This week’s Time Capsule looks at property condemnation, vandalism, a propane gas leak, the 1996 Olympics and the F-22.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, June 20, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, it was reported on the front page that “great excitement prevailed” at New Home Baptist Church in Cherokee County where the 15-year-old daughter of the pastor “administered a thrashing” with a large hickory switch to a 19-year-old man before a large crowd in front of the church. The incident happened after the pastor’s daughter learned that the other teen had been talking about her character and arrived at Sunday School with a six- to seven-foot-long switch.

50 years ago …

In the Friday, June 14, 1963 Marietta Daily Journal, it was reported that the Marietta School Board had been ordered to halt its condemnation of a 3.5-acre tract in the northeastern part of the city for constructing a new football stadium at the all-black Lemon Street High School. Cobb Superior Court Judge James Manning issued the temporary order and instructed the school board to appear at a hearing on July 3 to determine why they should not be permanently enjoined from proceeding with the stadium. Property owners adjacent to the proposed football stadium site had attacked the school board’s action and charged that the board lacked the power to condemn property.

Another story that day reported that Cobb County schools stood to lose some $900,000 a year in federal impact aid if a federal law was allowed to expire at the end of the month. Cobb Schools Superintendent Jasper Griffin reported to his Board of Education that the potentially lost funding amounted to about 12-percent of the county schools’ overall budget of $8.8 million for the 1963-64 school year.

In the Sunday, June 16, 1963 paper it was reported that 30 tombstones were overturned and damaged at the Mountain View Cemetery in Marietta in an act of vandalism.

Over 1,000 people were reported in the Monday, June 17, 1963 paper as having to be evacuated from the heavily populated Fair Oaks section of the county after a leak was discovered in a propane gas truck parked at a gasoline station on Old Highway 41 and Clay Road. Firefighters worked for over an hour and a half trying to stop the leak, but were unable to do so until the owner was located and he turned off an emergency valve on the truck.

20 years ago …

In the Tuesday, June 15, 1993 MDJ, it was reported that Cobb police charged a 19-year-old east Cobb man and an alleged accomplice with the brutal stabbing deaths of his parents and 14-year-old sister earlier that day. Cobb medical examiner Dr. Joseph Burton said that all three victims had been stabbed “numerous, numerous times.”

The defeat of a $12.8 million parks and recreation bond issue was reported in the Wednesday, June 16, 1993 paper as eliminating the keystone of Cobb County’s bid to host a women’s softball event at the 1996 Olympics. With the defeat of the bond, the county was not able to go forward with recreation improvement plans that included the construction of a fast-pitch softball stadium at Lost Mountain Park in west Cobb.

Cobb firefighters were reported in the Thursday, June 17, 1993 paper as having battled for an hour to put out an oil fire in the electric generating plant that was activated in south Cobb earlier that week to supplement power because of high demands for electricity caused by a heat wave. Georgia Power said the oil fire started in Unit 1 of the four-unit Plant Atkinson and the likely cause was overheating of oil as it ran through the unit.

In the Friday, June 18, 1993 paper it was reported that a Pentagon review committee had recommended building the F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter to be assembled at Cobb-based Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. It also recommended building enlarged versions of the McDonnell Douglas FA-18 fighter-bomber and killing the futuristic AF-X attack plane and Multi-Role Fighter.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at a $1 tax rate, an attempt to condemn the Leo Frank lynching site, teaching of Communism in Cobb, the start of the ZIP code system and the naming of the Gen. Lucius D. Clay Parkway.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, June 13, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, it was reported on the front page that the Marietta Mayor and City Council fixed the city’s general tax rate for the year at $1. The tax covered three items – 40 cents for city purposes, 30 cents for school purposes and 30 cents for interest on bonds and a sinking fund.

A second page story in that week’s edition reported that John Quarles caught a 72 pound snapping turtle in a trap in the Chattahoochee River. The turtle measured 3-feet, 9-inches long and 1-foot, 7-inches wide. Quarles sold the turtle to Cliff Mayes for $3.50 to feed his squad of convicts. Mayes believed he could get 50 pounds of meat from the turtle.

The story was proof that history tends to repeat itself. Just recently, MDJ reporter Lindsay Field wrote a story about a 20 pound turtle found in a Marietta subdivision.

50 years ago …

Objections by black homeowners in the area were reported in the Sunday, June 9, 1963 Marietta Daily Journal as being the doom of the proposed Johnson Street Urban Renewal project. A group of some 40-50 Baptist Town and Johnson Street residents appeared before the Marietta City Council to protest the plans. The residents said if they were forced to move from the area they would have nowhere else to go unless they left the city.

Also that day, black leaders in Marietta were waging a campaign to register at least 300 new black voters by the end of the week. An unnamed spokesman for the group, working as a “Voter’s League,” told the MDJ that he was trying to achieve increased ballot strength in the upcoming Oct. 9 municipal election and the 1964 state and county elections.

In the Wednesday, June 12, 1963 paper it was reported that the East Marietta site of the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank was the object of condemnation papers filed by the State Highway Department. The agency was seeking to incorporate the wooded lot known as “Leo Frank woods” into the right-of-way for Interstate 75, which was just being constructed. A court hearing was set for June 20 by Judge Albert Henderson.

Another story that day reported that officers were searching for vandals who ransacked the LaBelle Heights Elementary School in Smyrna, flooding the building by clogging up a sink and pouring glue on the floors.

The tenets of Communism as they compared to the American democratic system was reported in the Thursday, June 13, 1963 paper as being set to be taught in Cobb County schools for the first time in the fall. Superintendent Jasper Griffin explained that the Georgia General Assembly and the State Board of Education had both endorsed the program.

Also that day, ZIP code numbers to be used by Marietta residents in the new nationwide speed mail system were announced by Postmaster Pierce E. Cody. The new system was to go into effect on July 1. The new code system was expected to cut the possibility of mis-sent mail to a minimum and slice the time between pick up and delivery by as much as 24 hours.

20 years ago …

Cobb and its six cities were urging the Air Force in the Thursday, June 10, 1993 MDJ to scratch a proposal to move a 1,300-member reserve fighter wing from Dobbins Air Force Base. At a council meeting the night before, Marietta officials joined Cobb and its municipalities in a solid show of support for the 116th Tactical Fighter Wing of the Georgia Air National Guard by signing a resolution that asked the Air Force to reconsider its decision. Accepting the resolution, Brig. Gen. Steve Kearney, wing commander, thanked the council for their support on behalf of the 1,300 men and women in the unit. Adjutant Gen. William P. Bland, Georgia Air National Guard commander, was also reported as questioning the relocation and negotiating with the National Guard Bureau in Washington.

In the Friday, June 11, 1993 paper it was reported that retired four-star Gen. Lucius D. Clay Jr., then-74, accepted a resolution naming a portion of South Cobb Drive for his late father, who also retired from military service as a full general and was the military governor for the United States Army over occupied Germany after World War II. Officials from the state Department of Transportation also were on hand at the Marietta Kiwanis meeting with the first of the signs which would identify the stretch between Interstate 75 to Butler Street as the Gen. Lucius D. Clay Parkway. The signs were to be put in place that September.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at Shut-In Day, a Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever death, a surgical procedure, Michels’ Trading Post in west Cobb and a bomb threat.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, June 6, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, W.E. Swanson with Geo Hicks as Deputy was elected Sheriff by a majority over W.P. Hardage and Walter Mayfield. The totals were 1,430 for Swanson and 608 for Hardage.

The Board of County Commissioners also met that week and discussed the contract for a new steel bridge. The lowest bidders were Austin Bros., who would build the bridge across the W & A Railroad line on the new road being built out to Bartow County. The price was $1,439.

Another story that week reported that a Saturday wind and rain storm destroyed crops, uprooted big trees and blew down barns and small sheds in the eastern part of the county. Five headstones were also blown over at the National cemetery.

50 years ago …

Shut-In Day, inaugurated by the late Billy Power of Marietta, was reported as being observed throughout the United States in the Friday, May 31, 1963 Marietta Daily Journal. Power, known during his lifetime as the Sunshine Man, originated the observance as a means of bringing attention to people who due to illness or injury were classified as shut-ins. On Shut-In Day, churches and individuals in numerous states took time out to telephone or personally visit shut-ins in their areas.

A Georgia-made Lockheed C-130 Hercules was also reported as arriving in Paris at approximately 6:30 a.m. EST that day after a perfect non-stop flight from Atlanta. The plane, carrying an Army helicopter as its cargo, averaged a speed of 350 miles per hour for the 4,455-mile trip in the face of headwinds. The unofficial elapsed time was 12 hours, 24 minutes and 28 seconds.

In the Sunday, June 2, 1963 paper, the Georgia Department of Public Health said the May 25 death of a 6-year-old Austell boy had been attributed to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The child was the third case of the disease in the state in recent weeks.

Smyrna City Councilman Bill Keck was reported in the Tuesday, June 4, 1963 paper as charging that South Cobb Drive land speculators were attempting to block plans for widening old U.S. Highway 41 in Smyrna from two to four lanes. Keck made the accusation after a report that the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads was ready to drop the project due to excessively high demands by property owners for sale of the rights of way.

In the Wednesday, June 1963 paper it was reported that a 21-year-old patient was recovering from a surgical procedure at Kennestone Hospital that probably would not have been attempted in the previous decade. Two weeks earlier, the man had both of his legs nearly severed by a power saw. Rushed the 45 miles from Jasper to Marietta, he had only two pints of blood in his body on arrival out of the normal eight pints. After a six-hour emergency operation by an orthopedic surgeon, the patient’s life and his legs were saved.

20 years ago …

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-east Cobb) was reported in the Wednesday, June 2, 1993 MDJ as cutting into two issues that captivated the public – President Bill Clinton’s hair-care regimen and his deficit-reduction plan – while getting his hair cut at Best Cuts on Powers Ferry Road in east Cobb. The House minority whip’s comments from the barber chair came after the House narrowly passed Clinton’s deficit-reduction bill.

Also that day, Mike Michels, the then-70-year-old owner of Michels’ Trading Post in west Cobb, was reported as having packed away most of the contents of his Cobb landmark sporting goods shop at the corner of Macland and Bankston roads. A favorite haunt of area hunters and fisherman, the rambling, tan brick structure was going to be demolished by the Cobb County Department of Transportation to widen Macland Road.

In the Thursday, June 3, 1993 paper, a Marietta couple received a bomb threat because of the Georgia flag hanging on their duplex. A man called around 1:15 p.m. and threatened that if the flag didn’t come down, then a bomb would go off when they came out of the house. Marietta police and the Marietta Fire Department searched the area for 30 minutes, but did not find a bomb.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at a gun battle in Cartersville, a non-stop, trans-Atlantic flight and a bomb scare following the Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell’s rally at Roswell Street Baptist Church.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, May 30, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, there was a report that a Bartow County man was in the Marietta jail with three bullet wounds after a pitched battle with a posse of officers and Cartersville residents earlier in the week. The tale began when five men, armed with automatic pistols, threatened to shoot a man working at a signal tower over some whiskey. The tower  worker telegraphed the depot for help, but the Bartow County sheriff was sick in bed.

Bartow’s deputy sheriff answered the call only to be shot down at the scene and the five men escaped. A special agent at the W & A Railroad in Cartersville then called Marietta for help and Deputy Sheriff George Hicks responded with the county bloodhounds. After a gun battle in the front yard of a Bartow home after dark, the outlaws managed to escape again. However, one of the outlaws had been injured and Hicks was able to track the man for six miles before finding him hiding in a storm pit. With threats of lynching in Cartersville, Hicks brought the prisoner to Marietta for safe keeping.

50 years ago …

Gov. Carl Sanders announced in the Friday, May 24, 1963 MDJ an annual increase of almost $3 million in state welfare payments and said that recipients would get their first check increase the following month. The boosted payments amounted to $2 more per month for most people, while the blind and the disabled would see $1 to $5 more per month.

In the Sunday, May 26, 1963 paper it was reported that flags from the 50 states and American territories would be carried by Marietta residents in a ceremony at the National Cemetery to honor the dead of all wars. The program was sponsored by the National Memorial Day Association, which was composed of 16 veterans and military groups in honor of Memorial Day.

A pioneering non-stop, trans-Atlantic air cargo flight from Atlanta to Paris by a Marietta-made Lockheed C-130E Hercules propjet was expected to take off later in the week. The biggest cargo item on the plane, according to the Tuesday, May 28, 1963 paper, was a new Texas-made Bell helicopter. Declaring Atlanta a city of international importance, the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) and the National Aeronautic Association had officially sanctioned the 4,455-mile flight and would time it for record purposes.

20 years ago …

In the Tuesday, May 25, 1993 MDJ, former Councilman Paul Fields and Marietta lawyer Susan Brown-Harkins announced they would not run in the election to fill the seven months left in the term of late Marietta Mayor Joe Mack Wilson. This left the special election down to Marietta lawyer Robert Flournoy III, former banker Ansley Meaders and Councilman Floyd Northcutt.

Also that day, lawyers for Marietta and Cobb said that they would review restrictions on adult entertainment in light of a Georgia Supreme Court ruling upholding a Smyrna ordinance banning alcohol sales at nude dance clubs. The Friday before, the Georgia high court upheld Cobb Superior Court Judge George Kreeger’s October ruling denying an alcohol permit to the owner of Platinum Plus, a nude dance club on Old Concord Road near South Cobb Drive. The decision was viewed as a major victory for the city, which had been battling the permit for almost two years.

In the Friday, May 28, 1993 paper the Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell spoke to 2,300 people at the Roswell Street Baptist Church and told them American values were rotting. The culprits, according to Rev. Falwell, were President Bill Clinton’s administration and the solution was Christianity. He also said that signs of America’s decline were homosexuality, the faltering educational system and the Supreme Court’s rulings against religion in public schools.

The following day, two suspected bombs were delivered to Roswell Street Baptist Church by an unidentified man. The packages, addressed to Rev. Falwell and the Rev. Dr. Nelson Price – the pastor of the church – came in the wake of Rev. Falwell’s two-day “Wake Up, America” rally. The building was evacuated for 45 minutes as Marietta firefighters and police, along with two officers from the Cobb County Bomb Squad investigated the scene. It later turned out that the packages only contained clocks.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at a dynamited house, lunch counter sit-ins, the death of a popular Marietta mayor and wing cracks in Lockheed C-141 StarLifters.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, May 23, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier reported that a tenant house on the Powder Springs Road farm of James T. Anderson was blown up with dynamite. One room was completely demolished and houses near the farm were shaken badly. The seven black residents were in another part of the home when the charge blew up underneath the unoccupied room. A reward was set up by Gov. Joseph M. Brown and Anderson for the capture of the guilty party.

50 years ago …

A county official was reported in the Friday, May 17, 1963 MDJ as saying that quantities of fish in “two or three” private lakes near Dobbins Air Force Base had died the previous summer after the area was sprayed with a chemical designed to kill beetles. The incident did not become public at the time it happened, but came to light after President John F. Kennedy ordered prompt government action earlier in the week to cut down health hazards caused by the misuse of pesticides.

Another story that day reported an attempt to desegregate several lunch counters in downtown Marietta. The effort was made by members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The sit-ins were staged in Dunaway Drug Store on the Square, Atherton’s Drug Co. on Whitlock Avenue and McLellan’s store at 56 South Park Square shortly after noon. A black couple sat at the lunch counters of McLellan’s and Atherton’s Drug Co., while two black teens sat at the Dunaway Drug Store lunch counter. In all three sit-ins, the participants were not served and left the locations after 10 minutes.

In the Monday, May 20, 1963 paper it was reported that a 34-year-old former special deputy sheriff was shot to death near Marietta over the weekend. Investigators said the deputy was shot once in the leg, once in the right side and twice in the back by a .22-caliber rifle. The deputy’s 14-year-old stepson was being held for the murder.

Marietta police officers were reported in the Tuesday, May 21, 1963 paper as flagging down a south-bound train at the Goss Street rail crossing to keep it from hitting a tractor-trailer rig that was hung up on the tracks. Officers saw the train coming just as they arrived on the scene, flagged the train to a stop and then removed the truck with a wrecker.

Smyrna Police Chief Robert L. Drake said in the Thursday, May 23, 1963 paper that he was on the trail of a wire cutter wielding vandal who had extensively damaged newly-erected fences around two ball fields and a swimming pool at Jonquil Park. The vandal had cut the top strand of barbed wire around the top of the pool fence and cut both a man-sized hole and several smaller ones in the ball field fences.

20 years ago …

Children at Tritt Elementary School in east Cobb were reported in the Monday, May 17, 1993 MDJ as launching a crusade to preserve a stand of 30 to 120 year old white oak trees set to be cut down at a proposed subdivision development on Shallowford Road. Two third graders met with Cobb Commission Chairman Bill Byrne asking the county commission to save the trees. The site plan for the subdivision called for the oaks to be cut down for tennis courts and other amenities to be built.

In the Tuesday, May 18, 1993 paper it was reported that Marietta Mayor Joe Mack Wilson, a champion for the little people who dominated Cobb County politics for decades, died at his home of natural causes at age 73. Wilson, a retired jeweler and clockmaker, was elected mayor in 1989 after a 27-year career in the state Legislature. Reaction to Wilson’s death ranged from shock to grief by friends and foes alike that talked about his accomplishments and both the money and clout that he brought to Marietta and Cobb County.

Another story that day reported the Air Force ignored warnings several months earlier about cracks in the wings of C-141 cargo planes, according to a Lockheed Aeronautics Systems Co. official, who disputed a report that inspectors had recently found the cracks. Gen. Ronald Fogleman, chief of the Air Mobility Command, ordered a 74 percent load limit on 260 Air Force StarLifters built at Lockheed’s South Cobb Drive assembly plant in the 1980s. Gen. Fogleman said concerns surfaced after Air Force inspectors tearing down a C-141 at the plant found more extensive evidence of wing cracks than previously estimated.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at an ordinance on billiards, a brazen armored car robbery and the potential renaming of Fairground Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Street.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, May 16, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, the Methodist church was reported as overflowing with its own congregation and members of the Baptist church for Mother’s Day. White carnations were given to everyone who entered the church.

Another story that week announced that graduating exercises for Marietta High School would be held at the Armory at 8 p.m. on May 23. A small admission fee of 25 cents was charged to all attendees.

There were also two interesting ads in the paper that week. A quarter-page ad on the front advertised the screening of “The Toll of War,” a film was about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, at the Gem Theatre. On page two, an ad from the L.W. Rogers Co. advertised – 21 pounds of sugar for $1, 48 pounds of flour for $1.38, 24 pounds of flour for 72 cents, flour in barrel lots for $5.28 and 100 pound sacks of chick feed for $1.99.

50 years ago …

Some 15 property owners from Fairground Street and Roosevelt Circle were reported in the Friday, May 10, 1963 MDJ as vigorously protesting efforts by the city school board to condemn land near them for a black high school football field. The owners said the lights and yelling from football games would force them to sell their homes at a loss and move away. The property was being sought because Lemon Street High School’s old football field, adjacent to the school, was to be used for a badly needed $100,000 wing containing service facilities, including a band room, a music department, shop and home economics rooms.

The Marietta City Council was reported in the Sunday, May 12, 1963 paper as agreeing that if a man was old enough to vote, then he was old enough to shoot pool without his parents’ permission. Council members asked Mayor Sam Welsch to draw up an amendment to the then-current ordinance which said anyone under 21 had to get a letter of consent from their parents in order to play billiards.

The capture of three carloads of moonshine whiskey was reported in the Monday, May 13, 1963 paper. Marietta police officers seized 58 gallons in the Elk Street area after investigating a report of cars unloading liquor. A 1951 Ford, a 1941 Pontiac and a 1950 Chevrolet were found hastily abandoned at the scene.

A tractor-trailer truck hauling 30,000 pounds of dressed chicken was reported in the Wednesday, May 15, 1963 paper as having swerved out of control on Roswell Road late the night before and flipped over a steep embankment. The truck crashed at the bottom of a ditch at Sope Creek and sprained both the neck and back of the driver.

20 years ago …

Three heavily armed robbers were reported in the Wednesday, May 12, 1993 MDJ as having used two stolen cars to pull off a brazen robbery of a Brinks Inc. armored truck as it was delivering money to the Georgia Federal Bank. When the Brinks truck backed up to the bank, a white man driving a Chevrolet commercial van stolen in Fulton County pulled up and blocked the front of the truck as two other men in an Oldsmobile stolen out of Gwinnett County pulled up. An armed man wearing a clear plastic mask and a blonde wig jumped out of the car stealing cash from the money cart of the Brinks guard outside the truck on the sidewalk.

The Marietta-Cobb-Smyrna Narcotics Unit was reported in the Friday, May 14, 1993 paper as having made its first high-tech marijuana bust in the county. The raid captured over 500 high-grade marijuana plants, estimated at $4,000 a piece with a total market value of about $2 million. The basement of the two-story home, which had garbage bags stapled over the windows, was full of an elaborate hydroponics system.

A group of black Cobb residents were reported in the Thursday, May 13, 1993 paper as asking the Marietta City Council to change the name of Fairground Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Street. If the council did not agree, the 50-member Cobb County MLK Support Group planned to suggest Roswell Street as its second choice and Lawrence Street as a third option.

In the Saturday, May 15, 1993 paper, it was reported that the construction budget for Cobb’s unfinished convention center had more than $650,000 in cost overruns. Unplanned expenses included $381,000 in building permits and another $275,000 for a maintenance program in which all Galleria tenants participated.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at the burning of dogs and horses at the county dump, expansion of Marietta’s Lemon Street High School and a local teen co-producing the Oprah Winfrey Show.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, May 9, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, the Marietta Board of Lights and Water announced that the driest April in 30 years had caused a water shortage in the city. A ban on sprinkling city water upon streets and gardens was put into effect while a new city well was being bored to help alleviate the shortage. The Kennesaw Paper Co. also placed a small front page blurb announcing that it had an abundant supply of water and would be glad to supply it at low prices.

50 years ago …

Similar to a recent event in Smyrna, a man out walking with his children was reported in the Monday, May 6, 1963 paper as having found a live 60-mm World War II Japanese mortar shell along the edge of Lost Mountain. An Army demolitions expert said the shell could have destroyed a good-sized building if dropped on its nose. Marietta police urged residents holding souvenir ordinance to dispose of it through the Army’s explosive disposal unit at Fort McPherson in Atlanta.

Also that day, it was reported that a Smyrna man was accidentally wounded after his wife fired a German Luger pistol at a rat in their living room. Missing the rat, the bullet grazed the man on the left side of the head and fractured his skull while he lay on the couch watching television.

The Cobb County Advisory Board was reported in the Tuesday, May 7, 1963 paper as having ordered a health department inspection of the county-owned garbage dump after complaints from 22 nearby residents. A spokesman for the protesting property owners said that dead dogs and at least one dead horse had been burned recently at the dump.

Marietta Mayor Sam Welsch was reported in the Wednesday, May 8, 1963 paper as asking the Marietta City Council to approve an ordinance increasing the maximum fine for traffic offenses in the city from $100 to $200.

In the Thursday, May 9, 1963 paper, the Marietta Board of Education was reported as having filed condemnation papers against property for the expansion program of the city’s black high school. The school board was taking steps to condemn a 3.5-acre tract of property that was three-tenths of a mile from the Lemon Street High School. The plan was for the school’s football field to be shifted to the property once condemnation proceedings were complete.

20 years ago …

A proposal from Cobb-based Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. was reported in the Tuesday, May 4, 1993 MDJ as saying that Lockheed could build 75 C-5B transport planes for the Air Force that were capable of carrying as much cargo as the 120 planned McDonnell Douglas C-17 airlifters and for less than half the cost. Lockheed proposed building the C-5s for $165 million each, for a total cost of $12.21 billion, plus an estimated $575 million in costs to restart the C-5B assembly line. The value of the embattled C-17 contract was about $30 billion, or $250 million per plane.

In the May 5, 1993 paper, it was reported that Matthew Reeves of Acworth was invited to Chicago to co-produce an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Reeves, who was legally blind, received a call from Oprah producer David Boul with the invitation to co-produce the “A Tribute to Kids” episode, which would feature a studio audience made up strictly of teens from schools in the Chicago area. Reeves had been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey along with five other teens in late November 1992 after they had been awarded the Horatio Alger Scholarship and traveled to Washington, D.C., for the National Scholars Conference of the Horatio Alger Association.

While the deadline for sealed bids on the 800-acre Sweetwater Industrial Park in Austell had closed, the Thursday, May 6, 1993 paper reported that it would be about two months before Austell City officials learned if the site would be the home to Norfolk-Southern Railway’s truck to rail center. The land, which was near the old Coats & Clark thread mill in the former city of Clarkdale, had sat in bankruptcy for three years and was part of a multi-tract package put up for bid by the U.S. Resolution Trust Corp. Norfolk-Southern Railway, which offered $4 million for the property in late 1992, wanted to relocate its regional truck to rail transfer station out of Camden Yards in Atlanta.

 

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at the murder of Mary Phagan, a visit from Robert F. Kennedy, a moonshine convoy and the possible reviving of the C-5 Galaxy.

100 years ago …

The front page of the Friday, May 2, 1913, Marietta Journal and Courier was filled with multiple headlines on the now infamous murder of Mary Phagan of Marietta at the National Pencil Company factory in Atlanta.

At the time of the story, three men were under arrest and being held as suspects in the case – Arthur Mullinax, a street car conductor; National Pencil Company’s superintendent Leo M. Frank; and Newt Lee, a black night watchman at the factory.

For more information on the 100th anniversary of the murder and the later lynching of Frank, check out the Sunday, April 28, 2013 story by MDJ News Editor Leo Hohmann – A Pilgrimage for ‘little Mary’ at http://bit.ly/103FlI1

50 years ago …

U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy arrived in Atlanta on the final day of a swing through three Southern states, as reported in the Friday, April 26, 1963 Marietta Daily Journal. During the visit, Kennedy ruled out overt federal action against Southern states which had segregationist practices in order to achieve more progress in granting basic rights to blacks. He said problems like school integration should be worked out “internally” within those states and cited the peaceful integration of some Atlanta schools by local officials.

A two-car moonshine running convoy was stopped and the drivers arrested in South Cobb, according to the Sunday, April 28, 1963 paper. Two county policemen made the arrests and confiscated 33 gallons of non-tax paid whiskey in the trunk of the lead car about 5:30 a.m. Police said the second car in the convoy was “blocking,” which was a method used to hinder the efforts of any lawmen that might begin chasing the lead car and prevent capture of the whiskey.

Marietta Mayor Sam Welsch and a six-man citizens committee were reported in the Monday, April 29, 1963 paper as meeting with Jimm Gillis the director of the State Highway Board to discuss proposed changes in the plans for the widening and improvement of Roswell Road east of the Four Lane Highway (U.S. Highway 41).

In the Tuesday, April 30, 1963 paper, a squabble over access rights through an alley off the north side of Roswell Street appeared headed for the courts after a city engineer brought out a bulldozer to knock down a barricade erected by Real Estate Developer O.C. Hubert. The city said the alley was an integral part of Alexander Street, while Hubert claimed it was his private property. The situation developed when Hubert erected the barricade and users of the alley complained to City Hall that it blocked their access to Roswell Street.

20 years ago …

In the race for the 1994 7th District Congressional seat four delegates had announced their intentions to run for the seat during the 7th District GOP Convention on April 17 in Cartersville, according to the Monday, April 26, 1993 MDJ. Coming as no surprise to anyone were the announcements by west Cobb resident and former U.S. Attorney Bob Barr, along with Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, a gynecologist from Carroll County. Two surprise announcements came from Bob Herriott of Carroll County, the co-chairman of former President George H.W. Bush’s 1992 Georgia campaign; and Kenny Moore of Troup County, a college preparatory math teacher and varsity tennis coach at LaGrange High School.

The April 29, 1993 MDJ reported that Lockheed Corp. chairman and chief executive officer Dan Teliep announced that James A. “Mickey” Blackwell, vice president and general manager of the F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter program, had been named president of Cobb-based Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co.

Congressmen Newt Gingrich, R-east Cobb, and George “Buddy” Darden, D-Marietta, were calling for a comprehensive review of the troubled McDonnell Douglas C-17 airlifter that might include the possible reviving of the C-5 Galaxy built at Lockheed. Gingrich said he planned to meet with Defense Secretary Les Aspin about the C-17 and Darden said that McDonnell Douglas officials were expected to appear later in the month before the defense appropriations subcommittee, which recommended funding for military programs. The day before Aspin was reported as having fired the Air Force general who headed up the C-17 program and disciplined three other generals involved in the project.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

 

While Cobb County currently only has six cities – Acworth, Austell, Kennesaw, Marietta, Powder Springs and Smyrna – longtime residents will remember that the county has had several other cities over the years. Some of the more well-known cities were Elizabeth, Clarkdale, Mableton and Fair Oaks, which have been mentioned at different times in previous MDJ Time Capsule columns. But, while researching last week’s column this author came across a new obscure city.

In the Monday, April 19, 1993 MDJ, there was a story about how after 32 years of existence the county’s least known city, Chattahoochee Plantation, faced disappearing from the map due to a new state law.

A bill that passed during the 1993 session of the Georgia General Assembly and signed by Gov. Zell Miller stated that all nonfunctioning cities – those that provided no services to their residents – would lose their charters by 1995. The bill was crafted as a means for the state to save grant money.

Chattahoochee Plantation, according to the story, never offered a service, held a meeting or even a vote to anyone’s knowledge. The city was even overlooked by the Georgia Municipal Association’s list of about 100 cities that would be affected by the bill.

At the time, Chattahoochee Plantation stretched from the Douglas County line northward along the Cobb side of the Chattahoochee River toward Cherokee County.

Chattahoochee Plantation was created in 1961 in the Chattahoochee Plantation Estates subdivision in east Cobb by former Cobb County Reps. Bill Teague, Harold Willingham and Joe Mack Wilson – who served as Marietta’s mayor from 1990 until his death on May 17, 1993. The city was later expanded in 1968 to prevent the City of Atlanta from annexing the area.

When it incorporated, Chattahoochee Plantation had a mayor and city council that was appointed by developer Bill Ward and Fred Brown, who also named themselves as members of the council. Other members of the first and only Chattahoochee Plantation municipal government were Herman Warren, W.E. McFarland, Clyde King Jr. and Richard L. Simms – the only mayor of the city.

Prior to Cobb Rep. Hugh Lee McDaniell’s 1968 House bill that expanded the boundaries of Chattahoochee Plantation, the City of Atlanta had been annexing parts of both Clayton and DeKalb counties and was actively trying to annex everything within the Perimeter and Sandy Springs. Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen was reportedly looking to bring outlying areas into Atlanta to add to the city’s tax base.

Because of the threat of these annexations, the Cobb House delegation – which consisted of Reps. McDaniell, Bob Howard, Joe Mack Wilson, J.H. Henderson Jr. and Sens. Cyrus M. Chapman and Sam P. Hensley – decided to protect the entire Cobb border with Fulton and created the largest waterfront city in the state of Georgia.

Over the years, Chattahoochee Plantation remained obscure except for an unsuccessful attempt by Rep. Sallie Newbill, R-Sandy Springs, in 1991 to use its charter as a method to incorporate the Sandy Springs area. However, in recent years, Sandy Springs residents finally won their battle and were incorporated as a city.

While no longer a city, Chattahoochee Plantation currently is a small portion of East Cobb and made up of several neighborhoods that are a part of the Chattahoochee Plantation Community Association (CPCA).

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

 

This week’s Time Capsule looks at the breaking of a world record, PTA founder Alice Birney McClellan’s home and the 100-year old Lost Mountain Store.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, April 25, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier there was a front page story about the recent meeting of the First Baptist Church adding 62 members. Rev. G.S. Tumlin was reported as also having baptized 45 people the previous Sunday.

There was also a full page advertisement for W.A. Florence’s “Stop! Look! Listen!” sale on the second page of that week’s paper. Some of the bargains under a nickel included 4 cent Ladies black hose, 30 by 12 inch towels with red borders for 3½ cents, a dozen pearl buttons for 3 cents and embroidered Ladies handkerchiefs for 4 cents.

50 years ago …

In the Sunday, April 21, 1963 paper there was a story about several thousand Cobb County school students expecting to be shifted to five junior high schools in the fall as the Board of Education made the move to a new junior high school system.

Also that day, a group of Roswell Road property owners refused to grant free rights-of-way for widening the heavily travelled city road east of the Four Lane (U.S. Highway 41). While opposing the current State Highway Department plans to expand the narrow two lane road to four 12 foot lanes, the property owners did indicate they would work with the city for an alternate solution.

Five dancers were reported in the Monday, April 22, 1963 paper as having broken the world’s Swing-A-Thon record over the weekend at Marietta’s Larry Bell Auditorium by dancing continuously for 62 hours and 30 minutes before being halted by the city’s curfew law. The dance-off was held on a challenge from Finland where a Helsinki couple had set the old world record of 60 consecutive hours.

The Cobb Advisory Board was reported in the Tuesday, April 22, 1963 paper as having adopted a policy of providing free emergency treatment for prisoners injured at county penal institutions – but balked at paying for long-range medical care for those injuries.

Another story that day reported that Cobb Sen. Ed Kendrick had called on Gov. Carl Sanders to look into the possibility of having the state purchase the Alice Birney McClellan home in Marietta as a historic shrine. The late Mrs. McClellan, a native Mariettan, was the founder of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) movement in the country. Her home was located at the corner of Kennesaw Avenue and Church Street.

In the Wednesday, April 24, 1963 paper it was reported that the Cobb Hospital Authority had hired the Atlanta architectural firm of Wilfred J. Gregon & Associates to design a proposed 200-bed hospital in the south Cobb area. The Atlanta firm agreed to draw up preliminary plans – and ask for pay only if the hospital authority’s application for Hill-Burton funds were approved. The hospital authority hoped that it might start construction on the new hospital by July 1964.

20 years ago …

U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-east Cobb, following his seven-day trip to Russia was quoted in the Monday, April 19, 1993 MDJ as saying that economic aid, relaxed trade restrictions and strong U.S.-Russia relations were needed to keep Russia from a return to communism and further economic collapse. Rep. Gingrich traveled to Russia as part of a 14-member congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission led by House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Missouri. Delegation members visited Moscow, Kiev, St. Petersburg and Nizniy Novgorod, a city once closed to westerners under Communist rule because of nuclear research.

In the Tuesday, April 20, 1993 paper, the Cobb Historic Preservation Commission voted unanimously in a hastily called and little-publicized meeting to allow George Morgan Development Co. of Atlanta to move one of the county’s most famous historic landmarks, the 100-year old Lost Mountain Store. The move was supposed to make way for developers of a shopping mall at the intersection of Mars Hill and Lost Mountain roads in west Cobb. The store, however, was later renovated into a branch of United Community Bank and remains at its original location as part of a Publix supermarket shopping center.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.