Turning Back the Pages
100 years ago — 1922
Mrs. Mary Senior has moved from Lakeville to Mrs. Knickerbocker’s house.
The Salisbury Garden Club asked the children of the public schools of the town, to help in the protection of our wildflowers, and to write papers upon this, regarding especially the maiden hair fern, the laurel, arbutus, moccasin flower, the fringed gentian and cardinal flower.
Millard Silvernale says that if you want to prevent the cows stealing your corn, just mix a tablespoonful of turpentine with four quarts of corn. The corn must be planted the same day it is treated. If allowed to stand overnight it will destroy the germinating quality of the corn. Millard says it works to perfection.
50 years ago — 1972
New hope that the Canaan Mountain pumped-storage project may be unnecessary was aroused this week by a speech by a Northeast Utilities official that “a good alternate” may be available by the early 1980s.
The Lakeville Journal Inc. has contracted to buy the assets of the Millerton Press Inc., which publishes The News in Millerton. Announcement of the contract was made jointly this week by John M. Hager, publisher of The News since 1960, and Robert H. Estabrook, publisher of The Lakeville Journal.
The Sharon Playhouse will salute seven decades of the American Theater this coming season with an array of plays from the 1909 “adult” western The Great Divide to the recent Broadway comedy hit The Gingerbread Lady.
Francis Knuffke of Lakeville, seriously injured in a tractor accident on May 23, is reported to be improving. A spokesman for Sharon Hospital said yesterday afternoon that Mr. Knuffke’s condition is “good,” and he is no longer in the intensive care unit.
A note to The Lakeville Journal from Fannie Rudman, who lived in Lakeville for many years before moving to Texas, brings “greetings to all my friends in Connecticut.” Mrs. Rudman, who once operated a grocery store in the building that houses the Apothecary Shop, reports that she now lives at “a delightful home for the aged.”
A joint career of unusual distinction will end this weekend as Roswell Hopkins Rudd and Josephine Bauman Rudd retire at Salisbury School. “Hop” and “Jo” have given 24 years of their time to the school, and have given immeasurably of themselves to the community.
Mrs. Walter Fairservis was inducted as president of the Sharon Woman’s Club for the 1972-73 season by Mrs. William Kelsey at the annual luncheon of the club last week at De La Vergne Farms. Mrs. Fairservis also served as president during the current season.
The new Sharon Green condominium, located off Main Street behind the Hotchkiss Library, will open at 10 a.m. Saturday with a completely furnished model home, according to owners and builders George Yovan and John Desmond. An open house will be held on Sunday. Ten of the 18 units now have been completed.
The Steve Blass family of Greenacres, Canaan, is readying for their move to a new home in Upper St. Clair, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. “We hate to sell the house and leave Canaan,” Karen Blass said this week, “but there was just no way around it. We want to go where Steve’s work is and be able to see more of him.”
25 years ago — 1997
Last Thursday, the three-member team from Housatonic Valley Regional High School traveled to the University of Connecticut at Storrs to compete in the Connecticut Geographic Olympiad against teams from all over the state — and won. After competing against 15 other schools, the team of Jacob Gingart, a junior from West Cornwall, Molly McDowell, a sophomore from Kent, and Winfield Wilson, a freshman from Cornwall, coached by HVRHS teacher Peter Vermilyea, waited through a Miss America- style series of runner-up awards, and watched a tie-breaker for third place before it was announced they were the winners.
