Days Gone By
100 YEARS AGO, 1924 » Chief of Police Vance this morning issued an order to all members of the police department, that each officer, after making a call from one of the new call boxes, must see to it that the door of the box is closed and securely fastened. Today street sergeants reported finding the doors of four of the boxes open. Hereafter, when this sort of carelessness is reported, demerit marks will be registered against the officer making the call from the box, the chief said.
75 YEARS AGO, 1949 » A half four after the proprietor of the DeweyLee Motors, Ninth and Tilghman streets, was held up, Wednesday, 9.30 p.m., and robbed of more than $2,000, police arrested a suspect in a nearby taproom. The bandit grabbed G. Dewey Carver’s bank book and ran toward Flower Street. Carver was able to give police only a vague description of the holdup man. But from that description Sgt. John Carney and Detective Francis Holt in a tour of the neighborhood picked up a suspect in a taproom at Seventh Street and Central Avenue.
50 YEARS AGO, 1974 » From the AP, Harrisburg — Gov. Shapp is supporting a one cent hike in the state gasoline tax to finance a $45 million anti-pothole program. New projections on gasoline sales, made public over the weekend, would balance Shapp’s Motor License Fund despite earlier predictions of a $110 million deficit in the year starting July 1.
25 YEARS AGO, 1999 » When the father of an 18-month-old child asked police for help to find his son the officers couldn’t believe their ears. According to Patrolman Robert Mears, the man admitted to drinking alcohol at a Garrett Road bar “”with his son” who left the premises approximately 3 p.m. Police located the boy inside the United Artists Movie Theater about a block away. Two bags of suspected marijuana fell out of the man’s pocket while he was looking for identification.
10 YEARS AGO, 2014 » The pencil and eraser which morphed into a mouse provided a visual timeline on the posters and invitations for the 100th birthday celebration of Media School. Former students, teachers, students who returned as teachers, administrators, staff and borough residents filled the hallways, Sunday afternoon, for the festivities. The building originally served as a high school, then as the school for grades 1-12 of the Media School District. After merging in 1966 to form the Rose Tree Media School District, it functioned as a junior high school and later, a grade 5-6 center. In 1981 it assumed the current role as the kindergarten-grade five Media Elementary School.