June 12 through the years
100 Years ago – 1925
“The Birth of A Nation,” an epic film drama of the Civil War, was shown in the Hamilton Theatre. It was made in 1914 and had been shown in Martinsville before. It was a landmark of film history, the first non-serial American 12-reel film ever made. It helped to pioneer closeups and fadeouts, and includes casts of hundreds in scenes made to look like thousands of people. It was the first movie to be shown in the White House, watched by President Woodrow Wilson and his family. It has been called “the most controversial film ever made in the United States” (Anthony Slide, “American Racist: “The Life and Times of Thomas Dixon,”2004) and “the most reprehensively racist film in Hollywood history” by the Washington Post (2021). It showed black people in a negative light and glorified the Ku Klux Klan.
75 years ago – 1950
A new committee headed by Max Pate of Spencer aimed to raise several thousand dollars to help provide medical for Mrs. Ann Angel, 25, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Angel of Patrick Springs, Route 1. Ann Angel was confined to bed, paralyzed from the waist down for three years as the result of a wreck. She still had hopes of returning to walk. Her parents already had spent $4,000 in hospital and medical care. Mrs. Agel had sold her hoe for $2,700 and now she and the daughter lived their rent-free, courtesy of a relative. The family also sold most of their possessions, including their furniture.
The Boaz Ice Cream company plant in Collinsville was entered by an intruder overnight but nothing was noticed to be missing. The same company was burglarized about 4 months before, when $30 was stolen from a cash box in a refrigeration room. Since then they stopped keeping money there overnight.
50 years ago – 1975
Three men and one woman were arrested at the Castle Court Motel in Collinsville, 322 Virginia Ave., as the result of a state police investigation on prostitution. A 22-year-old woman was charged with prostitution and released in a $500 bond; a 54-year-old man was charged with keeping a bawdy house, $500 bond; a 53-year-old man was charged with feloniously receiving money from a female prostitute and operating a bawdy place, $5,000 bond; and a 24-year-old man was charged with frequenting a bawdy place, $150 bond.
A mobile lunchroom (now we call them food trucks) had “Dope Wagon” written across the front of it. A local businessman accused him of referring to marijuana with that term, but the proprietor said that the term was used in the late 1920s and the 1930s referring to mobile food carts that sold carbonated soft drinks. A rumor had gone around that those drinks contained “dope,” so people would say “let’s go get a dope” referring to soda. A photograph of a food cart labeled “Dope Wagon” at the Fieldale Towel Mill from that time back had been seen.
25 years ago - 2000
In a ceremony, Lt. Col. Dennis L. Via, 42, had colonel’s insignia pinned to his shoulders by the chairman of Gen. Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the nation. Via had called teacher Edward Fontaine his mentor, and in 1988 Edward Fontaine and his wife, Ruby Fontaine, visited Via at Fort Bragg, N.C. Via, now retired, concluded his career as a four-star general who last served as the 18th commanding general of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.