102 years old, Roman enjoys birthday cake
Bert Ragland, 109 South Hanks St., celebrated his 102nd birthday Saturday. His wife, Eva, is 92 years old, and he credits his good health to “Eva taking good care of me.” He and Eva have been married 72 years.
Ragland, the oldest social security beneficiary in six counties, has 14 children, nine of whom are living, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren he cannot even count. Though the children visit, the Raglands live alone.
When asked about some of the outstanding moments in his long life, Ragland said, “I don’t try to remember much.”
A retired, long-time bakery worker, he was eager to taste his birthday cake. The cake, presented by the Social Security office, was decorated with one tall candle representing a century of living, and two smaller candles for the two recent years. Noting the candle arrangement, Ragland said, “I done started over,” and added that he liked cake.
Walt Koken — somber-faced and gap-toothed with the wide-open look of a country boy — adjusted a sweat-rimmed black felt hat, tucked a fiddle under his chin and cut loose.
Hundreds of bare feet beat the mud, calloused hands pounded one another and shrill yelps of approval rent the air as he sawed out a raucous, rambunctious “Turkey in the Straw.”
It was enough to win him first prize as the best old-time fiddler in the First Annual Fiddlers’ Convention Tuesday at the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife.
For five hours fiddlers from across the country spelled one another on a wooden platform in the middle of a muddy mall jammed with fiddling enthusiasts.
The program noted that “fiddlers’ conventions and contests have been an American folk institution since the early part of the 18th century and probably even earlier.”
But they obviously have caught on with the young. Koken and most of the other contestants looked to be in their 20s and 30s and so was most of the audience.
As presented in the July 1922 editions of the Rome Tribune-Herald
By virtue of a victory by 11 to 2 over the Cherokee Indians, Fairbanks is the undisputed owner of top position for the first half of the race for the City League pennant.
In regard to the playing details of the game, the Cherokee team put up a stiff fight, despite indications of the one-sided score, but were outclassed by the teamwork of the Fairbanks aggregation. Picking the stars of Fairbanks would be a hard matter the whole team playing jam-up ball, but Bagdell, Ford, Lumpkin and Lindsey were possibly the outstanding stars. Minnis, of Cherokee, played the best game for his club and is one of the best pitchers that has played thus far on the Fairbanks diamond.
New Miss Georgia welcomed home
Clutching an elbow full of scarlet roses, a key to the city and a proclamation declaring her week in Rome, the reigning Miss Georgia survived an ordeal by flash bulb Wednesday to proclaim herself “liberated enough.”
Miss Lisa Lawalin, bewitching and obviously rather bewildered by all the fuss over her, is eyeing the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, N.J.
The 19-year-old blonde, who is a junior speech major at Shorter College, posed for photographers and answered questions of reporters on the steps of City Hall. Earlier she arrived in a motorcade which rushed her downtown in a fruit-salad of sirens, blinking headlights and blaring automobile horns, manned by friends from Shorter.
Lisa said she intends to spend the remainder of the week at home in the Georgian Apartments before returning to the hectic regimen of a beauty queen.
“I’m going to be in Rome until Sunday and then I’ll be going back to Columbus where I’ll do some commercials for a dairy there,” she said.
Lisa said she is “just now getting used” to “kids coming up to me and asking me for my autograph. It’s been a lot more exciting than at any other time of my life, that’s for sure. I think one of the hardest things to get used to is that you’ve just got to try to look your nicest because people really do look up to you … when you’re in a group of people. And you don’t want to disappoint anybody and you want to do your very best all the time.”
For Miss Georgia, a day generally begins at dawn’s first light or before and ends just shy of dawn’s first light. On the Fourth of July, for example, “I got up at 6 a.m., drove to Griffin, had an appearance at 9:30 a.m. where I was in a parade, and I participated in their Fourth of July activities. I went around to the different games that they had, and then I judged their pageant that night. They had a Miss Griffin pageant as well as a junior Miss Griffin pageant. There were 70 little girls and I and two other people judged. I finally got home and got to bed at 1:30 a.m. (Wednesday) and got up at again at 8 a.m. And it just goes on and on every day.”
Although Lisa won the bathing suit and talent competitions in the Miss Georgia pageant two weeks ago, she insists that “I really don’t think I want to get caught up in” show business as a career. “I enjoy just singing for my own pleasure and for the pleasure of the people that I’m performing for but I don’t really have any ambition of ever becoming famous for singing or anything like this.”
Instead, said Lisa, “I’d like to go back to school and finish my education and go on to get my master’s degree in special education.”
A true believer in a moderate form of women’s liberation, she explained that “I believe in women’s rights as far as job opportunities and equal citizenship and things like this, but as far as being liberated, I, as a woman, feel like I’m liberated enough as it is. And I still think that man should have precedence over woman in the home.”
A native of Tell City, Ind., Lisa has won virtually every beauty pageant she has entered. In 1971, she was named “Miss Shorter College,” and was first runner-up and winner of the bathing suit competition in the Miss Georgia competition. She was a runner-up in the Miss Dogpatch, U.S.A. contest in Dogpatch, Ark., and was crowned Miss Peach Bowl in 1971 when she reigned over the football game between Georgia Tech and Ole Miss. In March of this year, she was crowned the Peach Queen of the Peach Blossom Arts and Crafts Festival in Roberta, Ga. In April, she was crowned Miss Cedar Valley. She was first runner-up in the Miss Seventeen competition in Evansville, Ind., and has modeled for several stories in Indiana. Since her graduation from high school, Lisa has been singing at the Crystal Pistol at Six Flags over Georgia and has performed several times on WSB-TV’s Today in Georgia program.
“I think that (beauty) pageants are a way to develop a woman to make her an even better woman,” said Lisa, repudiating a charge of radical feminists that beauty contests are “degrading” to women. “They help a woman to develop her femininity, to be a lady at all times,” she responded, “and to me this is being a woman and women’s liberation doesn’t even enter into it.”
After being greeted by Ben Lucas, chairman of the Rome City Commission, Lisa was driven to her home where she was greeted by cheering friends and neighbors standing beneath a banner hung in her honor. A reception in her honor is planned tonight by friends and neighbors in the Georgia Apartments complex.
Scramble tourney to open Saturday
The seasons only open scramble tournament begins Saturday morning at Green Acres and any one of 10 or more teams are given a good shot at winning the championship.
That’s the way LinValley pro Raymond Williams sees it as golfers continue to tune up their games for the two-day, 36-hole event. Of course, Williams likes his own team, but readily admits no team is a shoo-in.
Playing with Williams are Willard Nixon, Ben Mashburn and Randy Lloyd.
Another real strong team has pro Tee Burchett as its captain. Playing with him are Jerry Argo, Donnie Holmes and Tony Burchett.
Par for the LinValley course is 36-36 — 72 and Williams predicts it may take as much as 25-under par for the 36 holes to lay claim to the title. Entry fee is $10 per golfer or $40 per team, and prizes will go to the top teams in each flight.
The field will begin play with a shotgun start. The morning play begins at 8:30 p.m. and the afternoon play at 2 p.m.
Williams said teams may request starting times for Saturday’s round as long as vacancies exist. However, each team will be required to play one day in the morning and the next in the afternoon.
Scramble play works like this: all four team members hit tee shots off No. 1. They then select the best drive and all four hit their second shots from this spot. They continue to do this throughout the 18-hole round.
100 years ago as presented in the July 1922 editions of the Rome Tribune-Herald
Alleged indisposition of Romans to clear the way for fire engines caused Chief Horace Taylor to state that a serious accident will occur if more consideration is not given in the future to fire wagons.
He pointed out that serious accidents have been avoided recently by the careful driving of the fireman. Mr. Taylor said that some Romans pay not the slightest attention to fire wagon bells and urge that cars move to the curbing in order that fire wagons have a clear road.
Mrs. Ida McGrath, 40, widow of P. J. McGrath, who was a wholesale plumbing dealer in Seattle, Wash., was arrested in Jacksonville, Fla., for hoboing her way on a freight train and was in the Duval County jail awaiting trial on the charge.
Mrs. McGrath said her husband had died and was buried in Washington, D.C., a little over three years ago, and that when her funds became exhausted she tried to get to Florida, hearing there were wonderful opportunities for nurses. Arrested with Mrs. McGrath was a young man named Cook, who was “showing her the ropes.”
Frank “Tubby” Jacobs, Rome motorcycle racer, returned home with the championship cup which he won at Chattanooga on July 4 when he defeated Claude Belcher in a five-mile race on a half mile track, his time being 5 minutes and 44 seconds. In that race he equaled the world record of 32 seconds for a half mile. He will return to Chattanooga to race against his own time to break the world’s record, believing that on a dry track he can accomplish that feat.
At a 10-mile race July 4 he was second. He had that race won until he had trouble with his machine.
Jacob holds 11 cups and medals won in motorcycle races, mostly in California where he lived before coming to Rome.
Plans are being made for Jacobs to race again in Chattanooga on Labor Day and at Rome during the fair next October.
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