25 Years Ago
September 5, 1985
Black Cloud is the 1985 World Grand Champion Missouri Fox Trotter. Black Cloud, owned by Jill and Billy Johnson of Rogersville, and ridden to the championship by Billy Johnson, edged out Missouri Outlaw who was named reserve champion.
Mrs. Lena Pierce, Ava Elementary Principal, is driving a brand new gold Chevrolet Cavalier this week. Mrs. Pierce won the car in a Back-To-School Chevrolet Give-Away, at J. C. Penney in Springfield.
Grand Ole Opry star Wilma Lee Cooper will appear at Chapel Grove Gospel Music Park Saturday night, Sept. 7. Appearing with Wilma Lee will be the New Horizons of Lebanon, Mo.
Mr. and Mrs. Ferley Lambert of Drury, Mo., will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on Sunday, Sept. 15, with an open house at Evansdale Church. Eula Cole and Ferley Lambert were married Sept. 18, 1935 by Everett Hutchison, Justice of the Peace at Drury, Mo.
A baby shower was given for Kandy Barnes on Saturday, Aug. 31 at 2 p.m. by Rosie Barnes and Nancy Barnes. Those attending were Mary Barnes, Lila Frye and Shana, Cindy Garrett and Cami, Debbie Souder, Brenda Duran, Mike, Mindy and Ashley, Linda Semro, Jane Barnes and Chrystal Barnes.
FOX CREEK –– Little Brandy Coonts spent Friday and Saturday evenings with her grandparents, Dan and Betty Coonts.
BLACK OAK –– Mr. and Mrs. Brian Daily and Michelle and Christina were evening dinner guests of their grandparents, Dwight and Eveline Thompson Sunday.
SQUIRES –– Lue Brown had a birthday and Dustin Johnson had one August 22.
50 Years Ago
September 8, 1960
There was a slight increase in the number of listings in the A & M Telephone Company directory issued this month for Ava and Mansfield. This year’s directory lists 680 numbers for Ava, an increase of 14 over a year ago, and there are 462 numbers in the Mansfield section, an increase of 10 during the past year.
The Ava R-1 board of education late last week employed Joe Wheeler of Muskogee, Okla., as science teacher and he began work in the high school Monday morning.
Now that the summer vacation is over some 50 young people are leaving Ava to begin work in colleges. Many are departing to enter as freshman and others to continue courses from which a few will be graduated at the conclusion of the year’s work.
Mrs. Thelma Heard hostessed a going-away-to-college shower at her home on Gordon Avenue Tuesday night. in compliment to Miss Lois Springs, who was to enter Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar on Saturday.
Mr. and Mrs. Guy Mitchell of McClurg, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary Sunday at their country home.
GAINESVILLE –– Ready for use here are six new charcoal kilns, first project backed by the local industrial corporation. Burl Evans, who with his brother J.R. Evans, will operate the new business, said that he will start filling the kilns and burning wood for charcoal as soon as he can find a temporary market for the product. Evans had made arrangements to sell his product to a briquette plant at Salem, but the plant there will not start buying charcoal until around December.
Mr. and Mrs. Ray Stillings of Route 3, Ava, sold one of their farm homes last week to Mrs. Silvia Whitaker and her daughter, Fern, of northeast Ava. The 80 acre farm is located in the Pleasant Green community west of Ava.
GENTRYVILLE –– Paul Grover who is in the Navy and stationed at Memphis, Tenn., spent the weekend with his wife, Betty Sue and daughter, Debbie Sue, and in-laws, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Riley.
BASHER –– Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Sanders, Mr. and Mrs. Lester Sanders, Mr. and Mrs. Loren Sanders and families, visited Sunday with their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Burl Sanders.
AUCTIONEERING –– all types of sales –– contact Neiman & Dewhirst, Phone MU3-4427, Ava.
DRIVE-IN THEATRE – Sunday Monday: “Suddenly Last Summer” Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn. A great emotional drama to thrill you from beginning to end! Don’t miss it!
A/3c and Mrs. Ronnie McKnight (Charlotte Jackson) of Amarillo, Texas, arrived in Ava Saturday for a surprise visit with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Jackson.
75 Years Ago
September 12, 1935
Huey P. Long, Louisiana’s “share-the-wealth” dictator and United States Senator, died at 4:10 o’clock Tuesday morning from injuries received when he was shot by an assassin Sunday night just as he started to leave the statehouse in Baton Rouge, as a special session of the legislature recessed for the night.
Douglas County schools have just received a total of $27,886.63 from the State Department of Education, representing this county’s share of the first payment of state teachers and attendance quota. Of the sum, $19,940.17 goes to rural schools and $7,946.46 to high schools.
The Gainesville schools opened last week with a record enrollment of 300 students. Onard Upton is the newly elected superintendent and Miss Madge Parker has charge of the teacher-training courses, which were added to the school this year.
Four cattle rustlers of the Ozarks received sentences in the Webster County Circuit Court at Marshfield Monday, before Judge C.H. Skinker. Pete Keller and Pete Hedgepeth, both of Marshfield, got sentences of four years each; Ivan Trogan, Springfield, two years; and Joe Bass, Rogersville, two years.
E.O. Wallace left Monday morning for Tulsa, Okla., to accept the position he formerly had before coming to Ava several months ago. He has been a member of the Wallace-Brooke Service Station here, and will be succeeded in that firm by Lev Crumley.
Mr. and Mrs. John Bumgardner entertained about one hundred friends Saturday evening at an old-fashioned barn dance at their home south of Ava. At the close of the evening’s dance cake and sandwiches were served to the many guests. Among those from Ava in attendance were: Mr. and Mrs. E.L. Curtis, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Vermillion, Mr. and Mrs. Tim Raines, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Brooke, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Bacorn, Mrs. John Victor, Misses Mary Blanche Victor, Florence Fletcher and Ideth Allison and Messrs Erwin Slater, George Johnson and Paul Fletcher.
Many Ava people manifested their admiration for the late Will Rogers, the world’s most famous movie actor, Sunday by attending the first showing of the latest Rogers picture, “Steamboat Round the Bend,” as presented by the Gilloz Theater in Springfield. Among those who attended were: Mr. and Mrs. Burl Krider, Mr. and Mrs. Ranse Gaston, Mr. and Mrs. A.L. Kropp, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Henley, Mr. and Mrs. E.R. Norman, Mrs. Marie Dry, Misses Helen Manley, Thelma Hartley, Neva House, Georgia Marie Jones, Faye Denney, Wilma Exline, Messrs E.F. Peterson, Glenn Hooper, Clinton Gaston, Clifford Reynolds, Tan Edmonds and Earl Akins.
About eighty relatives and friends of “Uncle” Bob Tate and “Uncle” Bill Darrow gathered at the Darrow home west of Ava Saturday to honor the 86th birthday anniversaries of these two men.
100 Years Ago
September 22, 1910
G.R. Curry has accepted the management of the big Ozarks Opportunity Opening and practically $1,000 has been raised to put the thing through. They have established headquarters on the 2nd floor of Citizens Bank building and employed Mrs. Lawrence Davis as stenographer for the bureau. Mr. Curry has charge of the big O.O.O. with the following citizens as members of the advisory board: C.H. Burdett, L.B. Moses, J.A.G. Reynolds. Ben J. Smith, H.E. Bash, J.A. Spurlock, Grant Eslick, W.F. Reynolds, B.F. Hays, H.S. Wilson.
Tom Burchell has been appointed Marshal of the city of Ava, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of J.M. Miller.
Miss Lotus Hartin and Neigel Campbell, both estimable young people of Ava surprised their friends last Sunday by driving to Brown Branch, near where Miss Lotus is teaching, and got married.
FOX CREEK NEWS –– Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hart, who had a sale Saturday, left Sunday for Mansfield, where they will make their future home.
TIGRIS NEWS –– Arthur and Fred Ellison says there are a band of night riders in this community who are organized against their watermelon patch and declare that not a one shall ripen.
BRUSHY KNOB ITEMS –– Pat Wilson who taught one month of our school has gone to Oklahoma, where he will get $50 a month. Who blames a school teacher for going where he can get more for teaching.
MARRIAGE LICENSES –– Henry Folk of Hilo to Maggie Moss of Bertha; James Worthey to Mary Carmichael, both of Noble; P.S. Deavers of Bryant to Mattie Cornelius of Basher; Neigel Campbell to Lotus Hartin, both of Ava.
Verna Wilson left first of this week to enter the Wentworth Military Academy, where he expects to spend the year in school.
Attention Sick Women – If you had positive proof that a certain remedy for female ills had made many remarkable cures, would you not feel like trying it? If during the last thirty years we have not succeeded in convincing every fair-minded woman that Lydia E. Pinkhams’s Vegetable Compound has cured thousands and thousands of women of the ills peculiar to their sex, then we long for an opportunity to do so by direct correspondence. For 30 years Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound has been the standard remedy for female ills.
The opening celebration at Christian College took place at Columbia. The enrollment in all departments was 130, a record for the first day’s enrollment. Dorsey Memorial Hall, a $50,000 building, given to this women’s college by R.H. Stockton of St. Louis, will not be ready for use until Nov. 15.
KANSAS CITY –– It took a jury of 12 men just 15 minutes to sentence Darwin Norton, Bigamist, to a year in the county jail. Norton had married three women without troubling the divorce courts.
