mother supplied the recipe, so we’re going to try cooking it as a breakfast cereal one of these days.

 A New Year’s dance, featuring the “One Nation Underground” dance band is planned for January2 at the wigwam. This will be the first appearance for this group in Wapakoneta, although several members were in ” The Quiet Jungle,” which played in a Theater Guild production last summer. Admission is 75 cents fo members and $ 1.25 for non- members. All 7th and 8th graders are permitted to stay from 8 to 10 pm For older students the dance will end at 11 pm.

25 YEARS AGO, DECEMBER 30, 1995

 Just four days into 1996, a homecoming that has been nearly 70 years in the making will take place. “Koneta,” an American doll sent to Japan in 1927 s an ambassador of peace<” is returning to her hometown January 4- 5. N. Alex Hara, director of Asian marketing with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, led the efforts to bring the doll back to the states an is heading up the group, composed of six Japanese residents from the Saigo District School, where Koneta has resided in recent year. Koneta was sent to Japan in 1927 by Wapakoneta resident Zenith Campbell, whose name appears on the doll’s passport. Campbell died in 1963. Her daughter Claire Eisenlohr of Dayton was part of a failed effort in 1987 to bring the doll back. The goal of the visit, said Kathy Keller, director of the Wapakoneta Area Chamber of Commerce is to establish a Sister School writing campaign.