April 25
100 Years ago – 1925
Thieves broke into S. Heiner’s store on Walnut street and stole several suits of fine clothes, overcoats, ladies coats, suitcases, hats and caps. They had entered a small window above the awning.
75 years ago – 1950
Firemen and enginemen on Southern Railroad were on strike, and local furniture manufacturers worried that it may result in the curtailment of local furniture operations. The Norfolk and Western Railroad, which served the Martinsville area, was not on strike, but much of the furniture sent out over the N&W was transferred down the route to Southern Railroad for distribution down South.
50 years ago – 1975
Stanley Furniture introduced its “Country Fair” line at the Spring Southern Furniture Market in High Point, N.C. Since the country look was becoming more popular, the new furniture lines had less decoration than in previous years, and less of the furniture was painted. Painted furniture was very popular in just the prior year, but the country was in a recession in 1975, and shoppers are more conservative in a recession, Stanley Furniture President James Van Vleck said. Stanley employees who had been working alternating weeks would go to a schedule of three weeks on, one week off from May to the one-week annual July vacation shut-down, but the 100 employees who had been laid off in November were not going to be called back.
25 years ago – 2000
Henry County Administrator Sid Clower talked about the negative effects NAFTA has had on the area before a panel organized by the White House. The 15 people on the panel included members of the Small Business Administration, the White House’s Economic Development Authority, the Treasury Department and the North American Development Bank.
A dozen students in Margie Kraska’s Computer Systems Technology class at Martinsville High School spent half the day at Martinsville Middle School installing new I-Mac computers and printers in classrooms.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.