20-50-100 Years Ago -- June 21
Jun. 21—100 Years Ago
June 21, 1921
The Old Georgetown pike boasts a history of about 167 years. The construction of the road was commended for military purposes in 1754 and it extended from a point on Rock Creek in what is now the District of Columbia to Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek. The road was constructed by order of Governor Sharpe of Maryland at the insistence of Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia for use as a highway over which to send troops to operate against the French at Fort Duquesne and in the Ohio river valley, then known as the Valley of La Belle Riviere.
This evening at 6:30 o'clock the summer season will be officially ushered in. The present month, June, has been a month of slight rain fall, far less than last month and much less than is needed for the good of crops throughout the county. The soil of Frederick county, much of which is a clay composition, has become hard and clodded from lack of moisture. Some of the vegetables are dwarfed, principally due to the slight rainfall and some of the crops are on the verge of "burning up."
50 Years Ago
June 21, 1971
Twenty people were injured when a bus from Ohio struck a curb and overturned at the U.S. 15-U.S. 340 interchange Saturday morning, state police said. A 1964 YMCA bus was driven by James Wienman, of Lima, Ohio, was northbound on U.S. 15 attempting to turn right onto the exit ramp leading to U.S. 340 westbound. He failed to reduce speed sufficiently, the wheels struck the left curb and the bus rolled over, police said. The bus was carrying 43 members of the Lima, Ohio, Rotary Boys Club Choir. The 20 injured were transported to Frederick Memorial Hospital and were treated and released. Ambulances made five trips. In October, the then president of Frederick's Ambulance Association, Lenwood Moss, warned, "What is going to happen when a school bus carrying 30-plus children overturns," predicting the lack of available ambulances if victims were seriously injured.
Elmer Bokesch, an employee of Fort Detrick and recently coroneted a 33rd Degree Mason, died Friday night of a heart attack. He was 57 years old.
Frederick County architect John Stann will resign from his present position July 1 to work at the Maryland Interdepartmental Committee for School Construction.
20 Years Ago
June 21, 2001
In an unexpected twist, Frederick's "black book" scandal has impacted the Girl Scouts. Mayor Jim Grimes this week suspended negotiations to lease 125 acres in the city's watershed for use as a Girl Scout camp. He cited The Frederick News-Post's connection to the Girl Scout camp and blame the newspaper's coverage of the scandal for the delay.
The 13.5-acre site that formerly housed the I-70 Truck Stop was sold for $8 million, according to records at the Frederick County Courthouse. The site, located at South Market Street and Walser Drive, will be the site of a Costco warehouse and retail store, scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.
When most people look back on high school graduation, they think of gowns in school colors, graduates lined up two by two in a procession and, of course, the band playing "Pomp and Circumstance." For this year's graduating class at Urbana High School, 17-year-old Freddie Long, Class of 2001, decided to shake things up a bit. Freddie wrote, composed and sang "It's Only Just Begun," an original piano piece paying tribute to fond memories and looking ahead to future ones. For the past two weeks, this song has caught major radio airplay during Dan Stevens' morning show on Key 103.1.
