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| Wilkes Barre's "Snapshot From A Century" |
In 2007, Wilkes-Barre's Times Leader newspaper printed the following news snippets from articles published over the past century. Each was published daily and I tried to save as many as I could. I didn't receive permission to post here, but I tried and until told otherwise, it will remain for all to read. Although not exclusively about Berwick, I found them interesting and hope you do too.
SNAPSHOT FROM A CENTURY
The explosion of a truckload of fireworks in Wilkes-Barre on June 30, 1958, left one man dead and a lot of motorists shaken, The Times Leader reported. When the truck, stopped in traffic at Scott and North streets, blew up, live electrical wires fell, trapping drivers and passengers in their cars. A passenger in the truck died of injuries. The huge blast was heard and felt for miles.
Local people felt a bit of Hollywood glamour when on June 30, 1942, The Times Leader announced that Kingston native Dorothy Dunsten had married famed cowboy actor Hoot Gibson. Gibson (1882-1962) had been a champion rodeo performer and a World War I soldier. During the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the biggest names in movies.
The Great Depression of the 1930s drove many people from their homes and forced them to live wherever they could. In 1932, The Times Leader ran startling photos of “Dump City,” along Coal Street in Wilkes-Barre, near the city dump. There, poor people built shelters out of whatever throwaway materials they could find. One of the “houses” was nothing more than a junked old automobile body.
Parents breathed easier when on the evening of June 22, 1958, a missing group of 54 girl campers was located in the Poconos near Cresson, The Times Leader reported. The group had gone hiking that afternoon, and when they failed to return on schedule, searchers spread out and a helicopter from the Tobyhanna Army Depot took to the air. The copter spotted them just as daylight was fading.
Rationing of critical supplies during World War II hit drivers hard. On June 9, 1942, The Times Leader reported, rationing boards in Wilkes-Barre approved residents’ purchases of nine tires, 12 inner tubes and 38 retreads over a period of one week – for the entire city. In some good news, federal authorities raised the weekly gasoline purchase from three gallons to four per driver.
When Wilkes-Barre police responded to the Boston Store on a shoplifting call on June 23, 1914, what they encountered was just the tip of the iceberg, The Times Leader reported. Detectives arrested two women, took them home and discovered a 15-member shoplifting ring that had been looting downtown stores for months. It took two large trucks to haul the stolen goods back to the rightful owners.
June 10, 1926 was one of the worst days in the history of the Wilkes-Barre Fire Department. One firefighter, Alfred Eyerman, was killed and 12 more were overcome by smoke and fumes while battling a blaze on South Main Street near Public Square, The Times Leader reported. The department had recently received smoke masks, but did not take them when they responded to the alarm that day.
Luzerne County would be the site of a new and unique type of jail, state officials said when the new State Correctional Institution at Dallas opened, The Times Leader reported on July 15, 1960. The prison would hold 817 inmates of “below normal intelligence” and would “make a dedicated effort to rehabilitate them.” The inmates would work for 15 cents a day at the Jackson Township facility.
About 200 people were arrested when Luzerne County authorities and state police swooped down on businesses in Wilkes-Barre’s “tenderloin district” on July 8, 1918, The Times Leader reported. Shut down were “gambling joints” and “bawdy houses.” Wilkes-Barre officials boasted that the city at last had been cleaned up. Buses transported the suspects to an alderman’s office.
Luzerne County saw what was probably its biggest-ever party on July 4, 1976, honoring the nation’s bicentennial. Most of the festivities were held at Kirby Park and included the cutting of a gigantic “bicentennial cake” as well as games for children and a fireworks display in the evening. Many individual towns held their own events, including parades.
A downtown Wilkes-Barre department store packed in crowds of shoppers and the just plain curious on June 28, 1923, and there wasn’t even a sale going on. The big draw was Clover, at 52, billed as the oldest horse in the world. MacWilliam’s store, on Public Square, constructed a special enclosure on the main floor for Clover, which had arrived by train.
Wyoming Valley felt a special bond with one U.S. Navy ship during World War II. On June 9, 1944, The Times Leader reported, local people donated five record players and 500 records to the new cruiser USS Wilkes-Barre. Nicknamed “the Willie Bee,” the ship was commissioned in late 1944 and saw plenty of action during the final months of the war
With Cold-War-era fears of nuclear holocaust running high, Wyoming Valley authorities held a drill with some grisly statistics, The Times Leader reported on July 20, 1960. A theoretical Soviet attack destroyed Wilkes-Barre, Kingston and nearby towns, but because of a good “evacuation” only 5,000 people were “killed” and 7,000 “injured.” Real-life sirens, though, brought many calls to Civil Defense.
To the long list of odd clothing styles people have worn, it is certainly possible to add the “milk jacket.” An ad by the Hub, a clothing store in downtown Wilkes-Barre, in The Times Leader for June 6, 1939, called the white coats the latest rage “for the hi-school crowd who do their jitter-bugging on milk and Coca-Cola.” The coats bore pictures of “contented cows” and had letters M-I-L-K on the buttons.
Wyoming Valley was plunged into grief on June 5, 1919, The Times Leader reported, when an explosion at the Baltimore shaft in Wilkes-Barre’s East End section took the lives of 92 men. The men were entering the mine on rail cars powered by electricity when a wire fell, igniting a car loaded with explosives. Bodies were so badly burned and mutilated that identification was difficult.
You could never really be sure what your neighbors were up to during the Prohibition era of the 1920s and early 1930s. When government agents raided a private home on Reno Lane in Wilkes-Barre’s Heights section on June 8, 1923, The Times Leader reported, they found a virtual factory for production and shipping of bootleg liquor. The 700 gallons of hooch there were confiscated.
The Pocono Downs racetrack offered a lot of excitement over the years, but perhaps the wildest evening was that of July 7, 1971, The Times Leader reported. Hundreds of bettors, angered by a suspiciously low payout, stormed out of the stands, rioted and destroyed track property. The result was a state investigation of allegations of race fixing, the suspension of several drivers and arrests.
World War II impacted nearly every area of community life, even a night out at the movies. On June 28, 1944, an ad in The Times Leader noted that patrons would have to display a war bond to get into the Plains Theatre to see the double feature “Hitler’s Children” and “Behind the Rising Sun.” The evening would also pay tribute to the 20 men from Plains Township who had died in the war.
An article in The Times Leader on June 26, 1923, offered a chilling prophecy about the future of anthracite coal, Northeastern Pennsylvania’s economic mainstay. E.J. Wallace of St. Louis told 500 area coal merchants that many people were switching to oil heat and that coal’s long-term prospects looked shaky. The merchants formed a committee to study the problem.
The life of a public school teacher in the 1930s was an uncertain one. Often a new school board majority would clean house and hire its favorites for the jobs. On July 9, 1934, The Times Leader reported, the Old Forge School Board fired 29 teachers, including all the leaders of a recent strike and hired 24 new ones, only one of whom, according to the paper, had any teaching experience.
There were “no serious accidents” because of Independence Day fireworks, The Times Leader reported on July 5, 1927. The community considered itself fortunate because the previous year approximately 50 people were injured in fireworks incidents in Wilkes-Barre alone. The paper praised local social and ethnic groups for holding safe events such as parties and dances.
Patrons of Sans Souci Park were accustomed to picnics, rides, swimming and games. But on July 20, 1958, The Times Leader reported, they got something else – opera. Ukrainian Day at the Hanover Township amusement park brought soloists from the Kiev Opera House to sing selections from “The Cossack Beyond the Danube,” an opera by 19th-century Ukrainian composer Semen Artemovsky.
Patriotic passions ran high locally during World War II, as two German-born men found out in Wilkes-Barre on July 10, 1942, The Times Leader reported. When the men visited a Heights tavern and remarked that they would rather fight for Hitler than the United States, “a near free-for-all ensued,” the paper said. They ended up being arrested and fined $5 each for disorderly conduct.
On June 29, 1949, The Times Leader reported, a truck that lost its brakes descending the mountain ran wild through Wilkes-Barre’s East End, hitting houses and cars and leaving three people injured. That wasn’t the only such incident. The danger finally subsided when trucks were required to use low gear descending the mountain and special off-ramps for runaways were built.
Many young people spent long days in the 1950s scanning the skies over Wyoming Valley, looking for Soviet planes that might attack.On July 14, 1958, The Times Leader reported, 40 new members of the Ground Observer Corps took an oath of loyalty to the United States and prepared to report to spotter towers.They qualified for their task by studying silhouette pictures of enemy bombers.
Eighteen people lost their lives when two Laurel Line electric rail commuter cars collided at the South Pittston station on July 3, 1921, The Times Leader reported. The crash happened when a moving car struck the rear of a standing one, telescoping it. About 30 people were injured. Relatives quickly flocked to the scene and to area morgues, trying to find their loved ones.
Some of the most frightening daily news during the 1970s was economic – chiefly that of gasoline shortages and general price inflation. On July 8, 1977, The Times Leader reported, a regional survey found a “shopping bag” of basic food products to have risen in price by 12.6 percent in just the previous four months. The biggest increase was in coffee, which reached almost today’s price levels in stores.
Military “war games” as World War II neared could take on a deadly urgency. On June 25, 1941, The Times Leader reported, the 109th Field Artillery spearheaded an Army column heading west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to “liberate” the city of Pittsburgh, which had been “captured” by enemy troops. Within five months the United States would be fully engaged in World War II.
One of the worst storms in the area’s history took three lives on July 22, 1952, The Times Leader reported. When a nighttime downpour turned creeks into raging torrents, a mother and her two children were killed as water smashed into their home in the Trucksville section of Kingston Township. Meanwhile, lightning struck several buildings in other towns, burning or destroying them.
The Tobyhanna area was “gaining recognition” as a possible site for the United Nations, a resort manager told The Times Leader on Aug. 26, 1946. R.L. Dengler predicted that crowded New York City would be rejected as a site and that the Poconos area offered plenty of space, a healthful climate and easy accessibility thanks to an expanding Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Airport.
Three more cases of typhoid had turned up in the area in the past 24 hours, The Times Leader reported on Aug. 2, 1910, as an epidemic that had started in June grew worse. Wilkes-Barre health authorities traced the outbreak to contaminated water, some of which was used to wash milk cans in a local dairy. By year’s end the disease had subsided, but city hospitals reported that 22 people had died.
Before the eras of rock music and video games, it was comic books that came in for criticism from authorities. Bishop William J. Hafey of the Diocese of Scranton denounced the magazines at a meeting of Catholic women on Aug. 26, 1946. “The influence of bad comics on the minds of children is incalculable and the damage likewise incalculable,” The Times Leader quoted him as saying.
Political elections in times past were not as money-centered as today’s. In the 1924 campaign for Congress, Democrat John J. Casey spent just $6.28 to run for the office, The Times Leader reported. He lost to Republican Edmund N. Carpenter, whose campaign budget was a then-whopping $1,925. On several other tries, however, Casey did win the seat and represent Luzerne County.
World War II-era gasoline rationing wasn’t in place long when local motorists discovered “bootleg” fuel, The Times Leader reported on Aug. 28, 1942. With drivers issued stamps allowing them to purchase only a few gallons a week, some sources began selling a low-grade gasoline for 50 cents a gallon, with no stamps required. The paper condemned what it called “this unpatriotic practice.”
A teenage girl’s death in a bridge collapse could have been avoided, The Times Leader suggested in an article about the Aug. 29, 1922, incident. The death occurred when a bridge over a huge hole on Market Street in Kingston gave way as a car was traveling over it, sending the vehicle crashing down 15 feet. The bridge was visibly unstable, but no action was taken, the paper said.
A youth gang was terrorizing the East End section of Wilkes-Barre, The Times Leader reported on Aug. 1, 1979. Residents claimed the teens would gather under the Butler Street Bridge and go forth to vandalize property. They even set up roadblocks to hinder police. The bridge bore the painted slogans “We smoke pot and we like it a lot” and “Speed and weed is all you need.”
“Flying saucers” were being seen all over the area in the late 1940s and early 1950s. On Aug. 4, 1952, The Times Leader reported, two men said they saw pinkish discs in the sky over Bloomsburg during their night shift at a factory. That wasn’t the only local incident. The paper in that era ran many articles in which local people reported seeing strange aircraft zipping across the skies.
As a strike by the area’s anthracite coal miners neared its fifth month, business and community leaders met to set up a way to help strikers’ families with money and food, The Times Leader reported on Aug. 14, 1922. Miners wanted a pay hike, but operators were asking for a pay cut. The miners’ strike would end in September, but a strike by railroad shopmen made shipping coal difficult.
A 6-year-old was injured and many buildings were damaged when a gas blast ravaged a section of Pittston on Aug. 15, 1946, The Times Leader reported. A fire started by some children near a manhole ignited a nearby leak of illuminating gas as the girl and her mother were walking nearby, authorities said. The explosion and devastation “created a near panic,” according to the paper.
Money was hard to come by during the Great Depression. In those days The Times Leader regularly carried several columns of classified ads in which people offered to barter goods and services. In the issue of Aug. 3, 1934, one person advertised “half-time houseman’s work for lodging,” while another sought a rocking chair in exchange for a mattress.
Kingston native Martin Mooney had mixed success in his debut as a professional bullfighter in Mexico, but when he came home for a visit The Times Leader made him the subject of a feature story on August 17, 1957. Using the name “Martin Muni,” he said he got interested in the sport while stationed with the military in a border town in Texas and decided to train in Mexico.
Six people were killed and more than 20 injured when a huge Midwestern-style tornado tore through parts of Wilkes-Barre, The Times Leader reported on Aug. 20, 1914. The twister did a lot of damage along Empire Street and in the Heights section, flattening and overturning 25 homes and other buildings. Several of the deaths occurred in a small factory when the roof collapsed.
Wilkes-Barre’s dogcatcher , George Ford, found himself impounded after an incident on Aug. 22, 1910, The Times Leader reported. Ford set out for the Heights section to pick up a dog that had to be destroyed but wound up entering the wrong house. When he tried to take “a valuable coach dog” the owner grew angry and Ford drew a gun. Ford was arrested and held on $600 bail.
Wyoming Valley rejoiced when former Berwick High School football star Ron Powlus threw four touchdown passes in leading Notre Dame to a 42-15 rout of Northwestern on Sept. 3, 1994, The Times Leader reported. The heavily recruited quarterback Powlus was coming back from a broken collarbone. He ended up setting many Notre Dame records and twice more tossed four TDs in a game.
Television viewers in the Wilkes-Barre area found their choices expanded when WILK-TV, Channel 34, went on the air as an ABC television network station on Sept. 16, 1953, the Times Leader reported. NBC and CBS were already represented. In time WILK would merge with the Scranton-area WARM-TV, Channel 16, another ABC station, to form the new WNEP-TV.
Living in a government-owned mobile home was a common experience for families that had suffered major property damage in the flood spawned by Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972. So many mobile homes were pouring into the area that the Empire Street, Wilkes-Barre, storage field was filled to capacity, The Times Leader reported on Sept. 1, and a new one was opened in Sugar Notch.
Children in Wilkes-Barre 33 years ago had a better chance to cool off than they do today. On Sept. 2, 1974, The Times Leader said that the Parrish Street and Hollenback swimming pools would be open Labor Day for one final swim before school started. The new Aquadome would open weekends in September and then, with its inflated dome in place, would open for winter swimming on Nov. 1.
Wyoming Valley got its chance to see one of the greatest boxers of all time when former heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano dropped by the annual festival at Holy Rosary Church on Wilkes-Barre’s Park Avenue on Sept. 1, 1960, The Times Leader reported. Marciano, who held the title in the 1950s and retired undefeated, was an old friend of church pastor the Rev. Luke Silvestri.
Kingston underwent the greatest expansion in its history on Sept. 1, 1921, when the adjacent borough of Dorranceton merged with it, The Times Leader reported. With townspeople having approved the merger, the communities’ two councils met and finalized the deal. One problem, though, was the size the combined council was to be. The new merged council had 30 members, 21 from Kingston.
Moviegoers might have thought an invasion was going on if they ventured into downtown Wilkes-Barre on the evening of Sept. 24, 1942. Actually, The Times Leader reported, it was a mock battle between two companies of local “home guards” on Public Square. The occasion was partly to stir up patriotism and partly to advertise the new war movie “Wake Island” at the Comerford Theatre on Public Square.
Wilkes-Barre ushered in a new era in public transportation on Sept. 19, 1939, The Times Leader reported, when the City Council approved removal of the street car rails, in place for decades. Within just a few weeks, the first trackless trolley buses would arrive. These smooth, quiet buses were powered by electricity from wires overhead. They would remain in service until the late 1950s.
Wyoming Valley got a taste of world-class musicianship on Sept. 24, 1924, when Paul Whiteman and his orchestra gave a jazz concert at Irem Temple, The Times Leader reported. Whiteman had recently premiered and recorded George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, and he and the orchestra played the classic 1920s work for the Wilkes-Barre audience.
Something that had been little seen locally since the Great Depression, a facility serving free meals to the needy, neared reality when on Sept. 17, 1982, the Wilkes-Barre Zoning Hearing Board approved a plan for the St. Vincent de Paul Kitchen, The Times Leader reported. When the planned South Pennsylvania Avenue site faced opposition, the kitchen was shifted to East Jackson Street.
People in the Wyoming Valley were shocked to read the headline “Nazis take Rome” in The Times Leader for Sept. 19, 1943. But they took comfort in news of Allied success elsewhere – and in patriotic movies. “So Proudly We Hail,” a tale of heroic nurses in the Pacific, was playing at the Capitol in Wilkes-Barre. The Hart featured “The Boy from Stalingrad,” a story about America’s Russian allies.
Northeastern Pennsylvania was a key battleground in the presidential election of 1960. On Sept. 19, Republican candidate Richard Nixon addressed a huge crowd on Wilkes-Barre’s Public Square. Five weeks later Democrat John F. Kennedy came to town, filling the square with a rally of his own. In the November election Kennedy would outpoll Nixon in Luzerne County on his way to victory.
Local sports fans saw something new as the high school football season of 1937 opened – two conferences, The Times Leader reported. The larger, more powerful schools made up the Wyoming Valley Conference, with Nanticoke winning the first championship. Most remaining schools played in the Luzerne County Conference, with West Wyoming capturing the title at season’s end.
Streetcar travel apparently was not the safest way to navigate the streets of Wyoming Valley in the early 20th century. The Times Leader reported. On Oct. 16, 1908, a streetcar ran away down a hill near Grove Street in Wilkes-Barre, sending several people to the hospital. Days later, a switching mishap caused a streetcar and a coal train to collide on Wyoming Avenue on the West Side, producing more injuries.
A magnificent local institution – Kirby Park – neared reality at last, The Times Leader reported, when dime-store magnate Fred M. Kirby announced on Oct. 19, 1920, he would put up $250,000 to build the park on land Wilkes-Barre was piecing together on the west side of the Susquehanna River, in an area known as the flats.
The Greater Nanticoke Area School District faced a possible state takeover because financial problems had piled up, The Times Leader concluded in a huge investigative report on Oct. 9, 1997. The paper cited “runaway” salaries and failure to make economies. Under Superintendent Tony Perrone, however, the district got its house in order and avoided takeover.
Some of Wyoming Valley’s favorite food products of 50 or more years ago were homegrown, ads in The Times Leader show. A typical issue from 1950 advertises chocolate cakes from Blue Ribbon Bakery, of Kingston, and milk from Purvin Dairy, of Wilkes-Barre. Other local favorites were Laddies potato chips, Carr’s cookies and Golden Quality ice cream.
The Vietnam War stirred passions perhaps greater than any other war in America’s history did. On Oct. 15, 1969, The Times Leader reported, a crowd estimated at 1,000 gathered on Wilkes-Barre’s Public Square for a peace vigil. Despite such evidence of dissatisfaction, though, American forces would not withdraw until 1975.
Generally, political leaders espousing radical ideas find few followers. But during the desperate times of the Great Depression, at least one of them drew a lot of attention in Wyoming Valley. On Sept. 1, 1937, The Times Leader reported, Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party drew an estimated 1,000 people when he gave a talk in Wilkes-Barre’s Kirby Park. Thomas ran unsuccessfully for president six times.
HOME-GROWN TERRORISM was unfortunately common in Wyoming Valley decades ago, according to reports in The Times Leader. On Oct. 18, 1927, St. John’s Church in Pittston was hit by a bomb. On Nov. 10, another bomb went off at the entrance to West Pittston High School. That same day dynamite with a lighted fuse was found along railroad tracks near Pittston. No one was reported injured in the incidents.
The area’s economy has changed dramatically since the days of the labor shortage in the garment industry. On Oct. 18, 1973, The Times Leader ran an article in which company owners lamented their inability to find enough workers. Said one, “The future is very dark.” About 15,000 people worked in garment factories throughout Luzerne County in those days, the paper noted, and many understaffed factories worked far below capacity.
Civil defense and military authorities were pleased by the success of a blackout held in the area on Oct. 18, 1941, The Times Leader reported. In fact, authorities said, U.S. Army planes sent over Wyoming Valley to play the role of enemy aircraft trying to find “targets” were unable to see anything. American cities held occasional practice blackouts during World War II, turning out all their lights in case an air attack should come.
When Kingston and West Pittston held their centennials in 1957 they advocated a practice that few towns in a festive mood bother with today. Centennial planners urged all men in their towns to grow long beards during festival week in September and call themselves “Brothers of the Brush” for the duration. Many women got into the spirit of the centennial by wearing 19th-century dresses in public.
Fans of comic strips with sharp political commentary rejoiced on Oct. 1, 1984, when The Times Leader ran a front-page article announcing that, after a break of 18 months, it would resume running the controversial strip “Doonesbury” on the comics page. That day’s strip featured an unseen God calling President Ronald Reagan on a special White House telephone to offer advice.
THE JUSTICE SYSTEM hid little from the public a century ago. On Oct. 14, 1908, The Times Leader reported, Luzerne County held its first double hanging when two local men convicted of murder went to the gallows one right after the other. Counties in those days conducted their own executions on prison property. Earlier, hangings in Luzerne County had been done in the open before crowds.
Fred Morgan Kirby, who had already put huge sums of money into creating Kirby Park for Wilkes-Barre, on Oct. 21, 1931, announced an endowment of $600,000 to start a health center for the people of the community, The Times Leader reported. Located on North Franklin Street in Wilkes-Barre, the Kirby Health Center has offered health services to countless thousands of people since.
The shift away from urban downtowns accelerated when on Oct. 22, 1958, the Narrows Shopping Center in Edwardsville held its grand opening, The Times Leader reported. Shoppers were immediately drawn by the ease of approach on U.S. Route 11 and the acres of free parking. With the nearby Gateway Shopping Center already established, local retailing was entering a new era.
A woman of compassion and vision was honored when on Oct. 9, 1922, the community dedicated a statue of Ellen Webster Palmer on Wilkes-Barre’s River Common. Palmer, concerned about the futures of the young boys who worked in and about the coal mines, had founded the Boys Industrial Association to provide the education they would need for better jobs.
The F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts has been providing pleasure and entertainment for more than 20 years. In 1992, however, the downtown Wilkes-Barre venue was experiencing financial trouble, The Times Leader reported. The newspaper was upbeat in an Oct. 8 editorial, calling for a communitywide effort to save it. “The Wyoming Valley won’t let the Kirby die,” the paper vowed.
Both local political parties utilized star power in the hotly contested presidential election of 1940, when Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt battled challenger Wendell Willkie, The Times Leader reported. On Oct. 19, the Democrats brought in former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, while just two days later the Republicans offered Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of the former president.
AN ERA ENDED on Oct. 28, 1980, when Retreat State Hospital closed its doors for good, The Times Leader reported. The institution had provided mental health care for decades. State officials had said closure would save $6.5 million a year. The site once occupied by the hospital, in Newport Township, is now used for a state prison.
After a trial that made national headlines, Robert Edwards of Edwardsville, on Oct. 6, 1934, was found guilty of first-degree murder, The Times Leader reported. Prosecutors said Edwards killed his girlfriend, Freda McKechnie, and left her body in Harveys Lake. The case was nicknamed the “American Tragedy murder” because it paralleled the story of a popular novel of the 1920s by that name.
Troubled by major mine cave-ins, Forty Fort officials held an emergency session on Oct. 16, 1959, and wrote to President Eisenhower, requesting aid, The Times Leader reported. Within days, U.S. Sen. Hugh Scott joined in the request, and a few days after that Gov. David L. Lawrence visited Forty Fort to see the damaged areas. Plains Township and Wilkes-Barre had also suffered cave-ins recently.
Wilkes College’s incredible streak of 32 consecutive football victories came to a halt on Oct. 16, 1969, The Times Leader reported, when the Colonels of coach Rollie Schmidt fell 13-7 to Ithaca College. Wilkes finished the campaign with a record of 6-2, dropping its last game to Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The streak remains a high point for the school’s athletics.
With the Ku Klux Klan looking for a place to hold a march and rally, Wilkes-Barre City Council on Oct. 22, 1925, enacted a law forbidding the wearing of masks in public for the purpose of violence or troublemaking, The Times Leader reported. The new law was the brainchild of Mayor Daniel L. Hart, who hoped to head off a large regional gathering of Klansmen.
Wyoming Valley saw a lot of partying on the evening of Oct. 22, 1980, The Times Leader reported under the headline “Phanatic fury,” when the Philadelphia Phillies captured their first World Series championship. Said an editorialist in summing up the victory’s impact on Northeastern Pennsylvania, “… civilization, its wars, tragedies and majesty slipped away…”
The people of Wilkes-Barre had reason to be proud when on Oct. 26, 1942, the Department of the Navy notified Mayor Charles Loveland that a new cruiser would be named the USS Wilkes-Barre. The name had been scheduled for a previous cruiser, but another name had been substituted at the last moment. The USS Wilkes-Barre would see much action during World War II.
The people of Kingston had more than a passing interest in the naming of a new administrator on Oct. 5, 1993, The Times Leader reported. The municipality was looking at an expected $3.4 million shortfall by year’s end, and James Phillips’ job was to bring a financial turnaround. Kingston managed to get its house in order and avoid possible state intervention.
Talk about calling a penalty. On Oct. 4, 1937, The Times Leader reported, the Luzerne High School football team went on strike when the school board did not grant passes to the players’ parents. When the board gave in, the team returned to the field. Luzerne, playing in the first season of the new Wyoming Valley Conference, finished the season with a record of 7-4.
Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower won Luzerne County’s vote in November 1952, but it wasn’t because the Democrats didn’t try, The Times Leader reported. On Oct. 17, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Sparkman visited Wilkes-Barre. Five days later, President Harry Truman appeared to boost the Democrats’ cause. Then on Oct. 29, presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson paid a visit.
Potato raising was a hotly contested activity in Luzerne County decades ago. On Oct. 14, 1927, The Times Leader reported, W.B. Tressler of Conyngham Valley raised 441.5 bushels to the acre, while Ralph Hosler of Salem Township raised 528.5. But they were both defeated by Ray Briggs of Briggsville, whose total of 640 bushels on 1 acre made him one of the top farmers in the state.
The area got a new type of school when Luzerne County Community College opened its doors on Oct. 2, 1967, The Times Leader reported. The two-year college started on North River Street in Wilkes-Barre but within a few years had moved to a huge campus in Nanticoke. The original student body numbered fewer than 1,000, compared to the more than 16,000 the school claims today.
Disease played a larger role in people’s lives than it typically does today, old issues of local newspapers show. On Aug. 3, 1913, The Times Leader reported, an epidemic of scarlet fever struck Sugar Notch. By Nov. 28, Wilkes-Barre health officials were alarmed over 30 cases of diphtheria and seven deaths for the month. Overall, though, pneumonia was the biggest killer of the time.
At this time of year 23 years ago Wyoming Valley was faced with not one but two teacher strikes, The Times Leader reported. As of Nov. 1 the Crestwood teachers had been striking for three weeks, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the Wilkes-Barre Area teachers had called a one-day strike and said more were possible.
GAR High School and Florida State University basketball star Bob Sura was slowly adjusting to his new role as a reserve for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA, The Times Leader reported as the 1995 season opened. Sura, a guard, pointed to a recent game in which he’d scored seven points and had three assists in just 12 minutes as proof he was confident of his skills.
The Wyoming Valley Airport, straddling the border between Forty Fort and Wyoming, became a transportation hub on Nov. 16, 1937, The Times Leader reported. On that date, American Airlines began service by 21-passenger planes, making it a stop on Newark-to-Chicago flights. A decade later, the larger planes would shift to the new Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Airport in Pittston Township.
One young woman was killed and 18 were injured when the Powell Squib Factory in Plymouth blew up on Nov. 6, 1910, The Times Leader reported. A resulting fire burned the adjacent house of John Powell. Squibs were fuses used in setting off dynamite in underground coal mines, and their manufacture was highly dangerous, often producing deadly explosions.
An escaped prisoner who had just robbed a Kingston bank Nov. 1, 1993, might have been better off if he had kept running, according to an account in The Times Leader. The 40-year-old West Nanticoke man was caught shortly after he stopped in a nearby restaurant for pastry and coffee. Police said that four days earlier he and another prisoner disarmed two deputies transporting them and fled.
The idea might seem almost quaint now, but a few decades ago the length of young people’s hair was a hotly debated subject. So it was that on Nov. 7, 1970, according to The Times Leader, U.S. Judge William J. Nealon in Scranton ruled the Blue Ridge School District within its rights in making a student cut his shoulder-length hair.
A half-century and more ago, the only question about gasoline prices that was on the minds of Wyoming Valley residents was how low they could go, Times Leader articles indicate. By today’s standards the cost of a fill-up was already a pittance, and a price war in the fall of 1953 lowered them still more. By Nov. 2, at least one area service station was selling its gasoline for 12.2 cents a gallon.
Fearing that America would be drawn into the fighting flaring in Europe, some local people made their sentiments known through peace parades in the late 1930s, according to Times Leader articles. On Nov. 11, 1937, the regular Armistice Day parade in Kingston and Wilkes-Barre stressed military might and preparedness, while a separate parade emphasized the horrors of war.
A big registration edge doesn’t necessarily mean victory, Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale learned of Luzerne County in 1984, according to Times Leader articles. Democrats outnumbered Republicans by five-to-three in the county at that time, but Mondale was badly beaten in the county by Ronald Reagan in the Nov. 6 election. Nearly all other Democrats won, however.
The Berwick High School football team thrilled all Northeastern Pennsylvania on Dec. 7, 1996, when it won the school’s third consecutive state Class AAA title, beating Blackhawk 34-13, according to The Times Leader. Much of the credit for the season had to go to the defense, which allowed opponents an average of just 6.5 points a game.
The local election of 1919 was probably one of the dirtiest in Luzerne County’s history, The Times Leader articles indicate. Several arrests and legal actions grew out of them. On Nov. 1, the following year, five election officers from Wilkes-Barre got a year in jail, a $100 fine and seven years disenfranchisement after being found guilty of fraud.
As the freewheeling 1960s drew to a close and women’s clothing styles began to change, an advice column in The Times Leader for Oct. 10, 1969, asked the question “What would you do with a collection of pass mini skirts?” After evaluating several alternatives, the writer concluded that the best course of action would be simply to hang onto them because short skirts would always be useful.
Most local people ignored President Roosevelt’s proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the third Thursday of the month in November 1941, and observed it on the traditional fourth Thursday, The Times Leader reported. Tiring of the controversy, which began several years earlier, Congress soon acted to define Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday, where it remains today.
Death was an ever-present reality for the anthracite region’s coal miners during the industry’s heyday. On Nov. 9, 1909, The Times Leader reported, nine men died in a gas explosion at the Auchincloss Mine in Nanticoke. In a typical year, 100 or more men in Luzerne County alone could lose their lives at work. Single deaths were so common that they barely rated mention in area newspapers.
Wilkes-Barre’s largest department store became even larger and more modern when on Nov. 8, 1954, The Times Leader reported, The Boston Store dedicated its huge expansion from South Main Street to South Franklin Street. The new structure was topped with a parkade. The store had been founded in 1879. Today, under the name Boscov’s, it remains a fixture of the city’s downtown.
Before high school football playoffs were invented, the Thanksgiving Day game ruled. Families would schedule dinner around a trip to the stadium to see traditional rivals clash, ending the season and perhaps settling championships. The games often drew enormous crowds. On Thanksgiving Day 1959, Meyers defeated GAR before more than 13,000 fans, The Times Leader reported.
The area’s motorists were saddened when in November 1953, The Times Leader reported, a local gasoline price war began to end. Within days, the cost of a gallon had soared to as much as 23.9 cents at some service stations. During the weeks of price-cutting that autumn, some dealers had been selling fuel for only about one-third that much, and it was possible to fill up the average tank for about $1.50.
The area’s coal miners had a busy Thanksgiving in 1944, The Times Leader reported. With World War II at its height and coal production vital for defense industries, federal authorities ordered the mines to operate even on the holiday. Mining was as dangerous as ever. Just weeks earlier three men had been killed at the Franklin Mine in flooding that followed an explosion.
No one was getting rich playing minor league baseball in the depression-era 1930s. After the 1932 season, The Times Leader reported, the owners of teams in the New York-Pennsylvania League met and considered a plan to lower player salaries to $2,000 a month per team. Ultimately, though, they decided against it. Assuming about 25 players to a team, the change would have meant average salaries of about $80 per man a month.
The area’s shrinking anthracite industry got a much-needed boost in the autumn of 1961, The Times Leader reported, when the first trainload of coal left the Ashley yards for shipment overseas. Under a new federal rule, all United States military bases in Germany were to burn Pennsylvania anthracite for their energy needs. Longtime Congressman Daniel J. Flood had been instrumental in creating the policy.
Local baseball fans had a lot of good memories after the 1911 season ended, since the Wilkes-Barre team in the New York State League had enjoyed a truly spectacular season, according to The Times Leader.The local club moved into first place on the first day of the season, held it continuously until year’s end and finished nine games ahead of second-place finisher Elmira. The feat was a first for the league.
Honor rolls listing the names of men and women in military service were springing up all over Wyoming Valley in 1942. On Nov. 15 alone, Times Leader records show, two Wilkes-Barre voting wards – the first and 14th – set up their monuments. A photo shows the 14th Ward dedication, on Parrish Street, of a billboard-size honor roll, with a huge crowd attending to pay homage. Most honor rolls vanished once the war ended.
The area’s clergy breathed easier on Dec. 5, 1979, The Times Leader reported, after a special showing of a TV movie “Mary and Joseph: A Story of Faith.” Erroneous reports had indicated that the movie, scheduled to be shown Dec. 9 on WBRE-TV, Channel 28, played fast and loose with Scripture. To reassure the public, management of Channel 28 set up the preview for 20 clergy, who ended up praising the movie.
The death of Josephine Houghton Smith of Forty Fort at 79 on Nov. 20, 1920, removed a true witness to history from the community’s midst, according to The Times Leader. Mrs. Houghton had been present at the assassination of Pres. Abraham Lincoln in April, 1865. As the governess for the daughter of the owner of Ford’s Theatre, she had been in the theater on the night of the slaying.
“BLACK FRIDAY” is no modern invention, if accounts from a half-century ago in The Times Leader are to be believed. All over Wyoming Valley on Nov. 25, 1955, shoppers were jamming stores in pursuit of bargains as they inaugurated the Christmastime shopping season. Downtown Wilkes-Barre was the biggest shopping area in Luzerne County in those days, with shopping centers still a few years ahead.
The community rejoiced on Dec. 3, 1966, The Times Leader reported, when a family of four was found safe in the woods of the Poconos after their plane ran out of fuel during bad weather and crashed. Hampered by fog, some 300 searchers had initially failed to find the family and suspended the search. But when daylight arrived the searchers went back to work and this time was successful.
While war was raging in Europe and Asia in 1943, Wyoming Valley faced an enemy of its own – a deadly influenza outbreak, according to The Times Leader. In mid-December, people began falling ill. On the 16th, the Wilkes-Barre hospitals closed to visitors in an attempt to check the disease. Within days, the Plains Township and Wyoming schools, as well as all area Catholic schools, shut down as a precaution.
Wyoming Valley lost one of its icons when on Dec. 27, 1953, cartoonist Ham Fisher died in his New York City studio, The Times Leader reported. Fisher, a one-time local newspaper artist, had created Joe Palooka, for decades one of the most popular comic strips in America. The strip spawned a radio show, movies and comic books. Despite Fisher’s death, it continued under another artist until the 1980s.
The Christmas season of 1970 was threatened by a Santa shortage, The Times Leader reported on Dec. 4 of that year. The state Bureau of Employment Security in Wilkes-Barre announced it had placed six Santas in stores and shopping centers throughout Wyoming Valley but kept getting calls for more. The going rate for a Santa in those days was $2 an hour, not exactly a jolly sum.
The new year of 1921 got off to a rocky start for area saloonkeepers when they were visited by the Rev. R.E. Johnson, the famous “raiding parson” of Philadelphia, The Times Leader reported. In mid-January, Johnson charged they were selling something stronger than the legally permitted and very weak forms of alcohol. The 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, later repealed, was a controversial issue all through the decade.
One of the most pressing needs the area faced was for a 911 emergency calling system, The Times Leader said on Dec. 4, 1994. The paper quoted a national survey that found that about a third of the people didn’t know what number to call for police help. The nearby counties of Columbia, Monroe, Wyoming and Lackawanna already had the 911 system, the paper pointed out.
Wyoming Valley was honored on Dec. 13, 1909, The Times Leader reported, when famed explorer Robert E. Peary, considered the first man to reach the North Pole, gave his first public talk on the feat in Wilkes-Barre. Peary filled the Irem Temple, even though the best seats cost $2.50. That was 50 times the price of a typical movie theatre ticket in those days. Imagine a comparable markup today.
It isn’t the modern-day stores that invented amenities to make shopping easier for the busy customer, old issues of The Times Leader indicate. On Jan. 14, 1922 MacWilliam’s Department Store in Wilkes-Barre was advertising that it now offered an in-store barber shop for the men and a playroom for kids. MacWilliam’s was on Public Square and later operated under the name Pomeroy’s.
Shoppers in downtown Wilkes-Barre during the Christmas season of 1937 were learning to cope with something new – parking meters. Seeing a way to raise more money as the Great Depression lingered, the city had installed hundreds of them earlier in the year. By today’s standards, though, they were a bargain. For a nickel you could get 45 minutes of parking.
It became easier for residents of the West Side to get their hands on a good book when the new Hoyt Library opened in a former private home on Wyoming Avenue in Kingston on Jan. 2, 1928, The Times Leader reported. The library grew steadily over succeeding decades. However, it suffered disaster in February 2007 when the roof over the main stacks area collapsed during an ice storm, necessitating a shutdown and major repairs.
In December 1955 some leading local citizens gathered to discuss forming a new method of raising money for worthy causes – a joint effort to be known as the United Fund. Three months later the charities themselves agreed to band together, and later in 1956 the first drive was held, The Times Leader reported. The initial effort raised a spectacular $1.26 million, more than 94 percent of the goal.
Northeastern Pennsylvania got one of the most remarkable buildings in its history on Dec. 15, 1908, when the Irem Temple was dedicated, The Times Leader reported. The huge quasi-Middle Eastern structure, built by the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine group, has been the site of countless concerts, plays, meetings, graduations and other events in its 100 years and is a candidate for a new role in Wilkes-Barre’s downtown development.
An era ended on Dec. 31, 1952, The Times Leader reported, when the last Laurel Line electric rail car left Wilkes-Barre for Scranton. Since the early years of the century the company had provided frequent and daily service in the Hazleton-Scranton corridor. Improvement of highways and growth in use of the automobile eventually made the Laurel Line less vital.
Sometimes progress comes with a price. In late November 1960, The Times Leader reported, the old Simon Long Store building on Wilkes-Barre’s South Main Street was sold to make way for the city’s first municipal parking garage – now known as Park and Lock Central. The department store, built in 1898, was an architectural marvel, with a striking front made almost entirely of glass with slender metal supports.
During the prohibition era, Christmas cheer sometimes turned into Christmas tragedy. On Dec. 15, 1923, The Times Leader reported, Luzerne County Coroner Dr. Frank Thomas warned people against drinking homemade alcohol – or “moonshine” – because it could be poorly manufactured and dangerous. He pointed out that so far that year 36 local people had died from drinking the illegal stuff.
Barely a dozen years ago the Hazleton Area Public Library took criticism from some parents when they found it was offering some children’s books with openly homosexual characters in the stories. On Dec. 2, 1995, The Times Leader quoted a library official who cited the institution’s educational mission, saying it has “a responsibility to have materials which present different points of view.”
With World War II just ended and the Great Depression becoming a distant memory, people throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania went traveling in huge numbers during the Christmas season of 1945. So crowded was the railroad system that on Dec. 22, The Times Leader reported, most trains were packed and ticket agents were putting up signs offering standing room only for passengers.
The holidays were an unhappy time for many area children and their families in late 1911 and early 1912, The Times Leader reported. An outbreak of measles in December became a full-blown epidemic. On Jan. 2, 92 cases were reported in Wilkes-Barre in that one day. On Jan. 16 the city’s schools shut down, and children were banned from attending movies. Eventually nearly 2,000 kids would fall ill, and eight would die.
Checks mailed to the homes of many local people on Dec. 21, 1937, didn’t exactly gladden hearts, The Times Leader reported. The checks were partial refunds of deposits made in several banks in Wilkes-Barre and Plains Township. Federal authorities had closed the banks when they became unsound and depositors got back only small fractions of the money they had placed in their accounts.
Parents probably had an easier time buying gifts for their children in the pre-computer tech days of the early 1970s, if a Kmart circular included with The Times Leader on Dec. 2, 1973, is any guide. Suggested gifts included a plastic rescue truck for $6.99, a baby carriage for dolls at $5.88 and – for parents who had musical ambitions for the kids or a high tolerance for noise – a complete drum and cymbal set for $19.97. |
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