Rockettes

April 5, 1966
THAT PERFECT STEP –  Mary Martin at Eastertide, the Sunday night TV show on Channel Three, had a surprise for many in this vicinity when she introduced in person the members of Radio City Music Hall ballet known as the “Rockettes” and named girls and the state they were from…One of the dancers from Kentucky is Paulette Harris, a Raceland High School graduate who has been with the famous chorus for four years…Her parents are Mr. and Mrs. Paul Harris of our neighboring city of Worthington…She was the prize-winning drum majorette at Raceland High School a few years back and she has been in New York for the past four years…Thanks to my old friend Earle (Bird) Norris, the ace of Greenup County newsmen for many years, for the bit of information phoned Sunday night just after he saw the performance.

Most first-time visitors to New York go to see the Rockettes…I just happen to remember that it was the 1938 edition of the Rockettes that Mrs. “C” and I saw in New York that give us so much to talk about…That thought alone recalls many things to write about…That was the year that works started on the Ironton floodwall…It was April 13th that the U.S. Engineers selected to break ground on Chestnut Street near the old Continental Stove Co. plant…That anniversary will soon be here.

Elliot Meyers was president of the Chamber of Commerce and the honor to break ground for the $3,850,000 levee was given to J. M Hill, the city’s oldest active merchant who had survived flood losses in 1884, and repeats in 1913 and 1937…The other citizen honored to hold the nickel-plated engraved spade was E. Fred Tyler, druggist, the city’s oldest living ex-mayor…George Hugger was chairman of the city council in 1938…The Selby Shoe Co. had a record month in February, making 3,200 pairs of ladies’ shoes daily at the Third Street plant…

The Board of Trade sponsored a cachet that was stamped on all outgoing letters at the post office during National Air Mail Week…The cachet was a drawing of the proposed Vesuvius Lake Dam, then under construction…The ground was broken for the Sam B. Cooke National Guard Armory on July 8…Kroger opened the first supermarket at Fourth and Park Ave. in a new building erected by Dr. George G. Hunter…

The $400,000 overpass on U.S. 52 at Second and Vesuvius was opened on July 8…October 6, 7, and 8th a city-wide celebration was held with mammoth parades when the Northwest Territory Sesquicentennial Caravan with ox-carts visited the city…58 Ironton floats took part in the parade…

A bridge commission was named by County Commissioners to attempt to sell the Ironton-Russell bridge to the state but Lawrence County politics upset the “apple cart”…The “right attorney” wasn’t to get the sale fee…Work started on the Ox Road now State Route 141, then called the “escape route”…The newspaper reporters had much to write about in 1938.