This week's Flashback Friday is another birthday request but for a new year's baby! Kristy Higginbotham was born on December 31st, 1962. That date is right in the middle of The News-Gazette's Christmas issue and new year's issue, so let's see a little bit of both!
The 1962 Christmas issue was full of Christmas greetings from local businesses. The front page had stories about:
- The annual Christmas Basket program
- How the snow that season affected the area's traffic and community activities. The story cites 10 inches of snow from a recent storm.
- A proposed sales tax of 3 percent, with two-thirds of the revenue going to the localities on a 'per capita' basis.
- And the photo in the bottom left corner of the front page is a nurse, at Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital, holding the smallest baby to be born and survive at that hospital. Her name was Tamara Kay Mays and she weighed 1 lb. 12 oz. on her birthdate in October of '61. In the photo, she weighed 4 lbs. 6 oz.
The New Year's issue for 1963 had front page stories about:
- Three men getting arrested on suspicion of burglary and possessing burglary tools.
- The price of certain kinds of mail for the US Postal Service was due to increase.
- A questionnaire was distributed to high school dropouts in the area as a way to understand why they dropped out. The results would be used to find out what could be done to help them with vocational training and to keep current and future students in school.
- And of course, the first baby of the year born in Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital is pictured in the bottom left corner.
The rest of the paper was mostly taken up with The News-Gazette's usual 'Year in Review' but we're going to look at the classified section and some New Years greetings.
