These century-old historical excerpts were selected from the Looking Backward feature of The Vidette-Messenger newspaper, which are part of the PoCo Muse Collection. Originally, these bits of information appeared as larger stories in the Valparaiso Daily Vidette and The Evening Messenger newspapers.
June 1, 1926
Among others to purchase lots in Valparaiso’s Graceland Cemetery are Moe Lowenstine, of Bremen, Richard Baum, of Gary, and several Calumet district residents. More lots are being disposed of during the last few weeks than were sold in six months prior to the new development.
Edith Weems recently took up her duties as county girls’ club leader. Arrangements are being made to hold meetings in various parts of the county whenever her presence is needed. Pine Township already has fourteen girls as well as several boys enrolled. Last year, Pine township had only three enrolled. A total of 150 boys and girls in the county are registered.
June 2, 1926
Work was started this morning on the improvement of Valparaiso City Hall. The old stairway leading to the council rooms is being tore away to make way for an improved and wider approach. A new roof will be put on the building. The interior will be repapered and repainted. Smith and Smiths have the contract for the carpenter work and C. L. Terry for the papering and painting. The improvement program was launched by Mayor W. F. Spooner soon after he took office.
Walter Harper, of Gary, will go on trial charged with first degree murder before a Porter County Circuit Court jury tomorrow. Two other Lake County killer suspects await trial in Porter County Jail.
June 3, 1926
J. M. Fabing yesterday started his forty-fourth year of continuous service with the Nickel Plate Railroad. The Valparaiso agent is now the oldest telegrapher in point of service on the local division. It was May 28, 1883, that Fabing, then a young operator at Middletown, O., received a wire from O. F. Brandt, then agent of the Nickel Plate here, whom he had known in Ohio, asking him to come to Valparaiso to accept a position as operator. He came here and took the job. During the first four years he jumped about considerably, but in 1887 returned to Valparaiso, married, and established his home. Louis Sprencil, foreman of the bridge repair department in this division, exceeds Fabing’s record by nearly a year.
Merger of the Northern Indiana Gas and Electric Company with the Calumet Electric Company into the Northern Indiana Public Service Company became effective today with the filing of the merger agreement with the secretary of state at Indianapolis and with the county recorders in twenty-five counties in which the company operates. Valparaiso is served by the company.
June 4, 1926
Warning all stock raisers that unless immediate steps are taken to secure the services of a state veterinarian for this section, Porter County milk producers will be brought face to face with a drastic embargo on non-tuberculin-tested milk now in effect in the Chicago area, Chairman Edward Ogden, of the Center Township Farm Bureau, addressed the regular June meeting of the organization Thursday evening. He advocated united backing of the movement now on foot to have the Porter County Board of Commissioners appropriate $3,500 to $5,000 to meet the cost of this service.
Taking the stand today in his own defense, Walter Harper, mill worker of Gary, charged with second degree murder in connection with the death last October of George Helwig, his coworker, asserted he acted in self-defense when he struck Helwig with his tongs after a struggle in which he claims Helwig attempted to take them away from him. Harper also injected the claim, that because of prior trouble, he stood in fear of the man he knocked down. The case is on trial in Porter Circuit Court.
June 5, 1926
After four hours deliberation, a Porter Circuit Court jury that heard the evidence in the case of the State of Indiana against Walter Harper, Gary youth, accused of having been the cause of the death of George Helwig, a coworker in a Gary steel mill, when he struck him with a pair of tongs, returned a verdict finding Harper guilty of manslaughter. Judge H. H. Loring, receiving the verdict at 9 o’clock last evening, at once sentenced Harper to serve two to twenty-one years at the state reformatory.
Grace Urbahns, Treasurer of Indiana, and nominee of the Republican party as its candidate for this office at the coming November election, is home for a few days rest, stopping at the home of Allen and Ruby Urbahns. Assuming the office held by her husband following his untimely death a few months ago, Urbahns was nominated as her party’s candidate without opposition. She is the first woman to hold a major political office in Indiana history.
June 6, 1926
Barney Jungels, Leonard School farmer, lies in Christian Hospital today fighting an uphill battle for life, with his upper abdomen punctured by a .38 caliber bullet. Charles Haskins, 60, and Wilbert Haskins, 18, his son, of Gary, are being held in Porter County Jail following their arrest by Sheriff W. B. Forney in Gary with assistance of Gary Police. Jungels was shot in an exchange of shots with a man supposed to be Haskins after he and two other farmers had set a trap to nab a prospective chicken thief. The shooting occurred Sunday evening about 11:30 o’clock.
Homeless for seven months because of a fire that last October destroyed the Ross Block, opposite the Valparaiso Post Office on West Lincolnway, forced the Take-Chevrolet Motor Sales Company to conduct its business affairs from three or four temporary locations. Sunday and today, Manager Milton J. Take directed the moving operations, which shortly will see the Take-Chevrolet Company installed in its new and imposing business home in the new structure reared on the ruins of the old.
June 7, 1926
Barney Jungels, well known farmer, residing west of Valparaiso on the Lincoln Highway, still lies in a critical condition at Christian Hospital from a bullet wound supposed to have been inflicted by Charles Haskins, of Gary, last Sunday night in an alleged chicken robbery attempt. Meanwhile, Sheriff W. B. Forney is holding Haskins and his son Wilbert, in the county jail on an open charge. Should the gun wound prove fatal, they will be faced with murder indictments.
June 8, 1926
The Porter County Commissioners have turned thumbs down on the plan to slice part of the courthouse lawn to accommodate auto parkers. The suggestion came from the Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce that the sidewalk be taken out, and the curb set over to the property line. Another suggestion made was that the county board rent a space to a popcorn wagon that has space on the street and thereby remove an obstruction. This suggestion, as well as the chamber idea, were met with firm “noes.”
June 9, 1926
Citizens living in the Chautauqua Park neighborhood are up in arms over the city’s granting of a permit to a carnival company to stage a show at the corner of Elmhurst and Chicago, on property owned by Frank A. Turner. Upwards of forty persons have lodged complaints with Mayor Spooner regarding the issuance of the permit. City Attorney William Daly has ruled that a carnival in and of itself is not unlawful and that the city has no authority to stop an amusement merely because it is a carnival unless it constitutes a public nuisance. Mayor Spooner claimed the company, when it secured the $23 permit, represented itself as a merry-go-round concession.
Nathan H. Sheppard, of Valparaiso, was re-elected attendance officer by the Porter County Board of Education at a special session held Monday afternoon at the office of Superintendent Fred H. Cole. His job is to keep tabs on boys and girls of school age and see that they are attending school as required by state law, and in many ways, to serve as the connecting link between the school and the home.
June 10, 1926
Valparaiso University was today presented with a portrait of Oliver Perry Kinsey, who with Henry Baker Brown, built up the university into one of the leading educational institutions of the country. The gift was made by the Class of 1894. Martin H. Carmody, of Grand Rapids, Mich., made the presentation speech. Kinsey was present and was given a great ovation when he arose to speak. Acting President John C. Baur, who accepted the gift, pledged his organization to the high ideals and the great standard Professor Kinsey and Professor Brown had established.
Edward Billings, a graduate of the Valparaiso High School, has made a splendid record in his work at the Indiana University Medical School, Bloomington. He obtained an A in Pathology, Medicine, Obstetric, and Surgery. He is the youngest member of the medical class and is not yet twenty-one years.
June 11, 1926
Delivering the fifty-third annual commencement address before 1926 graduates of Valparaiso University this afternoon, Dr. E. J. Lankenau, of Napoleon, O., spoke upon “Life and Its Ups and Downs.” Finding in the history of the university itself a fitting example of this theme which was, briefly, the theme that success comes only to those who can make the most of the ‘downs,’ the speaker forecasted a great and bright future for the university under its present management.
A campaign to straighten Lincolnway at Valparaiso’s west approach is being undertaken by Manager Wallace C. Sutter and the chamber of commerce road committee headed by F. W. Alpen, chairman, which has been in conference the past week with H. A. Moberly, right-of-way agent for the state highway commission. They have been successful in securing favorable grants from every farmer landowner, except one, along the eight-mile stretch that is to form the Valparaiso link of State Road 2, uniting the Chicago and Fort Wayne traffic over a new and broad cement highway. The local committee expects to straighten out the road at the Joliet Bridge and solve the problem of jamming, which have prevailed for years.
June 12, 1926
Beginning July 1, visitors to Dune State Park will be required to pay an admission fee of ten cents, which is the same charged at all Indiana parks. According to the rule in force at all parks, children under eight years of age will be admitted free. Cottage owners in the park, of which there are one hundred, will pay one admission fee and then will be given free passes for the season. The same rule will apply to taxi drivers and persons holding concessions within the park.
The Valparaiso City Council was evenly divided upon the question of removing popcorn and peanut vendors from the city streets when Chief of Police William Pennington presented the matter to the solons at the regular meeting on Friday. Chief Pennington asked authority to remove the obstructions because of traffic risks. He said there had been many complaints registered. The three council members who backed up the chief in his demands were John Palmer, E. S. Miller, and Louis F. Leetz. Councilmen Charles Hicks, Louis Gast, and C. A. Stanton opposed the ousting of the vendors. City Attorney William Daly, when appealed to, said the council had the right to remove the vendors. Mayor W. F. Spooner deferred action until the next meeting to give the council time to think it over.
June 13, 1926
Democrats of Porter County will hold a big meeting at Flint Lake Tuesday afternoon, according to Ira C. Tilton, county Democratic leader. Among the speaking headliners will be Evans Woolen, Indianapolis Banker, elected to oppose Arthur Robinson for the short-term seat in the United States Senate, and Albert Stump, Indianapolis attorney, candidate for the long term seat, Chairman Earl Peters and Mrs. John I. Gwin, chairman of the Tenth District organization, will also be present. A basket dinner will be held.
Delos Wesley Schleman, age 18, son of William and Blanche Schleman, died Sunday morning at the home of his parents in Chautauqua Park of a ten weeks’ illness of heart trouble. He was born in Francesville but obtained his educational training in the Valparaiso City Schools. Besides his parents, he is survived by brother, Herbert Schleman, of Dunnellon, Fla., and sister, Helen Schleman.
June 14, 1926
J. F. Bowlby, 407 North Napoleon Street, Valparaiso, owes his life to the fortunate circumstances. When caught in the terrific explosion which wrecked the coke products plant of the Illinois Steel Company at Gary on Monday, he was hurled backwards instead of forward. The same crash caught Leslie Richardson, of Gary, his foreman, and others in the group and knocked them forward. They were among the victims. Bowlby was only slightly stunned. He was able to assist in carrying out the body of Richardson. L. L. Liggett, of Valparaiso, was among the injured in the explosion. The death total stood at eleven, with forty-seven others reported in serious condition.
June 15, 1926
The first radio broadcast from the new studio in the Sievers building in Valparaiso through the courtesy of the Tom Brown Music Company on Monday evening was a pronounced success over WRBC. A. Harlan, manager of the music company, stated that he had leased a wire from the Northwestern Indiana Telephone Company lines to the Immanuel Lutheran Church and the new remote-controlled studio will be used every Monday evening for programs by musicals of the local music company. D. R. Clemmons installed the station.
June 16, 1926
Anna Mohler King, victim of Saturday morning’s cook stove explosion, resulting from the use of gasoline instead of kerosene, at her home on Lincoln Avenue (Brown Street) in Valparaiso, died at 12:20 o’clock this morning at the home of C. E. Norton, corner Lafayette and Indiana, where she was removed after the accident. Death followed a four days’ heroic struggle for life, but the burns sustained proved to be too severe.
Loren Liggett, North Washington Street, Valparaiso, fireman on the E. J. & E. Switch engine, who, with Clarence Gale, of Gary, his engineer, were caught in the Gary steel mill blast of Monday when a vat of acid exploded in the coke plant. The engine was standing on the tracks on the west side of the building when the blast occurred. Liggett was dragged to safety from the flames and debris by Gale. An operation was performed Tuesday on Liggett and it is expected he will recover.
June 17, 1926
Alvie Herbst, tried twice on a charge of mistreating 14-year-old Marie Palen, by juries in Porter Circuit Court, which were unable to reach an agreement, was today discharged from a liquor count against him. Judge H. H. Loring nolle prossed the affidavit against Herbst when neither city nor county authorities were able to show that they had a search warrant when they searched Herbst’s premises just east of the Valparaiso.
The Civic Male Chorus of Valparaiso is to give a program of sacred music at the Presbyterian Church on Sunday evening, June 20. The chorus recently appeared at the chamber of commerce forum meeting and both surprised and greatly delighted all who heard them by the high and splendid character of the work presented.
June 18, 1926
Members of the Porter County Council met in special session at the courthouse today and voted $7,300 for the purposes of changing the courthouse, jail, and Memorial Opera House heating system. In the past, the courthouse boilers have heated the other buildings. Under the new engineering, each building will have its own boiler. Those now in use will be transferred to the jail and opera house and a new boiler will be installed in the courthouse.
Members of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Sunday morning will be greeted by Rev. Father M. M. Day, one of the former pastors of the local church. Rev. Father Day will preside at the 7 o’clock high mass service in the absence of Rev. Father A. Worger Slade, who is away on vacation. Father Day is professor of Old Testament history at Nashotah House, Wisconsin.
June 19, 1926
Frank Schmidt, age 80, for more than fifty years a resident of Kouts, and up until a few years ago, engaged in the business of harness making, committed suicide at Noon today. Despondent over ill health, he went to the barn in the rear of his home on the outskirts of Kouts and shot himself in the head with a revolver. His wife discovered his almost-lifeless body and rushed to the home of Rev. Rugo Hicken, and given the shocking intelligence, collapsed. Schmidt was dead when a physician arrived.
E. E. Shedd, age 83 years, pioneer Valparaiso businessman, died this morning at the home of his daughter, Leona Smith, in Morgan Park, Chicago. Shedd left Valparaiso last fall for Bartow, Fla., where he spent the past five winters. Two months ago, he suffered a general breakdown. For forty-seven years, he was engaged in the grocery and nursery business in Valparaiso. Two daughters and two sons survive.
June 20, 1926
Flames early Sunday morning inflicted damage between $8,000 and $10,000 to the plant and stock of the Kingley Shirt Company at Chesterton. Faulty wiring is believed to have been the cause of the blaze. The plant, a one-story brick, is located in the south part of the town. It would have been completely destroyed but for the alertness of Henry Atchison, living nearby. Atchison arose about 5 o’clock to turn his horse out into pasture and noted a flash of fire in the factory and notified the fire department. Some forty or fifty women and girls and ten men are temporarily out of work. The plant will be reconditioned and its operation resumed as quickly as possible.
Ralph A. Miller, well-known monument dealer, died at his home, 18 Franklin Street, Valparaiso, Saturday evening after a several months’ illness. He was born in Valparaiso on March 23, 1878, son of August and Florence Miller. He had been engaged in the monument business here for the last thirty years. Besides his parents, he is survived by his widow, one daughter, two sisters, and one brother.
June 21, 1926
The Pennsylvania elevator on South Washington Street in Valparaiso, owned by Judge Willis C. McMahan, of Indianapolis, and managed by Harold W. Cleveland, of Valparaiso, was sold today to Henry and William Jensen, of Valparaiso. The latter will operate a grain, feed, and coal business.
June 22, 1926
Valparaiso Mayor W. F. Spooner received a letter this morning from Dr. H. H. Schreck, now a soldier patient in the U.S. Veterans’ Hospital at Chillicothe, Ohio, stating that fourteen years ago while a student at Valparaiso University, he received a broken nose in a ball game. An eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist treated him, but he left the city without paying the bill. Now he wants to make restitution, but he did not remember the doctor’s name. Mayor Spooner got in touch with Dr. H. B. Hayward, who recalled the incident. Dr. Hayward intends mailing Dr. Schreck a receipted bill insisting that the honest intentions displayed were reward enough for him.
June 23, 1926
Edward Maxwell, well-known farmer, residing five-and-a-half miles south of Valparaiso, was badly injured shortly after Noon today. He was driving his team to a cultivator and was returning to his home from the field when the horses became frightened at a passing county gravel road truck. He was thrown from the cultivator and dragged under it for a distance of thirty rods. It is not known whether he suffered internal injuries.
Valparaiso boasts the fourth largest apple orchard in the state. It is owned by G.G. Shauer and Sons and is located on the southwest end of Flint Lake on a high knoll of ground. Fifty-eight acres in the tract contain 3,485 trees, all planted in the three-year period from 1915 through 1917.
June 24, 1926
Asserting that to grant the petition filed by Clarence J. Osborne asking a license to operate a score or more of milk truck bus routes would be to grant a monopoly, some hundred and fifty Porter, Lake, and LaPorte County truck operators have served notice that they will fight the thing to the limit. Appearing in Whiting yesterday, Attorney Daniel E. Kelly, of Valparaiso, and other counsel gained a continuance of the hearing before the public utilities commission until July 12. Some forty Porter County operators are said to be interested in the proceedings.
Attorney Harold E. Stiles, of Gary, former Valparaiso University law school student, must stand on a jury trial on charges brought to disbar him because of alleged unprofessional conduct in selling answers to the Lake County Bar Association questions given young lawyers seeking admission. After hearing arguments on both sides of the issue, Attorney Frank Gaveit, for the defendant, urging that the complaint against Stiles was insufficient in that it did not violate constitutional provisions and Attorney George E. Hershman, for the bar examination, was a direct flouting of the court, which Stiles as a lawyer had sworn to uphold. Judge H. H. Loring inclined to the same opinion, and by his ruling, Stiles will have to face a jury.
June 25, 1926
Two fires on unknown origins struck north of Valparaiso late Thursday afternoon, inflicted loses estimated at $8,500. The fires occurred within half an hour of each other. The first, coming at 4:30 o’clock, destroyed two barns on the old Artillus Bartholomew farm, a mile north of the city, causing damage of $4,500. The second, coming at 5 o’clock, completely ruined two cottages on the Kilmer-Fraser Blackhawk Beach resort reservation, and threatened two others. The Valparaiso Fire Department prevented further losses. The Bartholomew property is owned by William Urschel, of Valparaiso, and tenanted by William Knoth. No origin could be advanced for the Bartholomew fire. It is believed a bonfire started by some children was the cause of the fire at Blackhawk.
Caught in the intense traffic jam that made motoring anywhere within a fifty-mile radius of Chicago perilous on Thursday because of the assembling and dispersal of the hundreds of thousands that attended the Eucharistic Congress program at Mundelein, Kathleen Kelly, her brother Daniel, and Mrs. L. R. Jackson, of Waterloo, Ia., a niece of Attorney Daniel E. Kelly, here on a visit, were involved in a crash on their way home. The mishap occurred near Rogers Park. The Kelly machine, a Hudson Coach, was damaged, and Kathleen Kelly sustained injuries that caused her to be taken to a hospital for treatment. Other members of the party were not injured.
June 26, 1926
Attorney John P. Crumpacker, representing the Mid-West Dairymen’s Company in its suit to force Steve Wozniak and Owen J. Roper, well-known west county stockmen, to live up to a contract requiring them to sell their milk supplies to the Mid-West Company, today charged the defendants with shielding themselves by subterfuge when upon evidence submitted by Attorney B. B. Loring, for the defendants, Judge Loring withdrew his temporary restraining order issued Thursday. The evidence showed the defendants, prior to March, had sold their cattle. A bill of sale was presented, but the deal was not a matter of record. “This is a mere subterfuge,” Attorney Crumpacker declared. He held that the cows were still in possession of the defendant, Roper, who was selling the milk to other parties in violation of his contract.
Two-hundred employees of the McGill Manufacturing Company Friday evening walked from their work benches or desks not to return until July 12 or thereabouts. Not a tie-up due to using non-union materials, not at all. Just the customary two-week’s vacation session given the employees at which time the annual inventory is taken. Many left before daybreak via automobile for points at a distance, while others leave Sunday. Many, however, are taking a rest at home. Checks covering one week’s pay was presented to each employee.
June 27, 1926
The Valparaiso City Council in special session Saturday night contracted to purchase a complete automatic traffic control system for the city. The purchase was made through the Tokheim Company of Fort Wayne and is said to involve about $900. Installations will be made within the next two months. It is said Councilman Louis Leetz stood against the purchase until it could be ascertained the city’s financial position. The three signals will be placed along the downtown intersections of Lincolnway and the one traffic signal now in operation will be given some other assignment.
About 1,200 persons attended the auto races at the Porter County Fairgrounds on Sunday promoted by Al Morine, of South Bend. The first race, a five-mile dash, was won by Charles Balinsky, of South Bend, as was the main event, the fifty-miles clearaway. The latter victory was made possible when Harry Keister, also of South Bend, who had won two recent races, crashed into the fence on the forty-ninth lap after holding a good lead and being an almost-certain winner. In the five-mile go, Herschel Harding, driving a Fronty, dashed through the fence, completely wrecking the car and sustaining a broken shoulder. Ten machines participated in the fifty-mile event, which was completed in one hour and thirty seconds.
June 28, 1926
Walter Bartz was elected president of the Porter County Cow Testing Association at the reorganization meeting held this evening in the county agent’s office. Twenty-five dairymen attended. Other officers named were R. L. McGinley, vice president; Clarence Fisher, secretary and treasurer. E. H. Westbay, Algae Kauffman, Herman C. Homfeld, and Daniel Haxton were named directors. G. A. Williams, in charge of dairy work at Purdue University, gave an interesting talk.
June 29, 1926
Kathleen Kelly, daughter of Attorney D. E. and Angela Kelly, is improving at Rogers Park Hospital in Chicago following the automobile accident of last Thursday. It is thought that she will be able to come to her home in Valparaiso tomorrow.
July 30, 1926
Valparaiso’s city planning commission met last night with Lawrence V. Sheridan, of Indianapolis, and accepted his maps and designs for the future development of the city and civic region. Under the Sheridan design, the Valparaiso of tomorrow contemplates a regional development in an area extending a mile and a half north to four miles south and a mile and a half east to two miles west. The regional map ties up with the present Valparaiso plan designed by Engineer Sheridan and shows chiefly the coordination of the city plan with the enlarged regional design. In all, Sheridan submitted five maps, all of which were mounted and given public display. In his statement accompanying the layout, the engineer explains the “how and why” of the contemplated expansion. A general scheme of platting is also followed.
Harvey C. Varner, former commander of the Charles Pratt Post, American Legion, and now at the head of the Tenth District organization, Tuesday was notified by state headquarters that his district had been the only one in the state, so far, to go over the top in the present membership drive. There are now 2,100 Legionnaires in the district.