People who lived and/or worked near Moorefield Laundry and Dry Cleaning Plant on Bridge Street in June complained about what they called an “awful smoke nuisance” from the plant. A dozen people presented before City Council a petition signed by more than 100 residents of Park, Spring, Bridge, Carter and Starling streets. J. Ford Burgess of Virginia Motor Co. said that the “smoke from the plant has become unbearable.” The petition asked that the company raise the height of the smoke stack, burn materials other than the green sawdust they were using, and place a smoke arrester on top of the stack. The next day, laundry owner W.G. Moorefield told Council that he would take care of the matter right away, and that necessary equipment for suspension burning had been ordered and would be installed in the fall; and he pointed out that several other businesses around his put out as much or more unpleasant smoke.
Martinsville playgrounds – at Joseph Martin school, Brown Street athletic field, Albert Harris school and East Martinsville school -- opened for the summer on June 18. The parks would be opened from 9 or 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with 2 hours taken for lunch. Each playground would have both a boy and a girl instructor, and the boy instructors were in charge.
The campaign goal for the Henry County and Martinsville Joint Hospitals Fund was $250,000, but it raised more than $300,000. Major donors to the campaign included DuPont, $50,000 (worth $642,150 today); the Schottland families, $20,000 (worth $256,860 today); the medical profession, $40,000; and American Furniture Co., $25,000. The goal was to pay off Martinsville General Hospital’s debt and to complete the Community Hospital for Negroes. Martinsville General was located where the Virginia Museum of Natural History is now, and Community Hospital was on Armstead Avenue; the building now is home to Hairston Home for Adults.
Most local plants closed for the week around the Fourth of July. At Fieldcrest Mills, that was 1,100 workers. Employees with five or more years of service received vacation pay equal to 4% of their year’s earnings, and those with more than 1 year and less than 5 received 2%.
Seventy-eight babies were entered into the Exchange Club’s “Trippin’ Around” popularity contest. The contest was to raise money for the club’s show of the same name. The babies’ pictures were posted in store windows all around town, and the general public voted.
The Henry County Horse Show had four performances across three days in June. Among riders was Doris Hermes, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Julius Hermes; she had won horse shows across the South. She rode her three-gaited mare, Aces Tempo Step, and her five-gated mare, Colonial Comet. Ruth Jones, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Louis Jones of Mulberry Road, rode a pony. Other riders included Stanley Bowles, Russell Shumate, Irving Ramsey, Tom Burnette and Julius Hermes. The horse show raised $1,500 to benefit the Youth Center being established in Fontaine. William Walter Dandridge, an employee of Fontaine Converting Works, won a new Ford as prize for advertising the horse show.
Martinsville’s Company B, 116th infantry, of the National Guard, spent two weeks of July in special training at Camp Pickett. In Martinsville, they had their military drills on the Brown Street Field.
George Hayes Swanson, 27, of Martinsville was the first black student enrolled at the University of Virginia. He was admitted through a federal court order for graduate law studies. He told the Associated Press, in an article printed in the Martinsville Bulletin on July 2, 1951, that he hoped “some day in the very near future the law school, as well as the whole University, will point the way to more constructive efforts in effectuating equality in the South” and that UVA “should be the pivotal point of socio-economic and political changes which would make democracy a living reality.”
In July the owner of Hines Hotel at 22 Spencer St. was convicted in city police court of operating a house of ill fame. He was fined $200 and sentenced to 12 months in jail. Eleven people total were arrested in a police raid there; five men and five women were arrested on morals charges.
About 100 people attended Pannill Post 42 American Legion’s open house for its new headquarters. Its features included a TV set, a ping pong table, a new refrigerator and a card room.
Charles William Arrington, 6, drowned in the Liberty Heights swimming pool in July 1951. He was the foster son of Mr. and Mrs. Maylon Emmitt Arrington of Stanleytown. The lifeguards were Bill Prillaman and Morton Lester, who also was a Red Cross instructor in first aid. Mr. Lester reported that he had cautioned the two older children who were in the pool with the small boy that they should not allow him to get into the 4-foot-deep area. Shortly later, when the lifeguards and the boy’s companions could not find the boy, a search was conducted. After the search, Mr. Lester organized a human chain of Boy Scouts and other people. It was Jimmy Winn who found the boy. It was the pool’s first drowning in the 25 years since it had opened.
Cpl. Leonard Kanode of Martinsville sent the Martinsville Bulletin a letter, which was published on July 30, 1951: “Martinsville has been my home for quite some years but from the mail I get from home one would wonder. Maybe my friends don’t have my address. Really after a man has been here in Korea for 10 ½ months he gets awful lonesome; all the letters up to date stand at 16. You can see why I worry so much.”
Martin F. Clark was sworn in as commonwealth’s attorney of Patrick County on Aug. 7, 1951. He filled the post left vacant when John Dillard Hooker resigned to become judge of the Seventh Judicial circuit.
W.R. Broaddus Jr. won the Democratic Primary election for House of Delegates over challenger Nick Prillaman, former mayor of Martinsville. Broaddus was Commonwealth’s Attorney for Henry County from 1929 to 1946 and Served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1947 to 1953, and as a delegate to Virginia’s limited constitutional convention in 1956. He was a director of First National Bank of Martinsville.
The Henry County Dairy Show and the Southern Piedmont Virginia Junior Dairy Show were held the second week of August on Kenmar Farm in Martinsville. Mostly Guernseys were being exhibited, with some Holsteins. The dairy shows were held annually by the Martinsville and Bassett Kiwanis Clubs in cooperation with the Virginia Extension Service and local vocational teachers.
The Patrick Henry Tuberculosis Association held a chest x-ray clinic on Aug. 21. The Kiwanis Club provided the Association with a space in the Henry County Exposition for the clinic to be held in the evening, when the Exposition would be open. During the day, the equipment was in front of the Henry County Courthouse. The cost to get a chest X-ray was 50 cents (worth about $6.48 today).
More than 1,250 people attended the opening night of the Henry County Exposition. A country music show was held, and Miss Violet Turner was crowned Miss Henry County in the beauty pageant. On the second night, with Exposition attendance of 2,300, Grandpa Jones performed. On the third night a total of 25 performers entertained.
More than 200 children took the “Learn to Swim” classes held by the Red Cross at Liberty Heights pool.
The Martinsville Bulletin’s Stroller column on Aug. 14, 1951, described pizza: “For the uninitiated, a pizza pie is an Italian dish largely made up of cheese and spices, which along with a couple steins of cold beer provides sheer eating enjoyment. In the north, pizza pie is sold in practically every restaurant and bar and since the war has become as popular as the hot dog.” Connie Ivie of Jefferson Circle made pizza pies with Musserle cheese, a hard Parmesan cheese and Italian canned tomatoes, all of which she received imported.
Shelton Scales, who worked at 5 Walnut St., had purchased hundreds of paper umbrellas and loaned them out to anyone caught in the rain while in town.
The City of Martinsville used its by-pass fund to purchase a complete hot mix asphalt plant for $25,000. The plant and its equipment had been valued at $74,500. Its owner, a general contractor from Fredericksburg, sold it because neither he nor his son could work it anymore: He had been severely injured in an automobile crash, and his son had been called back into service.
Construction on the new Liberty Warehouse in Martinsville would not be finished by the Sept. 17, but it would be far enough along to allow the first tobacco auctions to be held there starting on that date. The warehouse was being built on Liberty Street by the Lester Lumber Company. It would be the second modern tobacco warehouse; the large and well equipped Farmers Warehouse had opened for the first time the year before.
The Rex Theatre on Aug. 22 held a midnight benefit show to help raise money for medical care for Jimmy Dodd, 12. Fats Hairston was the manager of the theater. The Kiwanis Club pledged to buy the boy braces for his legs. The boy had been wheelchair- and bed-bound for 15 months, victim of a disease which turned the muscles of his legs into fat. A new medicine had been developed to cure the disease. Jimmy’s father was the pastor of Mountain Valley Baptist Church.
A list compiled by the Martinsville Bulletin in 1951 showed that the city had 134 civic, fraternal and social organizations, including 11 garden clubs, 10 demonstration clubs, 14 organized bridge clubs and eight book clubs.
More than 200 children went fishing in the Elks Club’s third annual fishing rodeo held in August on Whittle Lake. A total of 750 hot dogs were served at that event.
A corner of the two-room Camp Branch Negro School near Leatherwood was destroyed by fire, and the entire school was destroyed by smoke, just one hour before school was to open for the year. An arsonist had started the fire with kindling and boards. There was another pile of kindling and boards at another corner, but it had not been lit. The first student to arrive was James Carter, 7, who saw the fire as he was approaching the school. The teachers were Lucille Mitchell and Bessie Dandridge. The fire did not stop lessons: The teachers taught their classes under the canopy of shade trees.
—Information compiled from MHCHS records and the Henry/Martinsville Bulletin.