September 28 through the years
100 Years ago – 1925
A Poultry Culling Campaign was held for 3 days to teach people how to discard non-producing hens and save late moulters, healthy hens and those of good body conformation. Home Demonstration Agent Miss Emma Bratten held sessions at the farms of: Mrs. H.C. Clanton of Spencer; Mr. T.H. Self of Martinsville; Mr. Richard Adams of Barrow’s Mill; Mrs. George A. Pace of Ridgeway; Mr. B.L. Fowlkes of Sandy River; and Mrs. George Mitchell of Boxwood.
Many local members of the Jim Bob Bondurant Klan, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, went to Danville to participate in a big parade and special services in the tabernacle there.
75 years ago – 1950
City Council earlier in the month had decided to name a new main road Ford Memorial Street after cousins Lt. Dillard Ford, Lee Ford and Lt. Thomas Ford, who had died in World War II. This week, the mayor and Council received a check for $1,000 and a letter from the soldiers’ parents, saying that they appreciated the gesture, but “we feel there are other citizens who had similar misfortunes whose loss amounted to them as much as ours did to us, and realizing your intention of making this highway a memorial to all the boys who lost their lives from Martinsville, we are enclosing herewith a check for $1,000 which we hope you will use to erect a satisfactory plaque or marker somewhere on this highway on which there will be inscribed the names of all the boys from the City of Martinsville who lost their lives in World War II. We specifically state Martinsville only because the highway is wholly within the City. You have our wishes for the greatest success in this undertaking as well as our congratulations on your achieving a much needed by-pass.”
50 years ago – 1975
J. Irving Minter of Highland Street had designed and constructed a solar panel that he planned to install in a house his son, Joe, was buying on Greyson Street. It would be used to heat a 25-gallon water heater. Next he planned to install solar collectors in the four rear windows of the house.
25 years ago - 2000
Henry County Schools’ mobile health clinic, Health Connections, was featured by the Virginia Department of Education on a PBS broadcast. School Nursing Coordinator Sherry Vestal drove the mobile clinic.
At Horsepasture District Supervisor Debra Buchanan’s community meeting at Fieldale Elementary School, Fieldale residents told state highway officials that they wanted a new bridge built where the town’s historic iron bridge crossed the Smith River, not upstream from it. The Virginia Department of Transportation was looking at three options for replacing the 1931 iron bridge: build a new bridge upstream for about $6.5 million; expand a bridge upstream on Virgniia 609 for $3.6 million; or replace the iron bridge with a new bridge for $3.2 million.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.