100 YEARS AGO....
The much anticipated baseball game to raise money for Rockdale’s volunteer band was won by the “Leans,” 9-6 over the “Fats.” From The Reporter “coverage”: Dr. Ed Swafford made a home run on a bunt that didn’t travel 15 feet from home plate. (He) can make a clover-fed jackrabbit look like an old and feeble snail.”
A. Longmire and son-in-law H.C. Rawls departed on a fishing trip. Said The Reporter, quoting Longmire, “We will go where we please, stay where we please, stay as long as we want and come back when we get ready.”
E. A. Camp of Rockdale departed for the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Camp had been selected as one of Texas’s 20 electors for the presidential election. He would get to cast that vote in December for Democratic ticket candidates James Cox and Franklin Roosevelt, who carried Texas but lost the election to Republicans Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
Gubernatorial candidate Pat Neff spoke to a crowd of 1,200 on the Milam County Courthouse lawn.
FORTY YEARS AGO....
School trustees delayed a walk-though at the new junior-high school pending an examination of “dead spots” in the gym floor.
A Dallas engineer told school trustees that a drainage study indicated a drainage problem in the Dyer Addition existed before construction of the new junior-high and the new pattern did not make the situation worse.
Milano ISD trustees were discussing whether to call a fall bond election with possible items including renovation of the high school, new agriculture and home economics buildings and a new cafeteria.
Ralph Johnson, who coached Aycock High School to state football and basketball championship, was guest speaker at the annual AHS Reunion.
TWENTY YEARS AGO....
Rockdale Hospital District directors called an Aug. 12 election asking voters to remove the one-cent cap on the district’s property tax. The move was viewed as the first step in a plan to keep the financially-troubled hospital from closing.
Grace Berry, who at 102 was just a few years younger than The Thorndale Champion, for whom she worked as a reporter, announced her retirement. She wrote her first story for the paper in 1936.
A Waco firm announced it was bringing a wireless Internet service to Rockdale.
Texas Football magazine predicted District 18AAA’s “big three” in the upcoming football season would be Cameron, Rockdale and Taylor, in that order.
TEN YEARS AGO....
Demolition of the three older power plant units at Alcoa’s Rockdale Operations, which had provided power to the aluminum smelter for 52 years, was said to be 99.9-percent complete.
A 42-year-old Gause resident survived an attack by so-called “killer bees.” Gause firefighters said the man had been stung more than 100 times and still had about 50 bees in his hair when volunteers arrived.
A drug sting at Cameron’s Varsity Motel by the Milam County Sheriff Department’s Special Investigations Unit netted four arrests.
The Rockdale ISD was still looking for a new principal. Board members had hired Harry “Luke” Allison of Groesbeck for the job, but he turned down the position two days later.
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