History
In September 1917, West Plains’ Stephen W. Thompson and his outfit, the United States 1st Aero Squadron, arrived for training in Amanty, France. He would spend the next five months learning to be an aerial observer in open-air two-seat bombers. The job included protecting his aircraft with a...
Growing up in Willow Springs in the 1950s and 1960s left me with memories of the freedom a small child could experience in a small town in a more innocent time, with a feeling of safety that sadly is no longer there. As kids, my brothers and sisters and I were allowed to walk unaccompanied in our...
I do not recall a time when I didn’t know Judy Mizer. Certainly, my first recollections of her are before kindergarten in Davenport, Iowa.
After World War II, our fathers, Loren Mizer and Jack Whitaker, Sr., went to work for Merchants Transfer and Storage, an Allied Van Lines agent, in...
"Wars are things that bring their nasty selves right up to your front door for years and years after they are over. Of course, I get right down and think about it, seeing one of my own cousins with an arm shot off and hearing him laugh about how he got it done while he was trying to steal some...
Once again, the source material for this column arrived in the mail. This time, courtesy of retired Lawrence County Associate Circuit Judge Samuel Jones.
From writing historical research papers in college, I learned the value of primary source documents. Eyewitness accounts and contemporary...
The first settlers and pioneers of Howell County ventured into an unsettled wilderness with little or no government services accessible to them. With sparse communication from the outside world, one might expect the early citizens coming here to ignore the activities of their government or look...
Dear Editor,
I’d like to commend all who helped to make the 4th of July, America’s Birthday, a special occasion! But specifically, I’d like to recognize the efforts of Jane Bailey for making it special for all.
The parade was wonderful, the attendance was robust, the number of floats...
July is the time for tree-ripened peaches, eagerly anticipated in South Central Missouri. Today, we can spread the harvest through the summer into early fall, but grafted or hybrid peach trees were unknown in the era and area we explore now. Peaches are not native to the Ozarks or America but...
The source of articles for this column are sometimes unexpected. Susan Shryock (WSHS, 1961) prompted this one when she asked if I would be interested in seeing a book of poetry written by Lula Rothwell, her husband Joe’s grandmother (and my stepfather’s mother). Of course, I was interested...
The turn of the century 1900 brought a new round of migration to the Ozarks, primarily driven by the railroad's arrival and cheap land. The Kinnaird family was one of the thousands arriving from Kentucky and Tennessee, where available good farmland was becoming scarce, and farming opportunities...