Monday, July 21, 2008
Looking back: Week of July 21

The Day and Night Bank became the State and City Bank in 1925. The original building was at 116 W. Campbell, but the bank purchased the American National Bank Building on Campbell and First. The bank failed during the 1933 Bank Holiday and never reopened. Today the building is known as the State & City Building.
Click the button above to see all of our community coverage, or go straight to your community's homepage with the menu below.
More history stories
- Looking Back
- Looking back: Nov. 2, 2009
- Looking Back: Oct. 26, 2009
- Looking back: Oct. 19, 2009
- Looking back: 10-12-09
Archive
1998 (10 years ago)
n "He walked Omaha Beach with President Clinton in 1994. Tuesday, he'll rub shoulders with some of Hollywood's biggest stars. Bob Slaughter, the D-Day veteran from Roanoke who has shared war stories with historians and journalists around the world, will attend the Hollywood premier of Steven Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan.' " Tom Hanks and Matt Damon star in the movie, which depicts the deadly invasion of Normandy that set the stage for Adolf Hitler's defeat."
n "A home-grown Roanoke printing and business services company announced plans Monday to grow to more than 10 times its current size within 312 years. Dominion Solutions, formerly Dominion Graphic Services, plans to buy similar companies, according to company executives who reported the completion of two recent purchases and plans for at least two more."
n "Seven firefighters from Roanoke County returned Wednesday from Florida after spending 10 days helping more than 4,500 firefighters from 38 states put out fires that have ravaged hundreds of thousands of acres and forced tens of thousands of people out of their homes."
n "President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore will visit the headwaters of the New River at Todd, N.C., next Thursday to announce the designation of the waterway as one of the first American Heritage Rivers. The federal program will give communities along the designated rivers greater access to federal services and programs and a "river navigator" -- a liaison with the federal government. No new federal funds are involved."
n " It got as ugly in Catawba Thursday night as country folks will allow. A proposed North Mountain land swap between a private landowner and the U.S. Forest Service has residents there banding together. They're hopping mad about the prospect of the Forest Service giving a Florida investor 170 acres of developable land close to Virginia 311 in exchange for 170 acres of steep, thickly wooded land near the summit of the mountain."
1983 (25 years ago)
n "Green grow the weeds but precious little else in the browning of Western Virginia's lawns and fields."
n "Covington City Manager George Nester was appointed town manager of Vinton Tuesday and is expected to begin work Sept. 1, Vinton Mayor Charles Hill announced."
n "The show may be 'My 3 Angels,' but D. Clinton Patterson is the chief cherub in the engaging comedy that Mill Mountain Playhouse opened Wednesday at its Grandin Theater."
n Bernard Fauber, president of Kmart Corp., made a "happy trip back to his boyhood hometown for the opening Thursday of the remodeled Kmart discount department store at Crossroads Mall."
1958 (50 years ago)
n "Petitions asking the Roanoke City Council to annex a large area lying in the Masons Creek-Peters Creek section to the west and northwest of Roanoke, plus three subdivision developments, are being circulated."
n A man "who was in Municipal Court several weeks ago on a charge of flooding the detention cell and first floor of City Hall, was back today and accused of trying to burn down the jail."
n "The family of a Roanoke soldier serving in Baghdad, Iraq, where the government has been overthrown, is safe and headed for the states."
n "New blinker lights are to be installed at the city's 31 schools. In most cases they will raise the present 15 mile per hour school zone speed to 25 miles an hour."
n "The State Corporation Commission today authorized the Norfolk and Western Railway several discontinuances of service, including the famed 'Huckleberry' between Christiansburg and Blacksburg."
n Dr. Harry T. Penn was elected president of the newly formed Roanoke Development Association.
n "Persons use the pond in Elmwood Park for a trash can . . . Frank M. James, park keeper, said he regularly takes everything from bottles to watermelon rinds from the pond."
n "Dr. Margaret Glendy today was named Roanoke City health commissioner effective Aug. 1."
n "Three more suspected polio victims were admitted to Roanoke Memorial Hospital from Wise County today as the Wise health commissioner proclaimed the polio outbreak there as 'an epidemic.' "
n "Mrs. W.J. McCorkindale Jr. has had plenty of golf thrills during her 30-odd years at the game. But her greatest, she says, was the stunt she pulled at The Homestead this week, becoming the first winner of the Virginia Senior Women's Golf Tournament."
1933 (75 years ago)
n "Salem's new high school, the Andrew Lewis high school, will be completed the latter part of this week."
n "Dr. Bessie Carter Randolph, a graduate of Hollins College with the class of 1912 and professor of political science at the Florida State College for Women, Tallahassee, has been elected president of Hollins, the board of trustees announced yesterday."
n "The Mountain Trust Bank, receiver for the State and City bank, yesterday filed in hustings court a report of the audit of the State and City's affairs made by C.A. Brown and Company."
n "A week from Tuesday eight thousand or more Roanokers, according to experienced observers, will vote in what was heralded months ago as Roanoke's political 'battle of the century.' "
n "An eight-year-old boy, charged with housebreaking, was given a whipping at the close of his trial yesterday in juvenile court."
n "Every effort is made to keep objectionable books off the shelves of the Roanoke public library, J.W. Hancock, chairman of the board, declared yesterday in reply to charges made recently by a speaker at a meeting of the Southwest Woman's Christian Temperance Union."
n "A 'freeze-out' price of 10 cents a pint for ice cream by a drug store manufacturer in a war with a new rival store in the vicinity was the lowest recorded here in many summers -- with customers sweltering in the heat yesterday and today disinclined to argue about the matter."
n "People who drink beer in order to cool off had good reasons for guzzling today. At 1:15 this afternoon the temperature reading had reached 100 degrees."
n "Information on the cabins in the mountains near Roanoke was requested in a letter received by B.F. Moomaw, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, this morning. The writer of the letter stated that he is a writer by profession and desired an isolated place where he could work."
n "A relief squad of 25 C.C.C. youths today patrolled hastily-cut fire lanes constructed last night to prevent the spread of a forest fire which ate its way up the 45-degree slope of Fort Lewis mountain yesterday ..."
n "President Roosevelt's radio pleas for individual initiative in industry to put the nation back on its economic sea-legs brought the announcement today that the Blue Ridge Overalls Company, Inc. would increase the pay of more than 900 workers at its Roanoke and Christiansburg plants. The increase is effective immediately."
1908 (100 years ago)
n "The Roanoke Amusement Company have acceded to the wishes of their many patrons and consented to once more convert their beautiful pavilion at Mountain Park into a skating rink."
n "Cambria, which was until recently merely a suburb of Christiansburg, is now a town unto itself, and is destined to be one of Virginia's lively little cities."
n "The old wholesale grocery firm of Huff, Andrews & Thomas, Inc. of this city, has sold their Roanoke branch of the grocery business to Wood-Nickels Grocery Co., Inc., effective July 1st, 1908."
n "The free moving pictures on the Mountain Park lawn tonight will be one of the pleasing attractions of the evening at this panorama of nature."
n "There has been considerable excitement among the parents of Salem with small children during the past ten days over the new disease known as infantile paralysis, there having been in the neighborhood of about twelve cases, not including some outside of the corporate limits."
n "The season is at the height of this gem resort [Mountain Lake] in the Alleghanies, and every train is bringing scores of guests."
n "Portsmouth played for rain yesterday afternoon, but the wished for rain didn't materialize."
n "The Casino was nearly filled last night to witness the pretty as well as instructive play, 'The Parish Priest,' by the capable actors and actresses of the Latimore and Leigh Company. There were moments for meditation as well as moments of laughter."
n "Roanoke was visited at about nine o'clock last evening by a severe manifestation of the accumulated wrath of Jupiter Pluvius. There was not so very much rain, but the electric disturbance was very severe."
n "Those persons who are interested in the advancement of the city of Roanoke and of this section of Virginia, will be delighted to learn that a movement is on foot to construct a railroad from Roanoke to Floyd Courthouse."





