Montana Album: Moveable school walls; boxing at dance

50 Years Ago

From the Tribune week of May 8, 1966

Admitting that moveable walls in a public school building cost 12-14 percent more than stationary walls, Associate Superintendent of Schools Harold Wenaas said Thursday night that combined use of hall space and the great flexibility of classroom areas by using such walls saves money in the long run. Wenaas was part of a panel of school administrators, trustees and the architect that discussed the proposed two junior high schools to be voted upon at a special school bond issue election May 26. Moveable walls are an important part of the design of the buildings, allowing team teaching and the flexibility of using five classrooms at once for lecturing or audio-visual education.

WASHINGTON – Saturday is examination day for the first of an estimated one million college and graduate students who hope to show they merit continued deferment from the draft. Some 350,000 to 400,000 student volunteers are due to show up at test centers throughout the country for the three-hour, 150-question draft deferment test. Within two weeks the test papers will be sent to Science Research Associates for grading, and the results will be forwarded to the local draft boards. The passing grade is 70 for undergraduates and 80 for graduate students, but a passing, or even a smashing, score does not mean automatic deferment for the the school year beginning next fall.

The city is utilizing excess dirt from the Northwest Bypass project to fill the lower portion of Holland Park, between Fair and Valley View additions, C.R. Hanson, city engineer, said Tuesday. The park is between Sixth and Ninth Streets Northwest, just north of the bypass. The city is taking “all the dirt it can get” from the bypass to raise the level of the ground. After this is done, either a road will be constructed or the land will leveled and seeded by the park department.

WASHINGTON – The way man is messing up his surroundings, the time may come when ammonia in the air will strangle him — if the icecaps don’t melt and drown him first. These are among the predictions reputable scientists made before a Senate committee considering a bill that would authorize basic studies of the mysteries of ecology. Ecology, which Interior Secretary Steward Udall defined as the science of the web of life and the interrelationship of all our resources, presently is studied for specific purposes by assorted federal agencies.

The City Council Monday night voted to send a letter of commendation to Fire Fighter Don Keough for saving the life of a 5-year-old girl. Tari Wolverton, 5, was brought to the West Side fire station by her mother, Mrs. Shirley Peres, 591 2nd Ave. S.W., after the child had stopped breathing because of an upper respiratory infection. Keough administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for about three minutes until the child resumed breathing.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Sen. J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, warned that American universities were failing in their “higher purposes” as a result of the “stiflingly close” relationship that had developed between the universities and the federal government. Addressing a special convocation on “The University in America,” sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Fulbright observed that the relationship has created an atmosphere in which there tended to be little room for “intellectual individualists” and “dissenters.” Neither the government nor the universities are “making the best possible use of their intellectual resources to deal with the problems of war and peace in the nuclear age,” Fulbright said.

Strengths, weaknesses and complexities of Medicare, which becomes law on July 1, received thorough discussion here Thursday and Friday before about 130 Montana physicians. Russell L. Hegland, executive secretary of the Montana Medical Association, described the association’s position as having opposed passage of the law because of its belief it is a poor law in that it is not based on need, but that the association plans full compliance. Medicare lacks two things to make a federal law financing health care for the aged a wise and good law. One is that it should be limited to needy people, and the second is that it should be administered by the states.

SAN ANTONIO – President Johnson proposed Saturday that the U.S., Soviet Union and other space powers join in a treaty outlawing military activity on the moon and denying anyone or any nation lunar sovereignty. Johnson said the objective is to make sure that American astronauts, and those of other nations, can freely conduct scientific investigation of the moon.

VIRGINIA CITY – Historic Virginia City’s Thompson-Hickman Museum, one of Montana’s oldest and best-known historical collections, will have a new look for visitors this summer. The display area has been completely renovated, using the history of Alder Gulch as a theme. Robert F. Morgan of the State Historical Society, a museum authority, took on the job of sorting out the vast collection at the request of the Vigilance Club, Virginia City’s Chamber of Commerce which maintains the museum.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kauai King, owned, trained and ridden by Kentucky Derby novices, won the 92nd running of America’s glamor race Saturday with a mighty display of front-running speed. Jockey Don Brumfield, “the happiest hillbilly you ever saw,” said the only way to win a Kentucky Derby is “to get out in front and stay there. If you’re out in front, the other horses have to cover the ground you’ve already been over.”

Mrs. Hattie Tanner, 79, 2815 6th Ave. N., received critical burns Thursday afternoon when her clothes caught on fire as she was cooking at her home. Mrs. Tanner remained in intensive care at Deaconess Hospital with burns on 40 percent of her body. Mrs. Jack W. Muir, 2814 6th Ave. N., said her son, Dan, 13, and Kenny Veen were playing in front of the Muir home when they saw Mrs. Tanner stumble out the front door of her house, her clothes aflame. The boys tried to help, and Dan ran to tell his mother, “Mrs. Tanner’s on fire.”

TOKYO – A Japanese scientist reported Wednesday radioactive fallout from Red China’s third atomic test was far heavier than previous ones and warned it might be hazardous to human beings. Prof. Takao Kosaka of Niigata University said the dust radioactivity was slightly more than 33 times stronger than the second and largest of two previous Chinese tests in May 1965. The fallout also could seriously contaminate vegetables in the Japanese countryside, he said.

100 Years Ago

From the Tribune week of May 8, 1916

A series of athletic events will feature the dance to be given by the Great Falls Athletic club in Luther hall tomorrow night. The three-round bouts will be staged at intervals during the progress of the dance, and the participants will all be classy artists. There will be two exhibition boxing bouts with eight-ounce gloves and a couple of grappling exhibitions, principally for the purpose of demonstrating holds.

LETHBRIDGE – Government officials here say there is no doubt that German agents have been active in southern Alberta recently. The destruction of a munition plant at Medicine Hat was quickly followed last week by the destruction there of the big mills of the Lake of the Woods company, with their big elevators full of grain entailing a total loss of something like three quarters of a million dollars.

Work of moving the business of the Tribune to its new building at Second avenue north and Fourth street began in earnest yesterday when the removal of one section of the newspaper printing press was started. The change of the press will affect the size of the paper for two or three days. Furniture for the editorial rooms of the Tribune is in transit and is expected in the city today. When the change to the new home of the paper is completed, work will be started under conditions favorable to an improved service.

WASHINGTON – Federal aid in the case of indigent tuberculosis patients, as contemplated in the Kent bill now pending in Congress, was condemned and defended by speakers today at the annual meeting of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. The bill would provide for subsidized hospitals for the treatment of tuberculosis. Advocates of the proposed legislation declared it would set the federal government to work solving the tuberculosis problem, a task too big for the states by themselves. Opponents said it would defeat its own purposes and would encourage migration of consumptives to the western states in which the system would be instituted, creating a new problem.

STANFORD – The first high school commencement exercises to be given by the Stanford High school were held during the first week in May. Four years ago the taxpayers of the district voted to build a $25,000 school house. The first two high school graduates form the school finished this year and were Miss Magdalen Conrad and Miss Nyna Gregory.

ZURICH, Switzerland – Switzerland is now entirely dependent upon Germany for coal, not producing a single ton in her own country, and no longer being able to get supplies from France. Recently, the German government organized a monopoly for supplying Switzerland with coal through a central sales office in Basel. One of the chief objects is so to control the distribution as to prevent anti-German firms from getting any coal.

The arrest of Arthur Nelson, 21, under a charge of grand larceny or robbery was made by police Wednesday night under suspicion of the robbery of James Hughes, an aged veteran of the Civil War who was in the city on his way to Portland and who had been robbed in a saloon of his papers and a watch. The papers were afterward picked up in an alley, and later on the watch was found in the Western second-hand store where it was learned Nelson had put it up for $2.60. Justice of the Peace John T. Earll committed Nelson to jail to serve out a fine of $250.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The bill of Sen. Myers for the sinking of artesian wells on semi-arid and arid lands provides authorization of the secretary of interior to investigate the arid and semi-arid conditions, where they exist in the northern part of Montana, in the vicinity of the Canadian border, for the purpose of discovering favorable locations for the sinking of artesian wells. On striking such water, he will make it available for irrigation and shall collect charges to be determined just and equitable from the owners of the land irrigated.

BUTTE – When the Butte team takes the field at Natatorium park in Spokane this afternoon, it will be minus the services of First Baseman Stokke, who is laid up in bed with an attack of blood poisoning and under the care of two doctors who expressed that he might lose his leg. Stokke sprang a “charley horse” a week ago, but continued to play. The other day, he was hit right on the “charley horse” by a batted ball, and the leg festered, blood poisoning setting in.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A standing army of 206,000 men, capable of being expanded in emergency to 254,000, and backed up by a federalized national guard of 425,000 as a reserve, finally was agreed on today by House and Senate conferees on the army bill. The agreement will be reported to Congress early next week, and the measure, the first of the administration preparedness bills, is expected to be before president Wilson for his signature soon afterward.

For more Montana Album, visit gftrib.com, and select “Life” from the main menu and “My Montana” from the resulting menu.