news-record.com

75 years ago
From Greensboro Daily News, April 1936 
Jimmy Maus, former catcher for the Greensboro Patriots, is working hard to prepare the Reidsville Luckies for the upcoming season in the Bi-State Class D baseball league.

Maus, 27, is player-manager of the Luckies. Besides managing the team, he will be behind the plate most of the games, although Reidsville will have another, younger guy to back him up.

The Reidsville owner turned to Maus for this season after experiencing a disastrous 1935 season in which the Luckies finished last in the league.

A former star at the University of North Carolina in both baseball and football, Maus caught for several St. Louis Cardinal teams, including part of last season with the Greensboro Patriots.

Maus has virtually an entirely new team to work with — only three players from 1935 were resigned by the Luckies. These are pitchers Frank Johnson and Paul Paynick and second baseman Howard Briggs. The rest of the players are from other parts of the country with only a few being known in this area. 

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Allen H. Gwyn of Reidsville, solicitor for the 11th Judicial District, announced he is withdrawing as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 5th Congressional District. But Gwyn promised his support for the person who  wins the party’s nomination.

Gwyn’s withdrawal leaves two candidates seeking the nomination: Frank Hancock of Oxford and Allison James of Winston-Salem.
 
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Reidsville Boy Scout executive O.B. Gorman was honored by Scouts now in the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs within the Cherokee Council at a dinner at the Belvedere Hotel in Reidsville. Gorman has accepted a promotion in Scouting to Greenville, S.C.

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Miss Annie Walker of Leaksville was installed as worthy matron and Ernest M. Hodges of Leaksville as worthy patron of Tri-Cities Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star. The service was conducted by Mrs. J.N. Hester of Reidsville, grand matron, with assistance by Walter Irving Jr. grand marshal.

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The price of an Oldsmobile 6 is $665, and an Oldsmobile 8 is $810.

50 years ago
From Greensboro Daily News, April 1961
The winner of the most outstanding entry in the Rockingham County Fine Arts Festival will be presented the Felix E. Fournier Award, an engraved silver punch bowl and tray commissioned by friends of the late Reidsville tobacco company executive.

The winner can keep the award for one year before surrendering  it to the following year’s winner. An engraved sterling silver plate also is given annually to the winner to be kept permanently.

The award will be announced locally at opening night festivities May 5 in the Reidsville High School auditorium along with 60 other first-, second- and third-place finishers.

Judges for the outstanding entry are Paul Bartlett, Abe D. Jones Jr., and Dr. William W. Pierson, all from Greensboro.  

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Madison and Mayodan are preparing for municipal election May 2. Nine candidates have announced in Mayodan, but only incumbents have announced in Madison.

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The Leaksville Pride’s 3069 score withstood assault by 14 other teams, and the Pride won the first annual City Men’s Ten Pin Handicap Tournament. Closest to the Pride’s score was Cone Mills with 2,906. 

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Hugh Citty, former Elon College basketball star, will replace Max Rhodes as basketball coach at Morehead High of Leaksville-Spray-Draper, who coached the team for two years. Citty will teach biology along with his coaching duties. He had an outstanding record at Draper Junior High School.

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During a recent visit to Reidsville, Tom Wilson recalled the early ’20s when he went to high school there. He talked with Mutt Burton and Howard Roach about those days. He also talked about his service days during World War II and the Korean War.

He was accompanied on this rare visit to Reidsville by his wife, Peg Wilson, a former Long Island girl who now shares a home with him at Norwich, Conn., where he is a senior boundary engineer with the Connecticut State Highway Department.

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Reidsville High scored a run in the 10th inning to beat Bessemer High 4-3 in a pitcher’s duel between Paul Briggs and Jimmy McNeil at Bessemer. Briggs scattered eight hits in getting the win.

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The price of a Dodge Dart is $1,879.76.

25 years ago
From Greensboro News & Record, April 1986
As maintenance supervisor, Robert Bondurant carried on at Chinqua Penn Plantation after the plantation’s owner, UNCG, announced it could not afford to open it for another season.

Then when he saw a truck “with all our Easter lilies in it,” he struggled with the pain of knowing all the work he and his maintenance crew had done would not be seen by hundreds of tourists walking through the gardens.

But N.C. State agreed to take over plantation administration and was rewarded with a $500,000 grant from the state. N.C. State promised to open the house and gardens to visitors this fall. 
 
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Misti Louise Webster of Madison has been awarded a $1,000 Jefferson-Pilot Scholarship for studies this fall at UNCG. A senior at Madison-Mayodan High School, she intends to major in English and plans a career in education.

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The county school board approved a 1966-67 budget of $12.84 million, including $1.8 million capital outlay funding that includes money for new classrooms at Rockingham County Senior High School in Wentworth.

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Libby Cole was surprised, and pleasantly so, to find Market Square in downtown Reidsville buzzing with activity as people gathered to clean it up.

These consisted of people who normally gather there to talk and to socialize in pool hall bars. Instead of a daylong job, the cleanup was done by 9 a.m., when Patti Berger, chairwoman of the beautification committee for the Reidsville Chamber of Commerce arrived with camera in hand to record the cleanup activity. She instead shot pictures of the removal of waste from the block.

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The price of a 1986 Mazda 323 sedan is $7,695.

10 years ago
From News & Record, April 2001
Despite a nationwide effort to save jobs at Pillowtex Corp., the troubled bedding company announced it would close plants in Newton and Rocky Mount and lay off 290 workers.

Support for Pillowtex workers is especially important in Rockingham County where it is the ninth largest employer and is one of the top 25 taxpayers at $136,632. The company now employs 650 people in Eden.

The county has been hurt by the loss of nearly 3,000 textile jobs since the mid-1990s.

The Dallas-based company, whose brands include Fieldcrest, Cannon and Royal Velvet, is reorganizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy act.

The campaign to build national support for the financially troubled company is being led by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees, which is encouraging people to sign a letter it intends to send the company and Bank of America, the company’s lead creditor.

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The Mayodan Town Council approved a request by the Mayodan Preservation League to place a World War I French cannon in the town’s recently created Veterans Park. The cannon is being given to the town by Mrs. Glenda Richardson on behalf of her late husband, Otis Richardson, who bought the cannon in the 1980s and has kept it in his yard since. He died in 1996.

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The county commissioners approved raising the ambulance fee to $370 from $250 after a study showed the county spent an average of $368.32 per ambulance call. They also gave Kent Greene authority to garnish wages for people whose ambulance bills are unpaid after 90 days.

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County school officials want $14.6 million in county money in the coming school year, up from $13.1 million given this year. Whether they will get that much is problematic since the commissioners will have to weigh the schools’ request against those from other departments.