FIFTY & 100 YEARS AGO CONTINUED

Monday, Jan. 18, 1971 Camps barber trim lady

TULSA, Okla. (UPI) – Get too close to pert little Mary Phelan “doing her thing” at the University of Tulsa and she may use scissors on you. Or the razor.

Miss Phelan, who says “I’m under 30,” is the first lady barber on the TU campus, though she is not the only woman who has invaded the sanctuary of the once all-male barber shops in Tulsa.

She looks as if she belonged more with the university’s coeds than prompting quips from customers who find the men in the school’s barber shop busy, only to be motioned to have a seat by the bright-eyed brunette.

“You’re a barber, too?” an enthusiastic young man asked. “Hey, how about that!”

Miss Phelan admits her chosen career amuses many, but says she seldom has problems with a customer who doesn’t want to put his locks at her mercy.

But she hasn’t always been so candid about her job.

“I began attending barber school while I was in high school,” she said. “Only my closest friends knew what I was doing. My mother did not want me to become a barber, but she is resigned to it now. My brother is even talking about becoming a barber.”

Miss Phelan operated her own barber shop in a small town near Tulsa after graduating from barber college. She gave it up after 18 months “because of the sameness” of a small community.

While looking for a shop in Tulsa, she became acquainted with Fred Speer, owner of the university’s hair cutting salon.

She has been in demand by women, too, but says now she doesn’t cater to female customers unless their hair is short.

Tuesday, Jan. 19, 1971

Boys’ Club choir group to watch Apollo launch

Five members of the Rome Boys’ Club Choir have been invited to Cape Kennedy to witness the launching of the Apollo 14 space craft on Jan. 31.

Howard Derton Jr., Steve Jones, Bill Martin, Keith Roberts and Tim Walker will be among some 40 Boys’ Club members who will be guests of actor Hugh O’Brian while at the Cape.

The trip is being sponsored by several Rome organizations, including the Breakfast Optimist Club, Exchange Club, Coosa Valley Fair Association, Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club and radio station WRGA.

One of the qualifications for making the trip was that each boy represent some outstanding service performed by an individual or as a member of a group.

Keith Roberts, 17, a senior at Cedartown High School, has been a member of the Boys’ Club Choir for nine years. He was the winner of the Optimist Oratorical Contest in 1968 and will be representing the Boys’ Club support of “Cheerful Givers,” to which the club contributes proceeds from the Santa Bowl and helps to raise other contributions, totaling in 1970 approximately $3,500.

Bill Martin, 17, a Chattooga High School senior, will also be representing the Cheerful Givers project. He has sung with the choir for eight years and last year was a featured soloist.

Tim Walker, Howard Dorton and Steve Jones will represent the “Good Neighbor” tour taken by the club choir to raise money for the Biloxi Boys’ Club Building Fund. The Biloxi Club was destroyed in 1969 by Hurricane Camille. The Biloxi Boosters Tour raised $4,620.

Walker, 17, a senior at East Rome High School, has sung in the choir for 10 years and last year was featured as a soloist.

Dorton, a Model High School senior, has been a member of the choir for six years and a club member for eight.

Jones has been the official accompanist for the choir for the last four years. He is a senior at Chattanooga High School.

The choir has made 10 summer tours in 13 states and the District of Columbia and has been named by two Georgia governors as Georgia’s Singing Ambassadors of Goodwill.

The launch is scheduled for January 31 at 3 p.m.

Thursday, Jan. 21, 1971

‘Weird little lights’ blamed on release of barium rockets

Several Rome residents last night reported seeing “weird little lights that spread a bluish green veil all over the sky.”

Paranoids in the area were in an absolute quake, as one reported that the little “things” that have always been trying to get him were just about upon him and he was certain the end was near as the colors spread above Rome.

The cause of all this stir was the Air Force releasing vaporized barium into the earth’s upper atmosphere. Residents throughout the Southeast reported seeing everything from a pink moon to a red ring around the moon.

The rocket which released the vapor was the second of five which will be launched to test the magnetic effects of the upper atmosphere on reentering spacecraft and missiles, the Air Force said.

A similar rocket launched Sunday produced green wings and clouds. The Air Force said the colors were cause when rays of the setting sun were reflected in the high-altitude chemical cloud.

100 years ago as presented in the January 1921 editions of the Rome Tribune-Herald

Admitting to Superior Court that he had won the affections of Miss Estelle Shifflett of Lindale last summer and told her that he had been married but divorced, when in fact he had an un-divorced wife living at Huntsville, Ala., and two children, Ernest Singleton was sentenced by Judge Wright to serve three years in the penitentiary, on his plea of guilty to a charge of bigamy. Singleton had fled after the warrant for his arrest was issued but was apprehended in North Carolina last fall and brought back here to face the charge a short time afterward.

--On the evening of Feb. 8, at the Armstrong Hotel, members of the Nine O’ Clock Cotillion Club will be hosts at a large masked ball and several committees who have been appointed are working on arrangements.

More detailed plans will be announced later, but the announcement is made now, however, that no person who does not wear fancy costume will be admitted on the floor.

The occasion, which will bring to a close the preLenten season in the club, will be brilliant socially.