Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

INSURANCE CRISIS: The Warwick Boys’ Baseball Association nearly packed up its bats and bases and called off its season after facing a liability insurance crisis. The organization eventually obtained a policy that offered a quarter of the coverage for twice the price. Other youth athletic associations were facing similar challenges as insurance prices soared. (April 11, 1986)

MARKET MASTER: Donald L. Horn, 55, began work as Lancaster city’s new market master, replacing retiring market master Bob Sherts. Horn’s job was to serve as the liaison between City Hall and standholders at the city-owned Central Market. (April 15, 1986)

PRINCIPALS: The Rev. William McDonnell was named principal of Lancaster Catholic High School, replacing the Rev. Joseph Coyne, who was named principal of Bishop McDevitt High School in Harrisburg. McDonnell had been serving as principal of York Catholic High School. (April 15, 1986) (Note: McDonnell died in 1990 at age 46. Coyne died in 2001 at age 57).

LIBYAN RAIDS: A day after U.S. warplanes conducted air raids on Libya to strike “a blow against terrorism” and send a message to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, local travelers were busy changing their plans. Lancaster County travel agencies reported a number of residents were canceling trips to Europe and elsewhere out of concern that the raids would spur counterattacks aimed at Americans abroad. (April 15 and 16, 1986)

50 years ago

HOSPITAL COSTS: The cost of hospitalization for any catastrophic illness will soon be completely out of reach for all but “a very minute” portion of the population, Dr. Donald C. Smelzer (right), executive director of Lancaster General Hospital, declared in a panel discussion sponsored by Lancaster Manufacturers’ Association. Smelzer painted a somber picture of spiraling costs and “inadequate” hospitalization insurance formulas. (April 12, 1961)

TRAGIC FIRE: Fire swept through the small frame home of a large family in Newville, west of Elizabethtown, killing six brothers and sisters ages 3 to 14. The victims’ mother and one of their brothers were in critical condition. Officials said it was one of the worst fires in Lancaster County history. (April 14, 1961)

F&M RIOT: Armed with a litany of complaints about college policies and food, a high-pitched mob of students, many wearing Bermuda shorts and with towels around their heads, ran wild on the Franklin & Marshall College campus.
Students threw mudballs at police, whipped eggs at college officials and hurled stones at firemen. Motorists had their car stalled, and a police car was rocked back and forth on College Avenue.
Yelling youths also carried burning effigies of F&M executives across the campus and lit a bonfire fueled by college property. (April 13, 1961) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

PLANT CLOSING: Slaymaker Inc., one of Lancaster city’s oldest manufacturers, closed its doors after 98 years in business. Formerly Slaymaker Lock Co. Inc., the South West End Avenue company had been bought by local management and an investment group in February 1985 in an attempt to save the struggling operation.
But officials said two factors were too difficult to overcome: declining sales because of competition from locks made oversees and the rising cost of insurance. (April 4, 1986)

COPTER CRASH: A rescue attempt turned into a near disaster when a helicopter crashed in darkness into the Susquehanna River while its crew was searching for a young man stranded in a boating accident. Other rescuers pulled the pilot and his two passengers onto a boat, and the helicopter sank out of site.
The helicopter was owned by International Signal & Control Group, which had volunteered its use for the search. On board were James H. Guerin, 55, the firm’s chairman, pilot Duane D. Heist, 43, and co-pilot Robert J. Rummel, 36. The boater remained missing. (April 5, 1986)

‘WITNESS’ VIDEO: Local video stores reported huge advance demand for the movie “Witness,” starring Harrison Ford (left) and largely filmed in Lancaster County. Local stores planned to price the soon-to-be-released videocassette at $59.95 to $60. (April 7, 1986)

NW TRIANGLE: The administration of Mayor Arthur E. Morris (right) announced it had reached a tentative agreement with Conrail to buy a 20-acre tract known as the “Northwest Triangle,” bounded roughly by Harrisburg Avenue, North Prince Street and West Liberty Street. The city hoped to create an industrial park on the site. (April 8, 1986)

NEW STUDY: Mayor Arthur E. Morris announced the formation of a 14-member steering committee to examine the concept of a convention center in Lancaster and to determine if the city could afford to support it. He named Elaine Ewing Holden (left), former director of Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, to chair the panel. (April 10, 1986)

50 years ago

CITY RAMPAGE: A 55-year-old city man who wired himself with dynamite caps to become a walking bomb shot his nephew and a city policeman during a spree that ended when he surrendered meekly to two other officers. Both victims were shot in the leg and were in satisfactory condition at Lancaster General Hospital.
The suspect was not cooperating with police, but his brother said in an interview that “he must have flipped his lid.” (April 5, 1961)

NEW FACTORY: Universal Trailer Corp. purchased a 10-acre tract in the northeastern section of Quarryville for construction of a truck-trailer plant. Company officials said the plant would start with 25 employees, with the goal of expanding to 100. (April 7, 1961)

TOURIST BOOST: With full confidence that a new “Tourist Promotion Law” would soon pass the state Legislature, the local Pennsylvania Dutch Tourist Bureau was preparing to move out of “small change” promotion efforts into a full-blown agency. The county expected to receive $27,000 in state funding under the new law. (April 7, 1961) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

HEAT WAVE: Local temperatures soared to a near-record 86 degrees on Easter Sunday. The weather made for spectacular sunrise services. Then, shedding new spring outfits, residents took to the outdoors for such warm-weather pursuits as kite flying, gardening and sunbathing. (March 31, 1986)

MANAGER: Lancaster Township’s first full-time manager, Karen L. Koncle (right), began work at the municipal building with a tour and a discussion with Robert W. Lauer, who had been the acting part-time township manager.
Koncle, of Lititz, described herself as neither a traditionalist nor the type to make radical changes.
“I feel we need to build on what is already in place that is good,” she said. “I don’t like the word improvements; I like the word refinements.” (April 1, 1986)

VOLUNTEERS: More than 150 senior citizens from Lancaster County were honored at McCaskey High School for their volunteer work at 117 nonprofit agencies, schools, nursing homes and libraries.
Among the volunteers was Mary Myers, 82, (left) who said McCaskey hadn’t changed much from when she served as the school’s dean of girls from 1938 to 1969.
“They dress differently,” she finally admitted. (April 3, 1986)

50 years ago

L-S CAMPUS: Lampeter-Strasburg Union School District unveiled a detailed 20-year building program that mapped out the use of 44 acres adjacent to, and north of, the high school in Lampeter.
The plan called for a new junior high, two new elementary schools and a central administration building. It also set land aside for an outdoor swimming pool for the schools and the community. (April 28, 1961)

TEENS FOR PEACE: The United Nations accepted the dedication of the Warwick High School yearbook to the interests of world peace. It was believed to be the first time that the U.N. had been so honored by a high school graduating class.
Specifically honored were U.N. Secretary Dag Hammarskjold and his executive assistant, Andrew W. Cordier.
A delegation from the Lititz school traveled to U.N. headquarters in New York City to present the pair with a parchment reproduction of the dedication message.
The delegation consisted of Supervising Principal G. Marlin Spaid (left) and yearbook editors Robert Posey, Richard Ruhl, William Sigmund, Robert Peiffer, Jane Markert and Martha Gundrum. (March 30, 1961) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

E-TOWN HOLDUP: A lone gunman held up the Elizabethtown branch of Farmers First Bank at 9 a.m. on a Saturday and ran out the front door with a handful of $50 bills. The gunman showed a clerk a small handgun inside his jacket, but no one was injured. (March 22, 1986)

AG ZONING: Thirteen years after Conoy Township became the first local municipality to adopt effective agricultural zoning to preserve farmland, the rules had become common in Lancaster County. Of the county’s 41 townships, 25 had zoning laws that effectively prevented development on key farm acreage, the New Era reported. (March 24, 1986)

GRANITE RUN: A large tract off Route 283 in Manheim Township was being purchased by a local development group with plans to develop it into an industrial park.
The Horst Group agreed to purchase the 53-acre site from Keener Equipment Inc. The tract, between Manheim and Fruitville pikes, had been used in recent decades to store thousands of pieces of used and rusting farm machinery.
Formal plans for Granite Run Corporate Center were unveiled four weeks later. (March 25 and April 22, 1986)

RADON REPORT: Evidence was mounting that radon, the invisible, cancer-causing radioactive gas that was showing up in high levels in thousands of homes in eastern Pennsylvania, was also a health concern in Lancaster County.
“I was afraid this would be the case,” commented Nathaniel E. Hager Jr., an Armstrong World Industries research associate who had crusaded about the radon danger in Pennsylvania for six years. “I was hoping I’d be wrong.”
Hager was commenting on recent findings by state environmental officials. (March 26, 1986)

50 years ago

NEW LAKE: The State Fish Commission signed an option agreement for a 65-acre property, clearing a final hurdle in its effort to acquire land for a proposed fishing lake on Hammer Creek north of Lititz.
Work on the project — which eventually became known as Speedwell Forge Lake — was expected to begin as early as the summer. (March 21, 1961)

DOUBLE TRAGEDY: A retired farmer shot and killed his housekeeper and then himself at the home they shared in the village White Horse, along Route 340 in eastern Lancaster County. Both were described as being in failing health for some time. Just before the shootings, the farmer called a friend at a nearby store to tell him that his nerves were worn out. (March 23, 1961)

CITY TAX BASE: Exemptions were knocking bigger chunks out of the city’s tax base each year. For 1961, property assessed at $29 million was exempt from property tax. That was equal to 20 percent of the assessed valuation of all property in the city. In 1950, exempt property had accounted for only 15.5 percent of the city’s tax base, the New Era reported. (March 27, 1961)

75 years ago

VICE RAID: Four agents from the Philadelphia office of the U.S. Department of Justice raided an alleged disorderly house near Sandy Beach, at Ephrata R.D. 2, and arrested five women.
The women were charged with conspiracy to violate the Mann Act, which was also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, for allegedly transporting a girl from New York State to Lancaster County.
The federal agents reportedly had to break into the Sandy Beach house, where 62 patrons were said to be present. The patrons were released after they identified themselves. (March 23, 1936) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

GRAFFITI BUST: Two teenage boys were the first suspected culprits to be prosecuted under a tough new anti-graffiti law that Lancaster City Council had passed a month earlier. Police said the boys were arrested for spray-painting garages in the 200 block of Beaver Street. (March 17, 1986)

ZOOK GUILTY: Robert Peter Zook Jr. was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of a typewriter repairman and his girlfriend in July 1985.
Zook, 25, of South Plum Street, was convicted of killing Paul Conard, 55, and Sandra Lee Wiker, 19, in an apartment at the rear of Conard’s shop in the 800 block of North Queen Street. (March 19 and 20, 1986)
(Note: Zook was later sentenced to death and spent 20 years on death row before his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2006.)

AID TO CONTRAS: Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told a Lancaster audience that aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels was necessary to keep alive any chance of a negotiated peace with the Sandanista government.
Brzezinski, addressing the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also said Republican President Ronald Reagan was likely to get some or all of the $100 million Contra aid package he had requested from Congress.
Brzezinski had served as national security adviser under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. (March 19, 1986)

OLDEST MEMBER: Ella J. Barnes, 102, of Elizabethtown, learned that she was the oldest living member of an automobile club in the United States.
Her daughters figured that their mother had joined the Lancaster Automobile Club around 1916. She remained a member even though she hadn’t driven in many years, they said. (March 19, 1986) (Note: Mrs. Barnes died in 1990 at age 106).

50 years ago

BAD IDEA: Two young Bird-in-Hand boys confessed to trying to wreck two Pennsylvania Railroad trains on a sharp curve near the village.
They rolled an old abandoned cable-winding spool — weighing an estimated 200 pounds — onto the tracks. It was struck and shattered a short time later by a freight train.
The boys then gathered the debris and returned it to the track. A passenger train then struck the pile, and the engineer later reported that he felt the electric engine leap a few inches off the rails before safely returning to the track. (March 14, 1961)

LANGUAGE STUDY: The Penn Manor Joint High School Board expanded its foreign-language program to include Spanish.
The district already offered French, German, Russian and Latin, with some languages being taught as early as the seventh grade. (March 14, 1961) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

WORK FORCE: Lancaster County’s unemployment rate plummeted to 3.0 percent, which was the lowest figure in at least five years, according to newspaper records. (March 7, 1986)

DEMUTH’S FRIEND: Painter Georgia O’Keeffe, described as “a national treasure” and “the most important woman artist” America had ever produced, died at age 98.
O’Keeffe, known for her abstract works and paintings of flowers and bones, had enjoyed a friendship with famed Lancaster artist Charles Demuth before his death in 1935 at age 52.
“I always enjoyed him,” O’Keeffe had once said of Demuth, whom she had visited in Lancaster. “I thought him more fun than the other artists.
“He was a better friend with me than any of the other artists. We had wonderful times whenever he came to town.” (March 7, 1986)

DRUNKEN DRIVER: An Elizabethtown man charged with driving under the influence of intoxicants told a Lancaster County Court judge: “Thank God I was stopped before I killed someone.”
The man said he had turned to alcohol to cope with his own personal tragedy — the death of his son at the hands of a drunken driver. (March 8, 1986)

50 years ago

DUMB MOVE: A driver’s license dropped by a burglar led to the arrest of three teenagers in a safe robbery at a Manheim Township car dealership.
“I guess it fell out of my shirt pocket when I stooped over in the shop,” the suspect who lost his license told police. (March 7, 1961)

GIFT POOL: Adamstown’s four leading industries offered to build an 8-acre recreation area, including a swimming pool, and donate it to the borough as a bicentennial gift.
A spokesman for the firms said the industrialists “felt they should give something of lasting value to the community” in honor of its anniversary.
Cooperating on the project were Adamstown Hat Co. Inc., Bollman Carbonizing Co. Inc., George W. Bollman & Co. Inc. and Hope Hosiery Co. (March 10, 1961)

COE FOR MAYOR: City camera shop owner George B. Coe, 55, emerged as the Republican candidate for mayor of Lancaster. Coe, a political newcomer, was a surprise choice for endorsement by a GOP advisory committee. (March 10, 1961)
(Note: In the November general election, Coe defeated incumbent Democratic Mayor Thomas J. Monaghan, who later went on to win two more terms beginning in 1965.) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

DIRECTOR HIRED: John A. Hostetler (left) was named director of the newly created Center for the Study of Anabaptist and Pietist Groups at Elizabethtown College. Hostetler, 67, was retired from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he had earned a reputation for his expertise on the Amish. (Feb. 28, 1986)

SHOOTINGS: Allegedly angered over an unpaid drug debt, a Parkesburg man shot and killed two men at a Providence Township mobile home park, then killed himself with the same revolver 11 hours later, police said. (March 1, 1986)

DRUG TESTING: Although it generally was not happening here yet, local employers said they believed that the introduction of drug-testing programs for workers — especially new employees — was coming soon.
Officials with a number of local employers, both public and private, said that the question of drug testing was a “really hot issue” and was the “wave of the future.”
Their comments came as the President’s Commission on Organized Crime urged President Ronald Reagan to direct all government agencies to formulate “suitable drug-testing programs” for federal workers. (March 4, 1986)

SKYLINE POOL: The Manheim Township Park Board recommended the township consider purchasing the Skyline Swimming, Racquet and Fitness Center on Eden Road. A feasibility study estimated the purchase price at $420,000 and the cost of renovations at $259,545. (March 6, 1986) (The pool is pictured at right in 2002)

50 years ago

BAD METERS: Frustrated with malfunctions of its new parking meters, Lancaster city officials were discussing whether to return the 650 devices and get back the purchase price of $27,000 from the manufacturer. (Feb. 28, 1961)

WAGON HEIST: Two men leaving a city nightclub at 2:35 a.m. decided to take along a souvenir that was parked in front of the Brunswick Hotel. They hitched an old Conestoga wagon to their pickup truck and pulled it past the police station on East Chestnut Street, then north on Duke Street, which was one-way south.
Police stopped the pair at Lemon and Cherry streets and returned the damaged 1830 wagon to its display space in front of the Brunswick. (Feb. 28, 1961)

HIGH-TECH: An official with RCA Corp. made a presentation in Lancaster on the company’s “electronic highway guidance system,” which was designed to allow drivers to whiz along superhighways while playing cards, reading or even sleeping.
The three-stage project involved a “detector network,” a “guidance system” and an “electronic collision-control system.”
The project was begun in 1953, the RCA official explained, and was still about 10 years from completion. (Feb. 28, 1961) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

MARKET DAYS: With city officials contemplating Central Market adding Saturday hours, an informal survey found that about half of the market’s standholders would open if the third day of operations was approved.
Central Market was open only on Tuesdays and Fridays. The Saturday opening was being contemplated in conjunction with the closing of Southern Market, which was being converted to a visitors’ center and the new home of Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry. (Feb. 22, 1986)

BUDGET WOES: The administration of School District of Lancaster diagnosed its own fiscal illness, then prescribed its own cure.
Before listening to taxpayers’ suggestions on how to trim the district’s 1986-87 budget — and hold down a looming tax increase — superintendent Charles R. Walker (right) said the only long-term solution to the district’s annual budget woes was “increased revenues from the state.”
The state, he charged, was unfairly shortchanging Lancaster and more than 100 other urban school districts.
At a second hearing, parents and students asked the board to cut the number of administrators and freeze the salaries of all administrators making more than $50,000 a year. (Feb. 25 and 28, 1986)

50 years ago

UNSAFE STREETS: Merchants and residents in the 200 block of West King Street petitioned City Council for better streetlights. Women didn’t feel safe in the block, they said, because the street wasn’t lighted well enough, while many “drunks and panhandlers” were “lit” too well. (Feb. 22, 1961)

GO-KART TRAGEDY: A 14-year-old boy was killed when his “Racer Kart” went out of control on a private driveway, crossed two lanes of traffic on Lincoln Highway West and struck an automobile.
The accident happened shortly after a state trooper had stopped to warn the boy and three of his friends to keep the kart off the highway. (Feb. 24, 1961)

SENIOR CENTER: Lancaster Recreation Commission opened a day center for the elderly at its facility in the Grubb Mansion, 135 N. Lime St. The center, considered the first of its kind locally, was intended to give senior citizens of the city and county a place to play cards, read, socialize and relax. (Feb. 25, 1961) (Note: The Grubb Mansion later became  the home of the Lancaster Museum of art, which is pictured at left in 2005).

NEW OUTREACH: With the support of six Methodist churches in the city, a 36-year-old minister began holding services for the Puerto Rican community at St. Paul’s Methodist Church at South Queen and Farnum streets.
The Rev. William E. Nieto (right) saw only two persons, besides his family, at the first service. The next week, the number doubled to four. The goal was continued growth.
Nieto had lived in Lancaster for three years before graduating from Lancaster School of the Bible in 1953. He then served churches in Puerto Rico, New York City and Erie before returning to Lancaster. (Feb. 27, 1961)

75 years ago

MARRIED TEACHERS: West End residents lined up in opposing camps when a “slip-up” of the Lancaster Township school board revealed prematurely that five married women teachers had been notified of their dismissal.
Petitions were being circulated and protest groups began to gather. The school board’s president resigned as a signal of his disapproval of the decision.
The issue of married teachers had been a storm center of township politics for several years. In the previous school year, three married teachers had been dismissed. (Feb. 22, 1936) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

ON THE MOVE: A sleepy part of northwest Lancaster city was awaking as a vibrant commercial corridor. Over four years, developers were planning 18 projects, costing $22.7 million, along Harrisburg Pike and North Prince Street. (Feb. 14, 1986)

PRISON STUDY: Lancaster County Prison officials said the county jail at 625 E. King St. (left) was in need of expansion because of overcrowding. Among the possible expansion sites, they said, were the Kelly Cadillac Inc. building at 625 E. Orange St. and the vacant King Douglas Hotel at 105 E. King St. (Feb. 19, 1986)

50 years ago

NEW LIBRARY: A former Elizabethtown church building was being transformed into a modern public library with the help of $40,000 collected from area residents.
The library was being moved from 119 S. Market St. to the former Mount Calvary Church (right) on Hanover Street. (Feb. 16, 1961) (Note: In 2001, the library moved to a former bank property at 10-12 S. Market St.)

SHOE POLISH: Lancaster city’s controller rejected a police bureau request to buy 12 cans of black shoe polish for $1.35.
“Ridiculous,” snorted Controller George W. Glatfelter (left). “It isn’t the amount. It’s the principle.”
Police Inspector Albert Farkas said the city had provided the polish in the past for city-purchased police shoes. But he said he wouldn’t press the matter.
“He’s the one that’s being picayunish about it,” Farkas said of Glatfelter. “If there’s going to be so much fuss, I’ll furnish the polish myself.” (Feb. 17, 1961)

DEMUTH AUCTION: The $13,200 paid for eight Charles Demuth paintings at a New York auction indicated that values of his works had “skyrocketed,” according to an official with Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc.
“Demuth paintings are like gold-chip stocks,” the auction official said.
The prices were seen as a tribute to the skill of the late Lancastrian (right), who achieved international fame before his death in 1935.
Prices paid at the sale included “Men at a Bar,” $1,800; “Seated Nude,” $550; “Lancaster County Scene,” done at Peach Bottom, $400; and “Rocky Landscape in Maine,” $1,000. (Feb. 17, 1961)

‘COMMON SCOLD’: A 101-year-old law that permitted the use of the “ducking stool” penalty was invoked against a Beaver Street woman by six of her neighbors. The neighbors prosecuted the 57-year-old woman under an 1860 law that provided for declaring someone a “common scold.”
The neighbors accused the woman of repeatedly “cursing and swearing” at them, often in the presence of children.
Used in earlier times, the ducking stool was a chair mounted on the end of a horizontal pole, which allowed authorities to “dunk” the perpetrator into a pond or river however many times the sentence required.
Word of the Lancaster woman’s prosecution drew attention from news organizations up and down the East Coast and as far away as London, England. (Feb. 20 and March 6, 1961)

75 years ago

CRIPPLING STORM: A snow and sleet storm that lashed Lancaster County left communication lines crippled, main highways in bad condition and nearly all secondary roads clogged by drifts. Telephone linemen were working to restore service as “the worst cold wave of the season” was reportedly moving eastward. (Feb. 15, 1936) Continue reading →

Following are summaries of local news stories from the pages of the Intelligencer Journal and New Era. This column appears on page B1 of the printed newspaper each Monday. The items are researched and compiled by staff member Tim Buckwalter. Full versions are available on microfilm at the Lancaster Public Library, 125 N. Duke St.

25 years ago

BIG FIRES: Fires in Ephrata and New Holland took a heavy toll on property. In Ephrata, an overnight fire destroyed three businesses in the 600 block of East Main Street, including a printing company, a general store and a machine shop. In New Holland, a pre-dawn fire wrecked a large warehouse at the Earland Industrial Park. (Feb. 8 and 12, 1986)

SCHOOL OPENS: Lancaster Preparatory School, a nonprofit school for preschool- and elementary-level boys and girls, opened its doors with 23 students in the education building of Lititz Moravian Church. The school was not affiliated with the church or the nearby Linden Hall School for Girls.
The school’s director said its goal was to provide an environment “where there are no labels, where all the children can reach their own potential and work at their own pace.” (Feb. 10, 1986)

YOUNG HERO: A 10-year-old girl was credited with the capture of two armed robbers who walked into her School Lane Hills home on a Tuesday morning and held her family at gunpoint.
The girl slipped out of the house and went to a neighbor’s home to call police, who captured the pair after a high-speed chase. (Feb. 11, 1986)

50 years ago

STOCKYARDS: For the third straight year, Lancaster’s Union Stockyards did more than $60 million in business. But at just over $61 million, total business volume was down from the record $69.5 million in 1959. (Feb. 8, 1961)

BOOK ’EM: The leader of Lancaster Free Public Library expressed strong disagreement with a New Jersey police raid that led to the overnight jailing of six patrons who failed to return library books there.
Lancaster librarian Edward R. Dax (left) said such extreme tactics would do libraries more harm than good in the long run.
“That’s a terrible infringement of a person’s rights,” Dax said of the raids in East Orange, N.J. Locally, unreturned books were costing the Lancaster library about $400 a year, Dax said. (Feb. 8 and 9, 1961) Continue reading →