May 8 through time
100 Years ago – 1925
Martinsville’s quota of the $300,000 coins appointed to Virginia as the state’s share in the distribution of Confederate Memorial Half-Dollars was set at 2,500 by the State Committee. Irving H. Groves was the appointed City chairman for the district to insure distribution of the coins. The sale of those coins would pay for the erection of the Stone Mountain Memorial, a memorial to the soldiers of the South. The federal government authorized the coin issue. The statue is in DeKalb County, Georgia. It is the largest high relief sculpture in the world, measuring 3 acres. The carving of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson towers 400 feet above the ground and is 90 by 190 feet, recessed 42 feet into the mountain. The monument was the brainchild of Mrs. C. Helen Plane, a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The owners of the mountain deeded the north face of the mountain to the UDC in 1916, and the UDC was given 12 years to complete a Civil War monument. The carving consultant and carving sculptor was Gutzon Borglum. The project was delayed due to World War I. Work resumed after the war, but in 1925 a dispute arose. Borglum left, taking his plans with him, and went on to carve Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Augustus Lukeman resumed work on the project in 1925. He didn’t finish it by the deadline, though, so the previous owners of that mountainside took the land back. The project remained untouched until the state of Georgia bought it in 1958. The Georgia General Assembly created the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which resumed work on the monument in 1960. Walker Kirkland Hancock of Gloucester, Massachusetts, completed the carving.
75 years ago – 1950
Bassett contractor M.F. Mason was building the new $100,000 addition to the Bassett-Walker Knitting Company. It would be 204 feet long and 60 feet wide and have three stories. The increased size would allow for a substantial increase in knitwear production.
50 years ago – 1975
The curve on U.S. 58 over Lover’s Leap was called Greasy Bend because so many wrecks happened there. On this week in 1975, two tractor-trailers, over three days, flipped over the mountainside. The first truck to go over had been hauling sheetrock, and the second trunk dumped out half its load of motor oil. The second truck wreck happened right as three state employees – Phillip Belcher and Neil Shelor, both of Meadows of Dan, and Clanton Handy were working on the torn guardrail. The leapt over the rail and down the hill to escape the path of the out-of-control truck.
25 years ago – 2000
Kindergarten teachers and longtime friends Pat Walker of Spencer Penn Elementary School and Brenda Strickland of Snow Creek Elementary School developed a series of books that taught about historical figures such as Davy Crockett, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman and Betsy Ross. The copyrighted books were called “Primary Points in History.” The books have fun features such as pop-ups, flaps, rhyme, simple facts, fake fur trimming Davy Crockett’s book and stripes that open one layer at a time in Betsy Ross’s flag-shaped book.
— Information from museum records and the Henry Bulletin and the Martinsville Bulletin.