CHS Alumni Present a Gala "Vodvil" Show--1922

          Many of us remember the old Strand Theater on Green Street.  I remember seeing many movies there, at both the upstairs and the downstairs screens.  I do not know when the theater was divided, but I do know that many years ago, when there was just one stage, that the Strand Theater was a great place to view all sorts of traveling and local shows.  In today’s entry, I will highlight one particular show put on by alumni of Crawfordsville High School.   

     In December of 1922, several alumni of Crawfordsville High School decided to help fund the purchase of theater equipment for the school by having a “vodville” show.  It promised to be one of the “most interesting of its kind ever offered in this city.”  Since the show was announced, several theater groups from around the county pledged their attendance. Two young ladies from Indiana University offered a song and dance routine with costumes. Several members of the Wabash community would also be involved.

     The Detchon’s Orchestra would be playing “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye,” while Tony Bostwick would be performing “Sunshine of Your Smile” on his violin. 

    

      A  group of ladies in a chorus sang “Carolina in the Morning” and “My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms.”  The chorus was comprised of Katherine Dorsey, Lois Southard, Kathleen Straughn, Betty Moon, June Pett, Katherine Whittington, Margaret Coombs, Mildred Roach, Betty Wallace, Mary J. Herron, Dorothy Long and Dot Clark.

       During intermission, the patrons were invited to dance in the foyer and also received a memento of the evening from the alumni.                                                                                                                         

    

First County Casualty at Pearl Harbor Back From the Dead!

     We recently had an out-of-state guest come to the Local History department of CDPL with a very interesting story about her uncle, Leroy White, 26 years old, at the time, who had been stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

     The family story related that he was aboard on the USS California, at Pearl Harbor and had been smoking up on deck when the ship was torpedoed on December 7, 1941.  He supposedly jumped off the flaming ship into the harbor and swam through the burning waters to the shore and was not found for several days.

      As told in another post in this blog, citizens here learned of the bombing by radio and by reports given out to the crowds at the Crawfordsville Journal Review on Green Street. The December 12 article in the Journal reported that “ the Arizona and five other warships were lost,” but no mention was made of the USS California. 

     Imagine the horror felt by Mr. and Mrs. David White of near New Market when the headline on December 16 read: 

    "LEROY WHITE SLAIN AT PEARL  HARBOR.”

     Those were terrible days at the White household  until a letter, mailed on December 19, arrived at their home.  

  

      Christmas must have been a very merry occasion with the White family that year! 

Leroy survived the war and married Alice Lidester in October, 1953.  He died in August, 1994 and is buried in Boone County. 

     What happened to the USS California?  In early 1942 it was refloated and dry docked.  Later, in June, it was sent to Puget Sound for refitting and major repairs.  This fine ship later returned to the seas to play a significant role in the battles around the Philippines and Japan.   A Japanese kamikaze pilot slammed into it on January 6, 1945, so immediate repairs were made to it, and its men continued  on to battle near Okinawa, Japan.  The “USS California” was finally scrapped in 1959.   

The First Airmail Letter Arrives From Washington, D.C.!--1918

    Just a few short years after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, airmail became the wave of the future in communications.  A certain B. E. Hinkle in Washington, D.C., needed to renew his subscription to the Crawfordsville Daily Journal.  He enclosed a letter with his payment.

        "I was so fortunate as to see the first plane, in flight, that carried mail from our capital to New York City, and also the incoming plane from the metropolis to Washington."

                                                     (May 17, 1918. Crawfordsville Daily Journal.)

  

  

  The letter bore a new twenty-four cent stamp had only just been printed for the first time on May 14, and this letter appeared in our local paper on May 17.

    

 This stamp was to become famous when it was accidently printed upside-down. The “Inverted Jenny,” after the Curtiss Jenny airplane it depicted, is now worth about 1.6 million dollars.  Don’t you wish you had one?