Looking back...

Through The Reporter Files

100 YEARS AGO....

In the wake of problems with Rockdale’s water supply and “general sanitary conditions,” the State Health Department was sending investigators to town. “Citizens who have not complied with sanitary ordinances should proceed to get busy at once,” The Reporter warned.

Lena Wuensche brought in Thorndale’s first cotton bale of 1919. The 520-pound bale brought 32 cents a pound and also claimed the $110 prize donated by the Thorndale business community for the first bale of the season.

But....Prospects for a good cotton yield had faded for the year. The Reporter noted: “the extreme pessimists say we will get about half as many bales in Rockdale as last year.

The Dixie Theater was presenting Charlie Chaplin in “Shoulder Arms.” The entire story line was printed in The Reporter underneath a photo of Chaplin.

FORTY YEARS AGO....

For the first time, Rock-dale ISD teachers were to receive hospitalization insurance. Long a goal of the school board, the school board approved the plan presented by Assistant Supt. for Business Gilbert Bernstein.

Attorney Dean Lynn of Los Angeles warned Rock-dale leaders of what he called “lack of cooperation” in getting library expansion and civic center projects funded from the estate of the late city benefactor Dr. George Patterson. Lynn was administrator of that estate.

Three visitors from Beijing (Peking), China toured Fair Park and rode horses in the Rockdale Roping & Cutting Club arena. The three were guests of Alcoa’s Rock-dale Operations.

Legendary basketball coach Duane Vincent, who compiled a .703 winning percentage, won 359 games and eight district titles at Rockdale High School, resigned to accept a teacher-coaching position in his home state of Alaska.

TWENTY YEARS AGO....

City council members, over the objections of several visitors, voted to increase water rates to fund a line replacement triggered by US 79 project.

Once a 25,000-acre lignite lease, with promises of a power plant and 1,300 jobs, the Rockdale Power Project played out its final chapter as its final 6,700 acres were sold.

The Skilled Nursing Facility at Richards Memorial Hospital was set to close, according to administrator Ed Lynch who said the 10-bed facility’s average occupancy for the past six months was “less than two.”

Playing for the Texas Terminators, an elite girls softball team based in Belton, pitcher Sammie Meyer of Rockdale tossed a no-hitter against a Kansas team in the American Softball Association’s national tourney in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

TEN YEARS AGO....

Somehow, a 73-year-old employee of Milam County Precinct 3 wriggled from the wreckage of his overturned pneumatic roller with nothing more serious, although painful, than two broken ribs, several bruises and a thumb cut.

The City of Rockdale had ordered signs prohibiting the use of cell phones by drivers in school areas.

The new gym in Rock-dale’s (mostly) new high school had a spectacular Tiger head painted on its south wall by RHS seniors Kennedy Cooke-Garza and Corolyn Holub.

Cameron police staked out a local car wash and made what they termed a “major drug arrest,” charging a Cameron resident and recovering 10.6 grams of cocaine.