MID-SOUTH MEMORIES
25 years ago — 1993
MINNEAPOLIS — Girl Scouts will be allowed to pledge service to “God,” “Allah,” “The Creator,” or to anyone else they please, under a measure adopted Saturday at the organization’s national convention. The measure, which takes effect immediately, keeps the Girl Scout promise’s official wording intact, but allows individual Girl Scouts to substitute for God another word or words that they consider more appropriate to their spiritual beliefs. It was adopted by a 1,560-375 vote. The Girl Scout promise states: “On my honor I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times and to live by the Girl Scout Law.” The group’s leaders said the change acknowledges growing religious and ethnic diversity among the nation’s 2.6 million Girl Scouts.
50 years ago — 1968
Republican vice presidential candidate Spiro T. Agnew, often pictured as grim and unbending, was smiling and serious by turns here last night as he heaped scorn on Hubert Humphrey. Speaking before an appreciative audience of about 2,000 at The Auditorium, the Maryland governor also took a mild disturbance in the balcony in stride and praised Memphis’ hospitality at a reception afterward.
75 years ago — 1943
Improvements, extensions and additions estimated to cost two million dollars are planned by the Baptist Hospital as its postwar program, A.E. Jennings, executive chairman, announced yesterday.
100 years ago — 1918
BERNE, Switzerland — At least 76 American prisoners broke out of the German prison camp at Villengen Sunday. One of them was George Puryear of Memphis, brother of D.B. Puryear, Memphis lawyer and former judge of the criminal court.
125 years ago — 1893
The steamer Jim Lee was destroyed by fire last night at her moorings across the river at Hopefield Bend, about three and a half miles above Memphis on the Arkansas shore. Crowds leaving theater performances at 11 p.m. saw the whole city lit up with a glow from flames.