‘Cardinal’ Charlie Gill: United Service League formed in 1946
Published 7:54 am Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Here are some more of the old 1946 things I found in the Dowagiac Daily News.
The United Service League opened for its ninth year.
The league rooms are over Ferguson Vulcanizing on E. Division Street.
Anyone having anything to donate may call Mrs. Carl Ullery or Mrs. Jack L. Pollock.
Paul Bakeman directed the Civic Chorus sponsored by the Allied Arts Guild.
Dowagiac Conservation Club used to meet in the library basement. This was when D.C. “Dub” Marshall was president.
This was in one of Bereniece’s back-page columns, Here and There About Dowagiac.
Joe Winchester was injured recently while playing football and he wasn’t playing against Three Rivers, either.
It happened in Germany, where he is stationed, and he would be pleased to hear from his friends while he is laid up.
Oct. 7, 1946: Mr. and Mrs. Lenard Bright of Dowagiac, who with Mr. and Mrs. Carl McKenzie recently purchased the Marcellus News, will both leave Dowagiac and move to Marcellus.
Saturday, Sept. 21, 1946: This was when the paper had on the front page Service Notes. This was addresses of local boys in the service. Remember when newspapers came on Saturdays?
Ad: There must be more used fats before there can be more soap. Turn in more used fats and get four cents for every pound. Dowagiac Refrigerated Lockers, G.L. Boyce, prop., 510 S. Front, Ph. #525.
Robert Paxson’s father, Edgar L. Paxson, who lived on McOmber Street, as a builder built more than 16 homes and buildings. Perhaps a dozen are on Division Street and behind it, east of Beeson Street. Some are also scattered on Main Street. He also designed and built the World War I soldiers monument at Main and Front.
In the 1920s, he started the Paxson Co. in the basement of Powell Print Shop on S. Front.
He developed and made well-known Bearcat power saw rigs. I’ve mentioned the Paxsons family before over the years. One brother was killed in an airplane crash with my old neighbor, Howard Anthony.
Leon Pray and wife from Illinois spent Sunday with the M.L. Secor family. Mrs. Secor was Leon’s sister.
Leon was a well-known taxidermist for the Field Museum in Chicago who I have written about before.
1946: Harry Whiteley, in one of his editorials, told about his trip to northern lower and upper Michigan when he took his wife to show it to her.
Ads for Hiemstra and Redner grocery stores – “call your order in by 11 a.m. to get a delivery that day.”
Oct. 8, 1946: Mary Ellen Casey. Math and science rate high and she plans to attend a commercial art school to take an advertising course.
In the Hi Sheet, Victor Woodrick, the ag teacher, talked about his plane crash when he was in the Army Air Corps.
It happened in a B26 Martin Marauder, which was known as a flying coffin or a widow maker. Senior class of ’47, Bob Mosher was president, Bea Bray was vice president, Helen Keyser was secretary and Donna Armstrong was treasurer.
“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City.
E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.