History Snoopin': Checking out for 100 years

Checking out books for 100 years

by By Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, September 30th 2019

For over 20 years, the idea of a county library system had been percolating around Oregon, but not until 1919 did the state legislature officially allow every county in the state to have one.

The idea began in 1898, when an Ohio resident left money in his will for a library building. His relatives insisted that the library be free to all and be open to everyone in the county, with one addition — the county, they said, should support the library with taxes.

 

The Brumback Library, 1st County Library in the U.S.

It took an act of their state legislature to allow the county to accept the offer, but it did. The J.S. Brumback Library, the first ever county library in the nation, opened its doors in Van Wert City and County, Ohio, Jan. 1, 1901.

Almost exactly a year later, a bill introduced in the Oregon House of Representatives gave city governments the right to levy special taxes to establish public libraries. The following year, the Legislature approved a law allowing county courts (what we now know as county commissioners), to, “at their discretion,” levy taxes to provide libraries and books within all county schools.

In 1903, the Portland city library was the first library allowed to serve residents of their entire county. But it wasn’t until 1911 that the Legislature amended the state’s library law to allow any Oregon county to establish a county library system.

In the spring of 1919, the Legislature once again revised the library law to specify what a library system must be and do if established. Each system had to have a central library in the county seat or largest town in the county, and also branch libraries in other towns and communities. Books would be shared from the central library and a local library committee would oversee all operations.

In September of that year, the Mail Tribune began promoting the cause of a Jackson County library system as the right way to meet the people’s library needs, “supported by a county tax, and pledged under the law to serve all the people.”

“Many of our people are shut off from books,” said Mail Tribune Editor Robert Ruhl. “They are the country people who live so far from a town library they cannot conveniently borrow books from it.”

The Jackson County Court on Dec. 22, 1919, voted for the county library system and approved a .02-mil tax on each dollar of assessed valuation to support it. The tax was expected to raise over $4,300.

 

Medford, Oregon's Carnegie Library

With Medford’s Carnegie Library as the headquarters, libraries in eight other communities, Jacksonville, Central Point, Rogue River, Butte Falls, Gold Hill, Eagle Point, Talent and Sams Valley, joined together to share costs and materials.

Absent from the county library agreement was Ashland and its Carnegie Library. Its library board voted to claim a tax exemption allowed under the law for any city not wishing to be included in a county library system.

 

Medford, Oregon's Public Library, Headquarters of the Jackson County Library Service

Renamed Jackson County Library Services in 1970, the county libraries now number 15 branches, including Ashland, which finally joined the others in 1970.

It’s the 100th anniversary of the Jackson County library system — a century of meeting the people’s library needs.

“When I am king,” Mark Twain said, “they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books — for a full belly is of little worth where the mind is starved.”

Congratulations and thanks my friends at Jackson County Library Services.

CORRECTION: Eagle-eyed History Snoopers noticed an error in last week’s story.

The Tualatin Academy eventually became Pacific University, not Willamette University. Even the Snoop knows better than that.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) Betty Taylor Wood- the 8th WASP Pilot to Die

#The38

WASP Betty Louise Taylor Wood 43-W-4

(13 March 1921 – 23 September 1943)

(Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)

On the day she graduated at Avenger Field with class 43-W-4, August 7, 1943, Betty Louise Taylor married one of her civilian flight instructors, Harry “Shorty” Wood. Harry got his nickname for the not so obvious reason—he was tall. Regulations forbid trainees from dating flight instructors, but Betty and Harry’s wedding proved that love would top any military regulation every time.

After her morning march on the flight line and receiving her wings

Wedding Day Harry Wood and WASP Betty Taylor

from Jackie Cochran, Betty had most of the afternoon to get ready for the evening wedding service. Her mother and father, Thomas and Effa, had come from Auburn, California for both ceremonies. Her father would give his youngest daughter away and waited patiently while Betty, her mother, and classmate Violet Thurn prepared themselves. …

Twenty-one-year-old Harry was born in Colorado and he attended Fort Collins High School. After graduation, he enrolled in Colorado State College, learning to fly in the college’s extensive Civilian Pilots Training program that included advanced training and cross-country flights. After training in Texas, he qualified as a civilian flight instructor. …

After their honeymoon, Harry returned to his training assignment at Sweetwater, while 22-year-old Betty headed for her duty station with the 5th Ferrying Group in Dallas. By September 1943, new orders assigned her to Camp Davis, towing targets for artillery soldiers in training. …

 

A-24 Dauntless Towing Target at Camp Davis, NC

On August 23, 1943, while making a landing following two hours of flying, one of Betty’s wings touched the ground, forcing her to abort. Observers on the ground thought they heard her engine surge and cut out. They believed Betty was giving her A-24 full throttle, trying to climb and make a go-around attempt, but the throttle must have been sticking. The plane struck an embankment, the engine stalled, and the plane rolled over onto its top, crushing Betty. Almost every current report of the accident says that an Army chaplain was riding with her and that he too died; however, none of the newspaper stories reporting the accident at the time mentions

WASP Betty Taylor Wood

anyone else dying or even flying with Betty that day.

When word of Betty’s death reached Sweetwater, Harry Wood was on leave and in the air, on his way home to Fort Collins. Sweetwater forwarded the message to Fort Collins to await Harry’s arrival. Until he landed, Harry didn’t know that his wife of less than two months was dead.

There was a delay in returning Betty’s remains to California and she didn’t arrive until after the memorial funeral service held in Auburn. Her parents chose to have her cremated and then interred in the mausoleum at East Lawn Memorial Park, in Sacramento, California.

Betty was the eighth WASP to die.

RIP

 

History Snoopin': Tragedy and the strawberry festival

Tragedy and the strawberry festival

by By Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, September 23rd 2019

Three children stood at the rail of the ship and watched as their mother’s lifeless body fell into the Pacific Ocean.

Three-hundred miles south of San Francisco and on their way to join their father in Portland, 12-year-old Mary McGhee took charge of her brother Melville, 8, and sister Joanna, 7.

“We three children had to see her dropped over the side of the boat and buried at sea,” Mary said.

It was March 29, 1854, nearing the end of a journey that began near Jefferson City, Missouri.

Cordelia, the children’s mother, had not seen her husband for nearly three years.

John Wesley McGhee had left for the California gold fields in 1850, but finding little success, he moved north to the diggings near Yreka. Rather than struggle to find a fortune in gold, as an ordained Methodist minister he had decided it was better to preach to the mining population.

“The removal of most of his congregation from Northern California to Southern Oregon,” Mary said, “caused him to come to Southern Oregon.”

 

Mary McGhee Day

He settled briefly in Sams Valley, but Mary said in 1853 Chief Sam of the Taklema band warned him of trouble.

“You are a Bible man. I don’t want you killed,” the chief said, “Go away for a while. My young men are going on the warpath.”

McGhee went to Salem and took up a land claim southeast of the city. There he wrote to his wife and sent her money to bring the family West.

Cordelia gathered the children and caught the stage to St. Louis, where they rode a riverboat to New Orleans. From there they sailed to Aspinwall, Panama, where they traveled west across the Isthmus, by then the fastest route to California and Oregon.

Their fare included railroad tickets on the still incomplete Panama Canal Railway and a relatively comfortable 12-mile mule ride to the Pacific.

As they headed north on a steamship, 32-year-old Cordelia broke out with Panama Fever, a variant of malaria common to the Chagres River Valley of Panama. She died within days.

After arriving in Portland, Mary had to find her father.

“At Oregon City we met a man who knew my father,” she said. “He took us to Salem and out to my father’s place. Father asked me, ‘Where is your mother, Mary?’ and I said she was buried at sea three days before we got to San Francisco.”

Without a wife and having no way to take care of his children, McGhee placed them in Tabitha Brown’s orphanage and school in Forest Grove. When he remarried and decided to move to Washington, Mary and Melville stayed at school, and little Joanna went with their father.

Mary was one of the first graduates of the Tualatin Academy that would soon become Pacific University. “I took up teaching as my life’s work,” she said.

 

Add caption

At a Salem strawberry festival in 1870, Mary’s life work took a detour when the president of the university approached her.

“He said, ‘Mary, I want you to meet a friend of mine from Southern Oregon.’ He introduced me to Mr. Day,” Mary said.

A little later, a fellow university student approached, and he too introduced her to Mr. Day. That evening, a third friend approached, but this time Mary was ready.

“He said, ‘Mary, I want you to meet,’ I said, I know him already. His name is Silas Day. He is a miner and lives in Jacksonville.”

Silas called on Mary the next day and they began their “courting by letter.” They married May 22, 1871. They had four children and would remain in Jacksonville for the rest of their lives.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

History Snoopin': 90 years and counting- Medford Oregon's Airport

90 years and counting

by By Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, September 16th 2019

It was the biggest traffic jam surrounding the Medford airport ever

seen. Crater Lake Highway, Table Rock Road and all the nearby streets were lined with acres of cars.

With 15,000 visitors, it might well have been the biggest air show put up in Southern Oregon.

The Medford Aviation Fair of Sept. 18, 1949, would commemorate the 20th anniversary of not only the initial construction of the

Initial plan for Medford, Oregon airport (1928)

airport, but, in addition, the nearly unanimous vote of Medford residents to approve a $120,000 bond for its construction. Out of 2,426 votes, only 182 had voted no.

Beginning at 7:00 that Sunday morning, until dust that evening, the sky above roared with some of the country’s most modern aircraft. With so many military planes arriving from up and down the coast, some called it a virtual air attack.

This was not going to be some small-town event. Oregon Governor Douglas McKay said he was amazed at the variety of aircraft and the amazing size of the show.

Medford’s own Seely Hall, now a general manager with United Airlines and known as the “Father of Jackson County Aviation,” compared the new airport to Barber Field, Medford’s old airport, where he had previously been airline station manager.

A morning breakfast welcomed the early arrival of 300 invited private pilots, as well as military pilots and officers who would be part of the show.

 

Medford, Oregon's New Airport, ca. 1932

It was difficult to choose which one of the many aircraft was most popular with the crowd.

The four F-80 fighter jets from Southern California brought loud gasps and cheers as they buzzed over the field, nearly touching the ground, zooming up in a near-vertical climb at 500 mph, only to loop over into a screeching and twisting dive toward the ground.

Just before noon, four huge B-29 bombers, made famous by dropping atomic bombs on Japan, rumbled above and across the sky. After landing, one of the bombers was put on display and opened to a rare public inspection.

 

15,000 People Attended the 1948 Aviation Fair in Medford, Oregon

Minutes after the B-29 was on the ground, six C-46 military transports from the Oregon Air Force Reserve approached the field. A fleet of 13 P-51 Mustang fighters, one of the most effective U.S. fighters during WWII, gave the transports “cover” as if they were on a military mission. The transports peeled off and landed one by one, closely followed by the fighters.

Sixty soldiers from the Oregon National Guard, on their first

Oregon National Guard Troops Stage "attack" on Medford, Oregon Airport

airborne operation since the war, arrived in three C-47 troop carriers. They all rushed out of the plane in a mock ground battle, firing blank cartridges that simulated an invasion and capture of the airport.

United, Southwest and Western airlines each had their civilian DC-4 airliners displayed on the ground, while at least 10 different airline representatives from as far away as the Philippines and Great Britain, watched the show and took part in business discussions with the Medford Commercial Club and airport officials.

During the afternoon speeches, William Warner, 20 years earlier the former Medford postmaster, interrupted proceedings with a stunt, intended as a joke.

He produced a letter that, because a Studebaker automobile had broken down in 1929 and never made it to the airport, had been awaiting delivery for over 20 years. Our Mail Tribune reporter didn’t tell us whether Warner’s stunt received a laugh or, more likely, a groan.

Hard to believe that the festival was 70 years ago this week. So, that means, right now, we’re celebrating a total of 90 years of flight at the same location.

Time flies.

You look pretty good for your age — Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport.

Happy Birthday!

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.