Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — June 1922

Miss Clara Barnum is ill. Mrs. Hyland is caring for her.

— Mrs. Joseph Beebe has resigned her position at Benjamin’s Store and Miss Mary Finkle has taken her place.

50 years ago — June 1972

The largest senior class ever, 183 students, will receive diplomas Friday evening at 6 p.m. in the 33rd annual commencement exercises of Housatonic Valley Regional High School. John K.M. McCaffery, well-known news commentator, writer and educator, will be the featured speaker.

—The Lakeville Journal and many of its readers were victims of a hoax in the June 8 issue. One of our readers submitted a cleverly written but fictitious “news story” on a truffle hunt to be held June 11 at the Sharon home of “Mr. and Mrs. Miles Messervy.” Unwary editors swallowed the bait, Beluga caviar and all, and the story was printed in the Sharon section of last week’s Journal. On Saturday the Journal office was besieged with phone calls from readers wanting to know the Messervys’ address. Efforts to locate anybody by that name in the seven towns served by the Journal were in vain. A staff member finally recollected that Miles Messervy is the name of the fictional character “M,” head of British Secret Service in Ian Fleming’s James Bond sagas. The discerning 007 would have quickly realized that truffles cannot be cultivated in Northwest Connecticut; that Westphalian pigs and truffle-sniffing hounds are scarce as hen’s teeth, and that the cost of flying in the promised pate de foie gras and caviar from Fortnum and Mason in London would be beyond the expectations of the most eccentric local Croesus. Lured on by the promise of pate and truffles, the editorial staff is now resigned to a diet of crow (plain).

25 years ago — June 1997

LAKEVILLE — The latest check on Lake Wononscopomuc has revealed it is in better health than expected, thanks in part to millions of caddis fly larvae who feast on the milfoil weeds.

SHARON — The town’s new water filtration plant has entered its testing phase, the Sewer and Water Commission announced this week. The state Department of Health recently inspected the nearly completed facility and gave the town permission to start operation of the plant, commission chairman Malcolm Brown said this week.

—Jonathan Wilbur of Sharon, a member of the Housatonic Valley Future Farmers of America organization, has been named the state FFA Wildlife Management winner and awarded $100 at the state FFA convention.