How many still remember the racks of magazines and comic books that were a part of most grocery and drugstores in even the smaller villages and towns across America?
How many remember the sense of anticipation for the latest issue of a favorite?
The particular location of the Yellow Springs store in this photograph courtesy of Antiochiana was not identified, but there were several possibilities since such a magazine rack was a common feature at one time.
We continue to share highlights from Women of Greene County with a profile of Betty Hairston, who is a model of using her talents to strengthen our community.
Note: Bear in mind that the statistics cited about the Credit Union reflect the orgainzation in 1994.
Betty Garnett Hairston came to Greene County in 1965, early in her marriage. She had been born and grew up in Cincinnati. She and her husband Neil settled in Yellow Springs because his job was nearby.
When their daughter Michelle Ann was a toddler, Hairston was asked to take a part-time job at the local Yellow Springs Community Credit Union. Office work was not new to her. She had worked at Defense Electronic Supply Center, Civil Service, and Wright Patterson Air Force Base for a total of eleven years.
Credit unions are different from banks in that each member with an account is a share holder. That means members vote for officials, have input on policy, and receive a dividend if there is a balance after expenses are paid. Most credit unions are organized for employees of a company. However, the Yellow Springs Credit Union is for residents of the Village and Miami Township and workers employed in the area. The credit union has grown from seven members with $40 capital in 1948 to approximately 4300 members and $7.4 million in assets today. Once run by one part-time person, it now employs six people.
Hairston remembers well the year 1977, when record keeping was changed to a computer operation. Before computers, the loan interest and dividends were figured by hand and by head.. What a relief the staff felt when the computers began doing this work!
Hairston was promoted to chief operating office in 1978 upon the retirement of Henry Dyer who had been COO for the first thirty years. Hairston’s relationship with the members and personnel is outstanding. She has attended various training sessions through the years as her job has expanded.
Dedication to service is a way of life for Hairston. In spite of a demanding job, she makes time to be treasurer of her church, the First Baptist Church*. In addition, she is a trustee, an usher, a member of Missionary Society, twice chair of the Calendar Tea, and has spearheaded a project to help South Caroline victims of Hurricane Hugo. Hairston is on the Board of Coordinated Home Care, Inc. She has helped a number of older women with their financial decisions and record keeping. They have been able to stay in their homes with security and dignity because of her work. For Hairston the friendship of the senior women is rewarding. Her work in the community benefits many.
*The First Baptist Church will be hosting a Juneteenth celebration on Wednesday, June 19th at 6 pm. Other Juneteenth celebrations are being held today: 1) a Juneteenth Family Heritage Day between noon and 4:00 pm at the National African American Cultural Center in Wilberforce, and 2) a Juneteenth fundraiser for H.U.M.A.N. At the Mills Park Hotel between 2:00 and 5:00 pm.
More illustrators, showing an increasing focus on children’s books and science fiction media, plus a redesign of an old favorite.
0101-5 — by Hans de Beer
0102-3 — by illustrator Judy Gibson
0103-1 — “Harvest Flight” by Dean Morrissey, from the book Ship of Dreams
0104-X — Updated version of B-48
0105-8 — Poster art for Star Wars by Dave Dorman
0106-6 — “Winter Warrior Quartet” by Michael Whelan
The Yellow Springs Historical Society’ booth for Street Fair is in front of the Yellow Springs News building, and we have a number of Yellow Springs-themed items for sale: books, mugs, maps, Antioch Publishing items, and more.
We’ll also have a pictorial display of the Depression-era CCC camp in John Bryan State Park.
We look forward to your visit to the booth!
The next program offered to the public by the Yellow Springs Historical Society in which the Society adds context to a special exhibit at the Yellow Springs Arts Council Gallery won’t happen until September 15, but those intrigued by the topic and/or the artistry can see the exhibit which opens today at the Dayton Metro Library in downtown Dayton.
The Miami Valley Art Quilt Network has worked on a special traveling quilt exhibit for the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote — “Suffragists: And They Persisted! Art Quilts Celebrating Passage of the 19th Amendment, 1920,” two of which were contributed by Yellow Springs Historical Society board member Chris Zurbuchen. All dates, locations and thumbnails of the quilts for the exhibit can be found at the MVAQN website.
In addition to marking September 15 on your calendar for the Historical Society program you are encouraged to take in the exhibit already on display at the Dayton Metro Library, since the display space there allows for more of the art quilts to be shown than at the YSAC Gallery.
XENIA – On Monday, June 10, 2019 at 7:00 PM, the Greene County Ohio Historical Society will present “The Girls at Home: Parlor Harmonies from the Civil War Era” at the museum, 74 West Church St. The group consists of four sisters from South Charleston, who sing popular songs from the mid 1800s in the spirit of the homemade concerts our ancestors knew and enjoyed, accompanying themselves on a variety of stringed instruments. For eight years they have performed together; their other programs include an 1860s fashion show and bluegrass music (as Lafferty Pike).
This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. For further information about the Greene County Ohio Historical Society or its programs, please contact them at 937-372-4606 or gchsxo@yahoo.com.
Miller continues to describe his early school days, this time focusing on the textbooks. It is possible to obtain PDFs of these textbooks from such Internet sources as Project Gutenberg in a nexus of past and present.
All J. Peery Miller Memoirs posts can be found by clicking on the “Blog Multi-Part Series” tab above in the menu bar.
From the year 1854 to the spring of 1864 I attended the whole or a part of each yearly session. This was Bethel sub-district, No. 6, Bethel township, Clark county, Ohio.
Generally a winter session of four months, commencing the first or middle of November, was taught by a man, and, if public funds held out, a lady was hired to teach a spring or summer term at a much reduced salary. During my attendance I recall the following men teachers: William Tennant, S. Miller (my brother), Kemp Gaines, Harrison Hardacre, Harvey Wallace, Mr. Tolbert from Springfield, Ira B. Miller. The lady teachers were Catherine Shellabarger, Malissa Gaines, Fannie Harris and my sister Catherine Miller. The latter was employed to teach both the winter and spring terms – an experiment which was considered rather hazardous by the old school disciplinarians. It was thought that a lady would be unable to manage the big boys who attended the winter session. But their alarm was not necessary as her discipline was as good, if not better, than that of men predecessors. A special preparation for teaching gained by attending school at Antioch College enabled her to adopt new methods of teaching which created a new interest in school work.
But little attention was paid to grading and classifying pupils in the country schools at this period. Uniformity of text-books was requested but not always insisted upon. Ray’s Practical arithmetic for ciphering and Colburn’s or Stoddard’s for mental exercises were in general use. Two classes in geography – one primary and one advanced – were heard daily. This subject required much memory work for one to be able to repeat the names and locations of the capital cities, chief towns, rivers, bays, seas, mountains, &c., after the routine method of reciting then in vogue. As history was not taught as a special subject in the elementary schools at this period, much depended on the knowledge and willingness of the teacher to enlarge our ideas in this important branch of knowledge when teaching geography. I must confess, however, that I got very little knowledge of general history from this source.
Kirkham’s English grammar was the text-book used by older pupils, none receiving any special language drill until he was mentally strong enough to master the rules and regulations laid down by this author. Only a small percentage of the pupils studied grammar, especially of the boys, as the boys could see no use in the subject. Artithmetic was the essential subject for young men as a knowledge of it could be or more practical use.
With no incentive to advance beyond the curriculum of the district school much time was wasted in going over and over the same ground year after year. Some of the young men, eighteen or twenty years old, were perfectly contented with a knowledge of the three R’s, – ‘rithmetic, ‘riting and reading, the latter being eliminated if deficiency in that branch became so apparent as to become embarrassing to the reader if paraded before the whole school.
It’s a pity that the young woman in the first of these wasn’t identified. Wouldn’t it be a thrill for someone researching family history to find a sketch of a family member?
Part 1 of this centennial compilation by Amy Harper can be found here.
The book and magazine collection wasn’t the only thing that had increased by 1901. The number of readers was also steadily growing. So the reading room moved to a larger room in the same building; the rent increased to $10 per month, with the building’s owner, Ms. DeNormandie, contributing $3 of that amount, and the librarian’s salary also increased, from $5 to $8 per month.
The reading room was an acknowledged success. “….the Social Culture Club are doing a work they may well be proud of,” wrote Mary Ellis Tucker in her 1901 report to the community.
“Many people conceed [sic] it to be the very best work done in any place, of course, outside the churches and schools.”
It was a good work and deserving of special attention, in the view of the Social Culture Club, which decided in 1901 that the library needed an association of its own to maintain and support it. And so it was that the Yellow Springs Library Association came into being. Mrs. Mary E. Lehow, who led the effort to establish the Association, served as its first president.
The membership of the new association were almost identical to that of the Social Culture Club. Indeed, until 1905, when the Social Culture Club merged with the Library Association, it was routine practice for the Library Association to convene its meetings immediately following adjournment of Social Culture Club meetings.
Membership in the Library Association, however, was not limited to club members, and others in the community also joined. Village Council didn’t join the Association, but it became a supporting partner of the library in 1902, when it made a small contribution to the Association. Village government has continued to be “sympathetic and generous and faithful” in its support of the library throughout the years. Today, the Village owns and maintains the building in which the library is housed.
By 1903, the library had again outgrown its room in the DeNormandie Building, so it moved across the street to a “pleasant double room” over what is now the Little Art Theatre. Miss Adalia Little, one of the original members of the Social Culture Club, became the librarian. Other librarians in those early years included Miss Juanita Weaver, Mrs. C. L. Carr, O. E. Carr and Mrs. Herman Schnurer.
Village government’s support of the library helped ease the financial burden somewhat, but the operating expenses still taxed to the limit the young Library Association. It nourished the library during those years with funds derived primarily from donations and from benefits of all sorts: lectures, musicales, dinners, Halloween Carnivals (from 1915-1941) and, of course, bake sales. “….the amount of food consumed in support of this worthy cause must have been enormous,” said Mrs. John Birch in 1935. “If all those cakes, pies, and loaves of homemade bread had been placed end to end, I am sure they would have reached several miles.”
