April 9 through the years
100 Years ago – 1926
The Old Brick Building in Ridgeway, for years Messrs Jones’s and Griggs’ outstanding store of the town, was being demolished. The large timbers were in perfect condition despite being half a century old. The bricks were smaller than the size common in 1926 and also stronger. Most of the materials would be reused to build a new building which would be finished with stucco. So many cars traveled by the site of people watching the demolition that one day the cars were counted, with the number 400 being the result.
75 years ago – 1951
A Martinsville seventh-grader just returned home from fighting in the Korean War for 8 months. Marion Durham enlisted in the army on July 27, 1949, when he was 15. He was 6 feet tall and weighed 176 pounds by that time; he said he was never questioned about his age. He took basic training at Fort Knox, Kansas, and joined the First Calvary in Japan. He started his wartime duty as a truck driver in the field artillery. From Nov. 3 until March 2 he saw action and advanced as far as the border of Manchuria. He was almost captured once by the Chinese. He had been left to destroy a radio while the others were pulling off a hill. He decided he had enough of army life and wrote to his mother to ask her to send his birth certificate to the army. Marion Durham would go on to work as a city parking meter maintenance man. He was married with five sons. He died in 1967 at the age of 59.
50 years ago – 1976
Fieldale Towel Mill was hiring the following positions for second and third shift: spinners, $3.31/hour; card tenders, $3.31; roving frame tenders, $3.49; doffers, $3.56; spooler tenders, $3.34; and hemmers, $3.34. Those wages per hour were the equivalent of $18.73 to $20.14 today.
25 years ago - 2001
The Sportsman’s Club donated $1,000 to the Martinsville Fire Department to go toward the purchase of a thermal imaging camera. Melvin Carter was the club’s president.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.