Turning Back The Pages

100 years ago — June 1921

SALISBURY — Mr. A.W. Pearce sailed for England on Wednesday.

LAKEVILLE — Master Clement Bauman had the misfortune to be thrown from his wheel near Roberts Store on Monday morning striking on the cement road and inflicting painful cuts and bruises about his face.

The Saturday train service on the C.N.E. road under the new schedule is the worst ever. Towns all along the line are up in arms because there is no train service west of Winsted after 1.57. Petitions protesting against the ridiculous schedule will be circulated. The railroad management puts up a big kick about jitney competition, but by such moves as that of changing the Saturday schedule they simply invite the jitneys to operate. People living along the line should kick, and kick high, hard and fast, till some attention is paid to their needs and convenience by the railway company.

LIME ROCK — Mr. and Mrs. Arnott returned Monday from their wedding trip and expect to make their home here in the near future.

50 years ago — June 1971

It is illegal to “hitch” rides in Connecticut, Lieut. Richard Day, commander of Canaan State Police Barracks, reminded residents this week.

Eighty-eight friends of Edward D. Thurston Jr. of Calkinstown Road in Sharon attended a dinner at the White Hart Inn in Salisbury to honor him for his work with child patients at the Sharon Hospital. Participants presented a projector to the children’s ward at the hospital in the name of the 90-year-old Sharon resident who, for many years, has made the small patients his particular charge.

Richmond Wilcox Landon, 72, a former resident of Salisbury and son of the late Judge Howard F. Landon and Juliette (Wilcox) Landon, died Sunday, June 13, at his home in Lynbrook, Long Island. Born here in November of 1898, he was a retired advertising executive. As a Yale undergraduate in 1920 he broke the world’s high jump record with a leap of 6 feet, 4 and 2/5 inches at the Olympic games in Antwerp. It was there that he met his wife, Alice H. Lord, who was a member of the Olympic high diving team. They were married in 1921.

SHARON — PTA Scholarship Award winner Melanie Aakjar, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter L. Aakjar, has been accepted at the Stamford School of Nursing in Stamford, Conn. She will attend the nursing school starting in September.

25 years ago — June 1996

CORNWALL — Two controversial gravel mining applications were turned down last week by the Planning and Zoning Commission. But one of them, a proposal by FSB Associates to dig 50,000 cubic yards of sand and stone along the Housatonic River in Cornwall Bridge, may be back. The other proposal, from singer/songwriter James Taylor, is not likely to reappear on its own. Taylor said in a telephone interview this week he never intended to take a single rock out of the ground. “I did it to bring as much attention to the issue as possible,” he said. The idea, he explained, was to dramatize the danger of approving any gravel mining in this vulnerable and beautiful landscape.

LAKEVILLE — The life of a renowned local auto mechanic killed in an accident last Thursday will be celebrated Wednesday at the White Hart Inn in Salisbury. William L. “Murph” Mayberry, 63, of Lakeville died after he lost control of a 1995 Ford F-150 pickup truck on a Route 41 curve near The Woodland restaurant. A party in Mayberry’s honor will be held June 19 at the White Hart Inn from 5 to 8 p.m. No memorial service or funeral was held because Mayberry wrote in his will that he wished to be remembered by friends with a celebratory party. Mayberry, a former racer himself in the 1950s and early 1960s, worked on race cars driven by some of the biggest names in professional racing including Roger Penske. He was also a mechanic for four teams that won the Indianapolis 500 race working on vehicles that ushered A.J. Foyt into the winner’s circle in 1961 and 1964 and cars that carried Al Unser to Indy glory in 1970 and 1971.

FALLS VILLAGE — Denny Jacobs, urged on by his six-year-old son David, and Bill Beebe quit work every evening, pick up their tools and spend until nightfall scraping, torching, sawing and restoring old C621, a caboose built in 1944 for the New York, New Haven, Hartford Railroad Co. The caboose is retired now, anchored to a short stretch of track next to the Housatonic Railroad line in the center of town. The idea is to turn this side-lined railroad car into a visitors’ center.

These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible. To find more archival stories from The Lakeville Journal and other area newspapers, go to www.scovillelibrary.org.