Blast from the past

November 30, 1999

Week of May 7, 1956

The Coffman Health Center on the Middleburg Pike has become one of the community's most popular locations for holding meetings of various groups and associations. On several occasions, two and three groups have met at the same time, using not only the spacious auditorium, which can seat 125 persons, but clinic rooms as well.

It is a meeting place for the Junior Civitan Club, Town and Country Garden Club, Washington County Historical Society, Hamilton Park-Carroll Heights Civic Association, Antietam Street PTA, Hood College Alumni Association and many more.

There was a time when a trip by train, always an exciting event for youngsters, was rather commonplace. Nowadays, however, when most families do their traveling in their own cars, a train ride is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion for a lot of girls and boys.

So it was a very special occasion this week for a group of first-graders at Clear Spring Elementary School when they traveled from Highfield to Hagerstown via the Western Maryland.

It is going to be hard to convince three Clear Spring area farmers who rounded up eight young foxes from two dens a week ago that the sly Reynards should be spared. The dens yielded plenty of evidence that the parents of the young foxes had kept them well-fed not only with poultry, but young livestock such as pigs and possibly a newborn calf.

Week of May 7, 1981

Hagerstown's gold and silver dealers are crying the blues, but say they'll comply with a city law that requires them to turn over daily records of their business transactions to the police department.

"What they're doing is deputizing us. They are trying to make us a police department and that's not right," said Les Oberhaus, who owns two Eastern Gold outlets in Hagerstown.

Members of the one citizens' commission that may hold the key to keeping down city taxes met last night to begin organizing their effort to bring new business and industry to Hagerstown.

Recognizing that every new tax-paying business means a lighter tax load for homeowners all over the city, the newly formed Commercial and Industrial Commission's members and chairman Robert Murdock said they'll move quickly to attract new companies and help existing firms expand.

Washington County Health Department officials are investigating an outbreak of hepatitis in the vicinity of Broadfording Road and Md. Route 63.

Five mild cases have been reported, according to Bob Brandt, county health spokesman. "We suspect the water supply," Brandt said. "This could be coming from groundwater contamination."

? Compiled by Jean Baraclough

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