In this week’s Time Capsule we look at moving pictures in Marietta and a wet sheet saving a local housewife from a bullet.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, March 21, 1913 edition of the Marietta Daily Journal and Courier there was a story about Roy Butler, managing director of the Scenic Film Co. of Atlanta, coming to Marietta making arrangements that week for his company to come to Marietta and take moving pictures of the city. All the factories and points of interest were to be photographed with the moving picture camera and the film would then be sent all over the South to be shown in moving picture theatres.

There was also a three-column wide, full-page length ad for the new Gem Theatre’s opening. The theater was billed as “the most complete and up-to-date Moving Picture Theatre in the South.” The opening picture would be The Battle of Bull Run along with the Famous Monarch Quartette singing at each performance. Admission was 15 cents.

50 years ago …

Lockheed was reported in the Friday, March 15, 1963 MDJ as having told its stockholders and employees that 1962 sales were $1.7 billion, which was the largest in company history at the time. The 1962 sales were 53 percent higher than 1961.

Also that day, there was a story about a Marietta housewife who was shielded from a bullet by a wet sheet after it was fired from the woods behind her home. Police said the .22 bullet struck and mashed a 1½ inch dent in the sheet, which absorbed the impact and did not penetrate through to the stomach of the woman standing behind it.

Walter Ball of Smyrna was reported as the only one of a group of 30 Smyrnans to complete a hiking challenge undertaken by Smyrna Jaycees and Optimist Club members in the Monday, March 18, 1963 paper. Ball, a physical education instructor, walked 50 miles in 17½ hours. Two other hikers went 35 miles before giving up.

In the Wednesday, March 20, 1963 paper gusty winds were reported as delaying the flight of two planes from Dobbins Air Force Base that were to spray parts of the metro area to kill fire ants in a program sponsored by the State Agriculture Department. One of the pilots also reportedly ate some of the poison fire ant bait to prove that it was not a danger to the public.

Another story that day reported that Mrs. J. Dana Eastham, a 30-year-old Marietta housewife, was one of four remaining Georgia contestants in the Mrs. America pageant in New York. The four finalists were out of the state’s original 20 contestants.

A story in the Thursday, March 21, 1963 paper reported that some 25 Smyrna teenagers were sentenced to eight hours work at either the city fire station or sanitary department after a group fight at Ward Baseball Park. Smyrna and Cobb officers said over 100 teens had gathered at the park for what was believed to be a fight between the junior and senior class at a local high school.

20 years ago …

The Georgia House was reported in the Thursday, March 18, 1993 MDJ as having voted 116-0 to rename a portion of South Cobb Drive the Gen. Lucius D. Clay Memorial Parkway in honor of the man who played an instrumental role in bringing the Bell Bomber plant to Marietta, which would later become Lockheed.

In the Friday, March 19, 1993 paper it was reported that if a powerful U.S. House committee chairman shot down the troubled McDonnell Douglas C-17 airlifter, Cobb-based Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. would have an edge to winning a $4.5 billion contract to modify at least 152 C-141 StarLifter cargo planes and see the revival of the C-5B program. The StarLifters, built at Lockheed’s South Cobb Drive assembly plant in the early 1960s, would then be modified under the Service Life Extension Program (SLEP).

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.

In this week’s Time Capsule we look at freight train car thefts, Confederate veteran pensions, an error in voting figures, the death penalty sought in the Sara Tokars killing and a bill to rename part of South Cobb Drive after Gen. Lucius D. Clay.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, March 14, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier there was a front page story about how Sheriff Scaright Lindley and his newly acquired bloodhounds investigated the break-in theft of a box car on the sidetrack of the W&A Railroad. The stolen goods consisted of a shipment of candy, 10 boxes of tobacco and a case of Kodaks. Lindley arrested three men, who were also suspected of being involved in a five-car freight train robbery in the Elizabeth community.

Another story that week stated that Judge J.M. Gann had paid out $21,500 in annual pensions to Confederate veterans and their widows living in Cobb County.

There was also a story about a meeting of the Marietta mayor and city council where a committee was appointed to investigate the 1912 tax returns. It was believed that some had not returned all of their property for taxation, especially stored cotton that had been held for better prices.

50 years ago …

All five Cobb Legislators agreed to a Jan. 8, 1964 referendum date on the three-member multiple commission bill in the Sunday, March 10, 1963 paper. The week before it seemed that there would not be a bill emerging from the hopeless deadlock in the General Assembly.

It was reported in the Monday, March 11, 1963 paper that about a dozen litter barrels were to be placed on state highway routes in Cobb as an incentive to keep motorists from throwing trash on the highways.

Another story that day told how three men were arrested in connection with a $550 safe burglary at a large Marietta discount house when two sheriff’s deputies in a cruiser came alongside a car in a church parking lot, jumped out and surprised the occupants.

March 11 was also the first day that the Flintstones comic strip started appearing in the MDJ according to a front page story.

Sometimes the news gets things wrong. A story in the Feb. 27, 1963 paper, which appeared in the Feb. 28th Time Capsule column, had stated that black voters outnumbered white voters for the first time in Marietta’s Ward 6. However, Mrs. Dinsmore Cox, chairman of the city board of registrars, told the MDJ in the Tuesday, March 12, 1963 paper that an office error resulted in the incorrect figures and that there were actually 452 white voters and only 438 black voters in Ward 6.

A pelting rain was reported in the Wednesday, March 13, 1963 paper as having dumped about three inches of water on Cobb County, washing out at least one bridge and flooding several roads. Another story stated that a woman had to be rescued from her Thunderbird after it slid backward down a muddy 60-foot embankment, struck a culvert and flipped over on its back in a rain swollen creek near the Chattahoochee River.

20 years ago …

In the Monday, March 8, 1993 MDJ there was a story about Frank Rogers, the last living Big Chicken builder, who told his story about piecing together the landmark’s frame 30 years earlier.

Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. confirmed in the Tuesday, March 9, 1993 paper that it would build the newest generation of the C-130 Hercules airlifters – the C-130J.

Also that day, the Cobb District Attorney’s Office announced that it would seek the death penalty against two men charged in the Nov. 29 shotgun slaying of Sara Tokars. District Attorney Tom Charron filed a notice in Cobb Superior Court seeking the death penalty on the grounds that the killing was committed during an armed robbery and as part of a contractual agreement.

A bill to rename part of South Cobb Drive in honor of one of Cobb’s military heroes was reported as being a few steps away from becoming law in the Thursday, March 11, 1993 paper. Legislation to call a section of the road that ran in front of Lockheed the Gen. Lucius D. Clay Memorial Parkway had received Senate approval. Gen. Clay – grandfather of then-state Sen. Chuck Clay, R-Marietta – was instrumental in bringing the Bell Bomber plant to Marietta in March 1942 with the help of Sens. Richard B. Russell and Walter George. Gen. Clay was also the military governor of Germany after World War II.

Also that day, the Marietta City Council voted 5-1 to appoint MDJ publisher Otis A. Brumby Jr. to the newly-created seventh Marietta Board of Education seat. Voting in favor of were council members Philip Goldstein, Marion Rigo, Betty Hunter, George Garriss and Floyd Northcutt. Voting against was councilman Allen Hirons after his motion to appoint Dr. H. Dennis Harrison failed. Councilman Dana Eastham was absent.

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.

The worst winter storm in a decade, dubbed the “storm of the century,” roared into the county 20 years ago on Friday, March 12, 1993, with 50 mph wind gusts, rain, sleet and snow. The storm, which raged all the way up the East Coast and into Canada, was blamed for more than 100 deaths, six in Georgia.

Precipitation began in Cobb that Friday night in the form of rain and sleet, then turned to snow early on Saturday morning as temperatures continued to drop into the low 30s. The strong winds created a sub-zero wind chill factor throughout most of the day before dipping to 10 to 20 degrees below zero Saturday night.

Weather officials had said that snow accumulation would range from 2 inches at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to 6 inches in the northern suburbs and more than a foot in the North Georgia mountains. But the all-day snow storm on Saturday dumped 4 to 10 inches in the Atlanta-Athens area, 8 to 10 inches in Cobb County and Northwest Georgia, and up to 20 inches in North Georgia’s mountains. Along with the snow, more than 250 trees fell across roads around the county.

A variety of people volunteered time and four-wheel drive vehicles to transport nurses, surgeons and physicians to and from area hospitals during the storm. The Marietta-based Army National Guard, Civil Service Air Patrol, Cobb County Fire Department and the Four-Wheel Drive Club of Atlanta, which had more than 200 members, shuttled medical personnel about the metro area. Many personnel at Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Smyrna Hospital and Cobb Hospital in Austell volunteered to work 48 and 72 hour shifts.

Cobb and Marietta 911 system operators fielded non-stop phone calls during the storm for audible alarms triggered by the weather, stranded motorists, power outages and street maintenance. From 5 a.m. Saturday to 11 a.m. Sunday, county dispatchers received double their normal amount of police calls and about 10 times their normal amount of fire calls. Over the same period, dispatchers answered 3,350 emergency 911 calls, two-thirds of which were received between 6:30 a.m. and 11 p.m. Saturday.

Dispatchers even received calls from out-of-state residents who wanted someone to feed their animals for them. Marietta dispatchers had to send firemen out to remove animals from several homes. County operators also had to send police to an apartment complex on Saturday night after receiving complaints about residents throwing an outdoor Jacuzzi party in the 20-degree weather.

For two nights, the Salvation Army’s Waterman Street community center housed 85 storm refugees. Most of them were northbound travelers unable to use Interstate 75, which was closed north of Marietta on Saturday and still had icy spots on Sunday. The Marietta Cobb Winter Shelter on Church Street reported a crowd of 70 people, most of whom were homeless.

Countywide, tens of thousands of residents found themselves without power Saturday, although the vast majority was restored by Sunday night.

Wometco Cable said more than half the company’s 200,000 Cobb customers lost reception by about 8 a.m. Saturday with 90 to 95 percent being restored by Sunday afternoon.

Students in the Cobb County School System and City of Marietta schools were off Monday and Tuesday after the storm due to lingering hazardous secondary and subdivision road conditions.

Water was discovered standing in the halls of East Cobb Middle School and the Adult Educational Facility in Smyrna on Tuesday. Water damage at the school caused the air-conditioner coils to burst.

Cobb County Schools superintendent Grace Calhoun said many of the schools had 3 to 4 feet of snow blown up against the doors and had difficulty getting all the parking lots and doorways cleared by Tuesday morning.

Gov. Zell Miller viewed the storm devastation on Sunday in a National Guard helicopter and said most of North Georgia was “paralyzed.” Miller contacted President Bill Clinton and late on Monday, the president agreed to the governor’s request for snow removal aid for Cobb and 39 other hard-hit north Georgia counties. The federal government was expected to pay 75 percent of the snow-plowing costs incurred in the counties over the five-day period.

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.

In this week’s Time Capsule, we look at the beginnings of the county’s planning commission, new post offices, the expansion of Kennesaw State University and the fight to put Cobb in the name of the Galleria Centre.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, March 7, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, it was reported that the Marietta Rifles, headed by Capt. W.A. Way, attended the inaugural ceremonies and participated in the inaugural parade for 28th President Woodrow Wilson and Vice President Thomas R. Marshall.

Also that week, the Seventh District Medical Society of Georgia was expected to hold its 11th semi-annual session in Marietta on Wednesday, March 12, at the Fraternity Hall in the Black Building with many well-known physicians in attendance. The program included 14 papers on important medical questions which were to be read and discussed by specialists in every line of medicine and surgery. Doctors Malone, Benson and Nolan, all of Marietta, were among those who would read papers before the assembly.

Another story reported that in the February issue of “Bonds and Mortgages,” a magazine published in Chicago and devoted exclusively to the bond and mortgage business, had a lengthy article paying tribute to Marietta’s town booster, Col. Moultrie M. Sessions of Sessions Loan and Trust Company.

50 years ago …

In the Friday, March 1, 1963 MDJ, the first piece of legislation limited to Cobb County was reported as having cleared both houses of the General Assembly. It was a bill creating a Cobb County Planning Department and allowing the county government to appoint a full-time planning engineer.

The combination of an Air Force ordered speed-up in the production rate of C-130E Hercules and an already-planned build-up of workers on the C-141 program was reported in the Sunday, March 3, 1963 paper as potentially adding several hundred jobs at the Lockheed-Georgia Co. by the end of the year. Some 15,400 people were working there at the time of the news, which made it the largest single industry in Georgia.

Two Smyrna policemen ordered to join a widespread search for four men suspected of stealing merchandise from some Cobb stores over the weekend were reported in the Monday, March 4, 1963 paper as making the quickest capture in county history. The policemen said they stepped out of the police station and immediately spotted the suspects driving towards them. Police said that the suspects were unfamiliar with Smyrna and mistakenly drove past the station.

New federal post offices were reported as being readied for Marietta and Austell in the Tuesday, March 5, 1963 paper. The Marietta facility on Lawrence Street cost $282,000 and was expected to be completed on April 27. A “folded roof” and concrete columns were part of the Marietta design, which was being constructed by Latimer and Associates.

The Austell post office on Mulberry Street cost $90,000 and would open on April 1. It had a glassed-in lobby with steel supporting beams outside and was being constructed by The Austell Cabinet Company.

Police theorized in the Thursday, March 7, 1963 paper that a burglar who stole a large quantity of narcotics from a Marietta drug store had hidden inside at closing time and waited for the employees to leave. City detectives said that morphine, codeine, dolophine and other drugs were missing. The store’s back door, which was secured at night with a lock and two iron bars, was found open when the manager arrived the next morning.

20 years ago …

In the Thursday, March 4, 1993 MDJ, Cobb schools were reported as asking local legislators to limit homestead exemptions for the elderly in an attempt to slow a growing budget deficit.

Another story that day reported how after some six years of stalled negotiations with property owners, Kennesaw State College turned to the state attorney general’s office for help in acquiring land for expansion. The state Board of Regents voted in October to acquire two tracts of land totaling almost 30 acres either through purchase or condemnation. The parcels were on Steve Frey Road east of the Kennesaw State campus on the opposite side of the road from the school.

Cobb’s House delegation, upset by the Senate for not requiring “Cobb” to have a prominent position in the name of the county’s new convention center, was reported in the Saturday, March 6, 1993 paper as having tossed the hot potato back into the Senate’s lap the day before. The original bill, sponsored by Rep. Roy Barnes, D-Mableton, required the name of the convention center to be “The Cobb Galleria Centre.” The Senate changed the legislation to require only that Cobb be permanently included somewhere in the name and that the county not be eclipsed by reference to 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.

Severe Weather Awareness Week started out with a bang as warning sirens sounded across a 50-emergency siren network in Cobb County just after 9 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 21, 1993. A line of severe thunderstorms blasted the county with marble-sized hail and a tornado that damaged homes and left 7,000 residents without power into much of the night.

The storm that spawned the funnel cloud hit Floyd, Polk, Bartow and Paulding counties before hitting Cobb.

The tornado, confirmed by the National Weather Service, was the second in less than three months and the fifth to hit the county in less than three years. The tornado touched down near Midway Road and Dallas Highway in west Cobb and cut a swatch a mile wide and five miles long before it lifted back into the clouds near Austell and Atlanta roads.

Trees along South Cobb Drive between the U.S. Highway 41 overpass and Barclay Road were twisted or ripped in half. Across U.S. 41, Dobbins Air Reserve Base sustained $200,000 in damages, according to a spokeswoman. Supports for approach lights on the runway were downed by the storm and the base’s picnic pavilion was destroyed. The high winds also twisted road signs on Delk Road between Powers Ferry Road and Interstate 75.

Along Powder Springs Road about two miles from the Marietta Square, the storm hit the Spinnaker Cove and Baltimore Place condominiums and the Powder Springs Station shopping center on the west side of Powder Springs Road and the Natchez Trace apartments on the east side of the roadway.

Allgood, Hill Crest, Fair Oaks and Big Oak trailer parks in south Marietta were also hit hard. Cobb emergency personnel provided transportation for residents of those neighborhoods to an evacuation center that was set up within the Cobb County Civic Center.

Between 100 and 200 people spent the night at the civic center, but only 80 had to be moved the following day to the Fair Oaks Community Center on Barber Road to make way for a scheduled basketball game.

Most of the county’s impacted area was without electrical power and phone service for several hours with downed telephone lines in addition to power cables.

In the Wednesday, Feb. 24, 1993 paper, County Manager David Hankerson was reported as saying that Cobb had asked Gov. Zell Miller to request that President Bill Clinton declare areas of Cobb hit by the tornado a disaster area, qualifying the county for federal assistance. Hankerson said that the tornado had damaged or destroyed 400 structures – including condominiums, apartments, mobile-home parks, a few single-family homes and businesses. The damages were estimated at more than $6.6 million.

County Commission Chairman Bill Byrne and Hankerson were also reported as working on a plan to house victims of future disasters in buildings at the state fairgrounds on Callaway Road.

The county planned to buy cots, beds, blankets and other materials to store at the fairgrounds because all of above materials had to be provided by the local chapter of the American Red Cross in the aftermath of the tornado.

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.

In this week’s Time Capsule, we look at Marietta’s Civil War cannons at the Capitol, the death of a local businessman and how for the first-time registered black voters outnumbered whites in a Marietta ward.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, Feb. 28, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier there was an entire front page ad for W.A. Florence, which had recently opened between Schilling’s and the Fowler Bros. Stores on the Marietta Square. The new store offered dress goods, laces and embroideries, shoes, neckwear and hosiery. Some of the advertised opening sales included 43 black silk petticoats for 39 cents, dotted and striped madras shirts for 15 cents and 25 dozen ladies handkerchiefs for five cents.

Another story that week was about the two old cannons captured by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman from the Georgia Military Academy in Marietta during the Civil War. The cannons were removed from Grant Park in Atlanta and mounted at the northern entrance of the Capitol. The cannons were originally loaned to the City of Atlanta by Gen. John B. Gordon while he was governor.

50 years ago …

Prospects dimmed considerably for a merger of retail and wholesale water systems in Cobb County after a concerted opposition arose from the 90-person crowd at a public hearing in Marietta. The death blow to the proposed merger of the Cobb-Marietta Water Authority, reported in the Sunday, Feb. 24, 1963 MDJ, was dealt by Rep. Joe Mack Wilson who said that he was not sold on the idea. Without his support, the five-man Cobb delegation could not pass the measure since unanimous consent was required.

The death of local businessman Joe E. Groover was on the front page of the Monday, Feb. 25, 1963 paper. Groover who had been in business on the Marietta Square for over 60 years died at the age of 85. A member of a pioneer Cobb family, he founded Groover Hardware Co. at the intersection of Atlanta Street and Washington Avenue.

The Cobb Bar Association also that day was reported as having approved proposed legislation which would create a special countywide court using five-member juries to settle misdemeanor and routine civil cases. Officials said such a court would take a load of routine matters off the county’s two Superior Courts.

Vandals broke the canopy to the cockpit of Marietta’s jet trainer plane at the Marietta Motel on U.S. 41 and tore out the instruments, according to the Tuesday, Feb. 26, 1963 paper. The Lockheed aircraft was given to the city by the Navy through an act of Congress and was scheduled to be mounted on tall poles in a diving position along U.S. 41.

Also that day, the Cobb-Marietta Library Board took under consideration a request that it provide 70 percent of the out-of-pocket monthly operating expenses for the Sweetwater Valley public library in Austell. The request asked that the board include a sum in its 1963-64 budget to provide a maximum of $250 a month to the library’s monthly expenses. The Austell library personnel said that only 23 percent of its patrons were from Austell, while the remainder came from unincorporated areas near Mableton, Powder Springs and Clarkdale.

In the Wednesday, Feb. 27, 1963 paper it was reported that for the first time in Marietta’s history, black voter registration in Ward Six had exceeded the number of white voters. The ward, which was bounded roughly by Lemon, Cherokee and Roswell streets, showed 884 black voters and 378 white voters.

20 years ago …

Flying units at Dobbins Air Reserve Base were to be spared the budget ax that was expected to fall heavily on other military installation across the nation, according to a report obtained by the newspaper and published in the Monday, Feb. 22, 1993 MDJ. The report, titled “Report on the Roles, Missions and Functions of Armed Forces of the United States,” was released by Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It called for savings in manpower and operating costs “by eliminating or sharply reducing the 12 Air National Guard interceptor squadrons dedicated solely” to continental air defense.

Also that day, there was a story about a gas war in the county where two Citgos and a QuickTrip were selling unleaded gasoline for less than 80 cents a gallon.

Cobb Schools Superintendent Dr. Arthur Steller was out of a job after the Cobb County School Board voted 7-0 not to renew his contract in the Wednesday, Feb. 24, 1993 paper. The meeting was called by school board chairwoman Anne Brady after Dr. Steller met with district employees and the media to discuss an Oklahoma state audit released the previous week that said over $200,000 in payments made to Dr. Steller during his 7½-year tenure as Oklahoma City Schools superintendent might be illegal.

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.

In this week’s Time Capsule, we look at the performance of an aeronaut, the shotgun attack on a local black family’s home and the end of the county’s five-year dispute with former Gov. Lester Maddox.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, Feb. 21, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier there was a story about the well attended annual prize drill of the Marietta Rifles taking place at the Auditorium. Sgt. O.C. Cassidy was awarded the gold medal for first prize, which was his second consecutive victory.

The story also stated that if Sgt. Cassidy were to win the 1914 prize drill, then the gold medal would permanently become his property. A second place cash prize was awarded to Sgt. William Cooper.

Also in that week’s paper, Hugh Manning, the proprietor of the Gem and Princess Theatres, was reported as having arranged to give a free exhibition at 2 p.m. the following day. The event, written about on the front page and in a large advertisement on page two, would feature Aeronaut C.E. Bankston making a daring parachute drop in the vacant lot next to W.W. Watkins’ blacksmith and wagon shop on Washington Avenue.

Bankston was expected to drop from a balloon several thousand feet in the air with three parachutes, using one at a time until he had changed parachutes three times in mid-air. After the flight, Bankston was to give a lecture on the trials and narrow escapes that happen in his profession at the Gem Theatre.

50 years ago …

The Marietta School Board was reported in the Friday, Feb. 15, 1963 MDJ as having proposed a tougher policy requiring all teachers to hold college degrees or be working for their diplomas. The board also took under consideration an offer to give free Bibles to elementary school children and received some opposition to that plan.

A request to change Marietta city government to four-year terms for the mayor and council was reported in the Tuesday, Feb. 19, 1963 paper. Councilmen told the paper that the provisions were part of a package of legislation affecting the city of Marietta, drawn up by Mayor Sam Welsch and submitted to the Cobb delegation.

Also that day, the Smyrna City Council was reported as asking for a voice in the setting of rates on the Cobb-Marietta Water Authority, which sold water to the city wholesale. Smyrna was the second Cobb city to make the request in recent days. Mayor Jack Ables declared that Smyrna was the fourth largest user of water after Cobb County, Marietta and Lockheed-Georgia Co.

A five-category rating system for films shown in Marietta theaters were reported approved by the city’s newly-organized Motion Picture Study Committee in the Wednesday, Feb. 20, 1963 paper. Paul Greenlee, the committee spokesman, said that Martin Theaters in the city had agreed to publish the ratings along with their advertisements of future films.

Four shotgun blasts were fired at the home of a black family in Marietta early on Thursday, Feb. 21, 1963 and was the second mysterious attack against the family for that year. Two of the shots crashed through a front window shortly after midnight and pellets sprayed a room occupied by a woman and her two teenage daughters.

Two more shots exploded from the darkness about half an hour later and struck the outside of the small frame dwelling. All seven occupants of the house escaped without injury.

A bullet fired from a pistol in a previous attack in mid-January shattered the home’s front window and woke several members of the sleeping family. Officers said they were planning to press the hunt for the gunman in the hopes of catching him before another assault was made.

Another story that day about Cobb’s growth was mentioned in an article within the February issue of Newsweek Magazine entitled, “Defense: Meat and Potatoes.” The paragraphs about Cobb appeared on page 28.

20 years ago …

In the Monday, Feb. 15, 1993 MDJ, a Georgia National Guard helicopter ambulance unit at Dobbins Air Reserve Base was reported as being on the list of units that could potentially be deactivated in fiscal year 1994. One of six Guard units slated for deactivation as part of a downsizing of the military, the 129-member unit – the 148th Medical Co. – flew 12 Vietnam war-era UH-1H “Huey” helicopters.

The Cobb County Commission reported that it had ended a five-year dispute with former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox in the Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1993 paper with a vote to rezone Maddox’s 1.2-acre home site on Johnson Ferry Road to a commercial retail category. The board voted 4-0 with Commissioner Bill Cooper abstaining, to approve a neighborhood retail commercial category for the property, which was surrounded by major shopping centers and offices.

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.

In this week’s Time Capsule, we look at the visit of a Sioux Indian chief, a 70-foot sign for Rich’s in Smyrna and a legislative resolution to keep the original appearance of Big Chicken.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, Feb. 14, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier there was a story about visiting Proctor and Gamble Co. representative A.T. Vickery of Cincinnati. The company, which manufactured Crisco, had Vickery arrange for Mrs. E.S. Siple to conduct a series of cooking lectures and demonstrations at the Auditorium Armory. Siple was also to give away a pound cake each day to one of the ladies in the audience.

Sioux Indian Chief Red Fox, who was playing at the Gem Theatre in Marietta that week, gave the Marietta Boy Scouts a lecture at the Auditorium. The chief had planned to “hit the trail” with the boys, but the rain interfered. However, Chief Red Fox promised that he would be passing through again in June and would try to spend a week with the scouts camping.

Also reported that week was the celebration of Georgia Day by the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh grades of the Marietta public schools two days before. In Ms. Sena Towers’ classroom the black boards were adorned with the Coat of Arms of Georgia in colored chalk and the State flag was used in decorating. As part of the program, the 60 student class sang “The Red Old Hills of Georgia,” “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” and “We Are Old Time Confederates.”

50 years ago …

Builders of the new Rich’s and Food Fair Shopping center near Smyrna were reported in the Friday, Feb. 8, 1963 MDJ as having received a county permit to build a 70-foot tall sign. The project manager told county zoning officials that they would also get an okay from federal aviation officials to erect the sign and see if they needed to put aircraft warning lights on the sign to alert low-flying planes at night.

Also that day, a Marietta prisoner, who escaped from a city work gang and ran from a pack of bloodhounds and a squad of policemen, was re-captured in a briar patch near the Cobb-Marietta Industrial Park after three hours of searching. It was the second time the prisoner had been chased by police. The man was serving a 148-day sentence on charges of driving through Marietta at a high rate of speed and forcing other cars off the road with police in pursuit.

An increase in C-130 aircraft production at the Lockheed-Georgia Co. in Marietta was also proposed by the U.S. Air Force that day. If approved, production of C-130s would be increased from 12 to 15 per month and continue rising employment at the plant. The workforce there had climbed from 13,000 to 15,000 in the past year due to increased C-130 production and beginning work on the C-141 jet air freighter.

20 years ago …

Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-east Cobb, in the Tuesday, Feb. 9, 1993 MDJ, was reported as having spoken to members of the Metro Marietta Kiwanis Club at Jimmy’s on the Square. Among the ideas the congressman bounced off the 50 or so members gathered for the meeting was the need for technological advances, liberating small businesses, personal strength and teaching youth the principals of American civilization.

Also that day, a Smyrna man was reported as having escaped uninjured over the weekend when his ultra-light aircraft lost power after takeoff and crashed into the trees about a quarter-mile from a small, private airstrip off Arnold Mill Road in Woodstock. The man received only minor cuts and bruises in the crash, but his Minimax ultra-light plane was destroyed.

Sounding similar to recent events involving two members of the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department working at the county jail, there was a story in the Wednesday, Feb. 10, 1993 paper about a Marietta jailer being charged with sexually assaulting a female inmate at the city jail over the weekend. The inmate had accused the man of raping her in an isolation jail cell.

Another story in that day’s paper reported that the Marietta City Council was considering the approval of a no-smoking policy that would prohibit smoking or chewing tobacco in city-owned or Board of Lights and Water buildings, facilities and vehicles.

More than 50 Georgia House members were reported as having signed a resolution on Friday, Feb. 12, 1993 commending Kentucky Fried Chicken for its efforts to save The Big Chicken on Cobb Parkway, but urged the company to keep with the original model and not a more modern option.

In the Saturday, Feb. 13, 1993 paper, the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority voted 3-2 to change the name in the logo of the county’s new convention center at the Galleria Mall to include the words “Cobb-Atlanta” in small type beneath the convention center’s name, The Galleria Centre. Convention Authority Chairwoman Barbara Williams described the change as an effort to satisfy community sentiment to include Cobb’s name in the county-financed facility and indicated that she wanted the vote to be the authority’s final word on the controversy.

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.

In this week’s Time Capsule, we look at dorms for Southern Poly, two famous Louvre paintings coming to Atlanta and potential sites for the 1996 Olympic Games in the county.

100 years ago …

In the Friday, Feb. 7, 1913 edition of The Marietta Journal and Courier, it was reported that Marietta was to have a new manufacturing plant. J.M. Mitchell, J.C. Dyson and J.H. Hawkins filed an application for a charter in the Superior Court.

Mitchell was the patentee of a machine that was expected to revolutionize “stump pulling” on farms and roads. The machine was said to be able to pull out any stump up to three feet in diameter and only required two men to operate it making mule teams, cables and other appliances unnecessary.

Both Mitchell and Dyson had been out on the road for the past three weeks selling the machines and found they were selling more than their current plant could supply. The pair decided to organize a company and build a larger plant in Marietta.

50 years ago …

It was reported in the Friday, Feb. 1, 1963 paper that the State Board of Regents had written funds into their budget for construction of dormitories at Marietta’s Southern Technical Institute, now Southern Polytechnic State University. When the school opened on its $1.8 million campus it included everything but dormitories. Southern Tech’s boarding students at the time were living in old apartment units originally built for defense workers during World War II and with private rental housing.

Marietta attorney Norman Shipley was reported in the Sunday, Feb. 3, 1963 paper as having been elected district governor of Rotary District 690 – the highest statewide post a Georgia Rotarian could hold. Shipley, a past president of the Marietta Club, was the first district governor elected from the local club since it was founded 43 years earlier.

Two famous paintings, including Whistler’s Mother, were reported in the Monday, Feb. 4, 1963 paper as having arrived in the country for a six-week exhibit in memory of 122 Atlanta art lovers, including two Mariettans that died in a chartered plane crash on take off from Paris’ Orly Field on June 3, 1962.

Marietta resident James V. Carmichael, president of the Atlanta Art Association, met the paintings as they were offloaded from a U.S. troop transport at the Brooklyn, N.Y., Naval yard. The French government had loaned the paintings, which came from Paris’ Louvre museum, to the Atlanta Art Association as a memorial tribute to the association members who died in the crash after touring European art attractions.

Firemen were reported as having washed the streets clean of gasoline in the Thursday, Feb. 7, 1963 paper after a fuel tank was torn free from a taxi cab and hurled against a building during a collision at Anderson and Winters streets in downtown Marietta.

20 years ago …

Cobb Commission Chairman Bill Byrne said in the Friday, Feb. 5, 1993 MDJ that he would push for the construction of a garbage incinerator on County Farm Road in west Cobb as a solution to the county’s longstanding garbage woes. The new chairman provided a brief outline for the plan during his first town hall meeting at the county library in the Merchants Walk shopping center.

State Rep. Roy Barnes (D-Mableton) was reported in the Saturday, Feb. 1993 paper as introducing legislation renaming the county’s new convention center The Cobb Galleria Centre in response to public outcry over a decision to leave the county’s name off of the facility. While several Cobb legislators said they wanted to see Cobb included in the name of the county-financed convention center, they turned a cool shoulder to a section of the bill that would shake up the membership of the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority.

A site for women’s fast pitch softball for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta was reported in the Sunday, Feb. 7, 1993 paper as being considered at four locations – including west Cobb’s Al Bishop Softball Complex. Before the site decision could be made, details between the Olympic committee and the softball federation had to be worked out.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) was also considering Cobb’s Galleria Centre as a site for team handball and badminton. The two sports were originally planned to be played in the proposed $155 million Phase Four of the World Congress Center until Gov. Zell Miller decided in December 1992 not to fund the expansion.

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.

On Wednesday, Feb. 3, 1993, the seven-man crew of a Lockheed test airplane died when it crashed after takeoff from Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.

Killed in the crash were pilot, George D. Mitchell, 42, of Marietta; co-pilot, Olin L. Bankhead Jr., 49, of Marietta; flight engineer, Malcolm J. Davis, 49, of Marietta; flight test engineer, Troy C. Castona, 33, of Smyrna; flight engineer, Veda Ruiz, 46, of Kennesaw; research engineer, William B. Southerland, 49, of Smyrna; and flight test engineer, Alan McLeroy, 35, of Marietta.

The “High Technology Test Bed” (HTTB) was built in 1971 as an L-100 – which was the civilian version of the C-130 Hercules military transport, and later modified into the HTTB in the early 1980s. This one-of-a-kind transport, dubbed a “flying laboratory,” was owned by Cobb-based Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. and flown by company employees to test their own avionics and electronic systems, as well as systems built by other firms. At the time of the crash, the crew was testing a new rudder-control system.

Witnesses told the Marietta Daily Journal that the plane got airborne around 1:30 p.m., then it appeared to veer to the left to avoid crashing onto the flight line where C-130s, F-15 jet fighters and other aircraft were parked on the tarmac. After the turn, the plane reportedly nose-dived to the ground just barely clearing a stand of pine trees and a short radar tower before crashing onto an access road a quarter-mile from the runway and about 150 yards from a vacant recreation area.

The plane came to a stop 25 feet from the Navy medical clinic operated by Naval Air Station-Atlanta, which was set ablaze by the crash. The plane also clipped an ambulance that was in a parking lot. The clinic was quickly doused with water and foam by firefighters to contain the flames. All 50 people inside escaped unhurt.

The force of the impact ripped the wings free from the plane. The front third of the fuselage was twisted, while the rear two-thirds remained relatively in tact.

Amateur video shot by someone at Dobbins and shown to the newspaper revealed bright orange flames and thick black smoke that quickly consumed the plane. Afterwards the entire plane was charred so badly that its markings could barely be seen. The black plume of smoke was reported as being visible for up to 15 miles away.

The crash also happened right after the retirement luncheon for Dobbins Fire Chief Jimmy Gilbert. Gilbert, who was being honored by fellow firefighters on his last day with the department. Gilbert had just returned to work when the warning bells sounded the plane crash. Within 90 seconds, his first fire unit was at the scene and was later assisted by units from Cobb County and Smyrna fire departments.

The crash was the third time in less than five years that a plane based at Dobbins Air Reserve Base had been involved in a fatal crash.

In November 1989, an A-7E Corsair Navy jet from Naval Air Station-Atlanta crashed into a Smyrna apartment complex while on approach to the runway at Dobbins, killing two people. The Corsair was on a routine training mission when the pilot, who survived the crash, mistakenly shut off fuel to the single-engine jet and could not reignite the engine.

In December 1988, a Dobbins-based Georgia Army National Guard reconnaissance plane narrowly missed several homes before crashing into a heavily wooded area of Cherokee County. The pilot of the Grumman OV-1D, dubbed “The Widowmaker” by aviators who flew the now-grounded twin-engine turboprop aircraft, died in the crash.

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.