This week in history: April 13, 2023

OLD TIMES

85 years ago

With 13 victories and four defeats, Lakeview High School girls closed one of their most successful basketball seasons. The Lakeview misses compiled a total of 616 points to their opponents’ 339. Team members were centers Carolyn Peters, Wilma Tilden, Mary Henderson, Vera Marvins and Mary Jane Seagraves; guards Christine Kitchen, Bobbie Joe Henderson, Evelyn Bray, Janie Ruth Fairchild, Lydia Tilden and Harriet Pounds; and forwards Gertrude Martin, Lou Evan Reddich, Mary Roper and Kathryn Mellon.

60 years ago

Adele Moody presented her students in a piano recital held at her home on North Woodlawn Street in Winter Garden. Performers were James McKey, Susan Thompson, Ginger Thompson, Cindy Kannon, Sue Ann Starr, John McKey, Ellyn Kadel, Nancy Maguire, Michael Hurley and Leila Ann Bell.

55 years ago

The Ocoee Teen Council was making a drive to raise funds to carry on the work for teenage activities. They were selling cartons of matches each containing famous cooking recipes plus a free comb donated by the Gulf Life Insurance Co. Council members were Ray Ungara, Sandy Barnett, Lonnie Warr, Sherrell Dann, Kay Anderson, Brenda Watson, Carol Andersoon, Margaret Robbe, Pat Minor and Ronnie Hagen.

45 years ago

Boy Scout Troop 210 of Winter Garden announced Pete Wiley and Noel Griffith as the new scoutmaster and assistant scoutmaster. At a recent West Orange Scout Show, scouts recruited seven new prospects. The troop was sponsored by the First United Methodist Church of Winter Garden.

30 years ago

Letter to the editor: The article that appeared in your newspaper regarding an industrial plant in Windermere was apparently supposed to be an April Fool’s joke. But it was no joke at all. It was poor journalism that cost a lot of people wasted time, money and tremendous discomfort in already unstable times. Robert L. Kazaros, president, Kazco Communications Inc.

Letter to the editor: Being an immediate neighbor to the Bumby Point property, and having grown up in western Pennsylvania, I am extremely excited about the Wyandotte Company putting their plant next to our house. … I really miss the polluted air, the soot and the stench that was released by the steel mills, and the slimy feeling that one gets from swimming in the Alleghany. … George, you got me good. I thought the article was true for quite a while. … “ Karen Fay

20 years ago

The Jimmy Neutron Nicktoon Blast attraction opened at Universal Studios.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

April 3, 1942

The Florida Public Service Company (“in the service of customer, community and country”) placed an advertisement in The West Orange News I n 1942 to discuss women’s rights.

“The American woman has made significant political, social and economic strides under the protection of the Republic. Women possess nearly half the private wealth in the United States — they own 40% of all real estate, 23% of all stock shares and 65% of all savings accounts. Women are the beneficiaries of 80% of all life insurance policies, receiving a billion dollars in annual benefits.

“They inherit about 60% of all estates. Their collective holdings exceed ($210 billion). Women spend more than three-fourths of all money spent for consumer goods.

“Whatever weaknesses our profit system of free business enterprise may have, it has been exceedingly generous to the American woman. Certainly she would not exchange the American way for some alien -ology or -ism that would turn back the clock of time to destroy the gains of her greatest century.

“In home, school, church, club, office, shop and at the ballot box, the influence of the American woman has become essential to the preservation of our way of life.”

FROM THE WINTER GARDEN HERITAGE FOUNDATION ARCHIVES

Grace Mary Mather-Smith’s first birthday was celebrated in Oakland’s Speer Park 111 years ago. The photographer captured a scene in which just about every child living in Oakland had been invited to honor the little girl. Charles Fredric Mather-Smith and his wife, Grace, moved to Oakland from Chicago in 1908. They bought parcels of land in town and set up a homestead on North Tubb Street called Edgegrove Farms (no longer in existence), which eventually included a 28-room house. The generous pair eventually improved a park (Grace Park) situated on two blocks west of Town Hall, established the original West Orange Country Club on Avalon Road (the c. 1915 entryway survives) and contributed to improvements to Oakland’s black churches.

Grace is seen in front, holding her daughter.