A glance in the rearview mirror: March 2020

25 years ago this month
• On March 7, 1995, The Town Crier reported on a house fire that occurred on March 1 in a Gregory duplex. Laurie Herman got her two children who were home out safely, but she and her 18-month-old daughter, Ashley Elliott, were transported by helicopter to U of M Hospital. Duplex neighbor Candy St. Charles was home with her three children and another child she was babysitting. They were able to evacuate the duplex unharmed. The paper reported that next-door neighbor Betty Crockett jumped the fence to assist her neighbors when she heard them calling for help.
• Approved by the Stockbridge Board of Education on March 16, 1995: The purchase of five used school buses from Waverly Community Schools (as reported in The Town Crier, March 21, 1995).
• On March 1, 1995, Jon Fillmore purchased the Abbott & Fillmore Agency from his parents, Ron and Hester. (Source: Stockbridge Area 175th Anniversary Souvenir Book compiled by the Stockbridge Area Genealogical/Historical Society.)

50 years ago this month
• The cover story of the March 4, 1970, edition of The Town Crier carried the headline: “He Died on Hill 407. Andy Duszynski Victim of Vietnam Combat.” Duszynski, a local Stockbridge High School graduate (Class of 1967), had been in the Army for less than one year. He died on February 22, 1970. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. John Duszynski of Munith.
• The March 4 edition also reported that the Stockbridge Panthers basketball team finished its first-ever undefeated season of regular play.
• Jill Owen Collins was featured in the March 4 edition for following in the footsteps of her grandfather, Vincent (Stub) Owen, who had been a long-time barber in Stockbridge. She was not alone; she began training in her brother Ridge Owen’s barbershop while their sister Lynn Owen focused on women’s hair care in her own beauty salon.
• 1970 Lenten food specials advertised in The Town Crier by Spadafore’s Food Village:
Fresh Trout Fillet: $1.49/lb.
Fresh Perch: 99¢/lb.
Fresh Smelt: 49¢/lb.

100 years ago this month
• In 1920, much of the news in the Stockbridge Brief-Sun covered national and international news, and even though it was 62 years after the fact, the March 4, 1920, Brief-Sun devoted substantial space to recounting the Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas debate that took place in August 1858. The debate topic: Could people of a U.S. territory exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution. In 1920, the paper considered the seven debates of the Lincoln-Douglas debate series, which were held during the 1858 Illinois state election campaign, to be among the “momentous events of all nations, all ages, and all history.”
• National Boy Scout news was carried in the Brief-Sun, including a “Scout Dog” looking for a new master in Kansas, Boy Scout participation in a victory parade in London, and a 15-year-old boy in Pennsylvania who saved his seven-year-old brother by “offsetting” a copperhead snake bite using Boy Scout first-aid knowledge.
• The headline, KENTUCKY FOR VOTES FOR WOMEN” appeared in the March 18 edition after that state passed a joint resolution of its house and senate to ratify a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, “ending a 30-year fight in the Blue Grass State.”
• Closer to home, the Stockbridge Brief-Sun reported in its March 18 edition that the first meeting of the Field Manufacturing Company was held in Lansing to elect officers. A specially designed broom manufacturing machine was expected to be completed in April that would handle the “roing pressing and riveting, heretofore done by hand” enabling the company to reach capacities of 1,000 to 2,000 brooms a day.
• And for those who commute daily from the Stockbridge area to their jobs around Southeastern Michigan, consider this “travel news” from 1920, as reported in the March 18 Stockbridge Brief-Sun: UNADILLA: Mr. and Mrs. Otis Webb spent Monday and Tuesday in Jackson, and on Thursday, they motored to Howell. GREGORY: George Marshall left on Tuesday to take up his duties as juror in Howell for a short time.