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This 1930 picture is of McKnight's Service Station which was located on South Main Street, Roaring Spring, on the site the of present day Shear Techniques Beauty Shop. Pictured are James McKnight, owner, and in the background is an unknown successful raccoon hunter displaying his bounty. This photo is from the Elmer Burket collection which is currently being preserved at the Blair County Genealogical Society. It was submitted by Victor Curfman of Altoona, formerly of Roaring Spring.
Readers are encouraged to send or deliver old local photographs of general interest for use in Yesteryear. Information about people and places should be included. Photos must be 30 years old or older and should be sent to Yesteryear, Altoona Mirror, P.O. Box 2008, Altoona, PA 16603, or emailed to community@altoonamirror.com. For more information, call Brenda Carberry, community news coordinator, at 814-946-7459.
Local news on this date
Aug. 15, 1951
The Altoona Senior Park and Recreation Board, Stuart Nolan supervisor, was sponsoring bus trips for more than 600 area youngsters to a Pittsburgh Pirates-St Louis Cardinals baseball game at Forbes Field. The buses were to leave from the Post Office and a side trip to view the new Chrysler automobiles at Syria Mosque was arranged by Penn Motors of Altoona.
Aug. 15, 1976
The new Gee Bee Discount Department Store opened in the Park Hills Plaza, employing about 150 and owned by Glosser Bros. of Johnstown. Norman Wilheim was the general manager.
Aug. 15, 2001
Frankstown Township was claiming that part of a $48,000 building permit fee that Garvey Manor Nursing Home paid to Allegheny Township belonged to them because part of Garvey was built in Frankstown. Allegheny said the majority was built on their land, so the entire fee should be theirs.
Aug. 15, 2016
Hollidaysburg Borough, James Gehret manager, decided to sell two historic canal homes on South Juniata Street. They had been vacant for years and were in disrepair. The homes were valued at $15,000 and $16,000.
Aug. 16, 1951
Playing at the Capitol Movie Theater was "That's My Boy" starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; at the Olympic was "Let's Go Navy" with Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and the Bowery Boys; and at the State was "Moonlight Bay" starring Doris Day and Gordon MacRae.
The Altoona Camp of Gideons International, Kenneth E. Wilt president, gifted about 85 Bibles and Testaments to Bedford County Memorial Hospital. Gideon International had distributed more than 3 million Bibles worldwide and 11 million testaments to the military.
Aug. 16, 1976
Tyrone held a bicentennial parade with a float called the Boston Tea Party winning first place and Harriet Coulter, 100, chosen as Bicentennial Queen and presented 100 red roses. President Gerald R. Ford sent a citation to the Tyrone Senior Guards Drum and Bugle Corps.
The Altoona Recreation Commission held its annual summer jubilee at Mansion Park for kids from the city's 22 playgrounds to compete in all types of sports and activities. Fairview Hills playground, Paul Chambers and Denise Burchner directors, won first place. Garfield won second place and Whenwood won third place.
Aug. 16, 2001
PA Gov. Tom Ridge released $15 million to area hospitals from the $11.5 billion tobacco company settlement, payable in $340 million installments over 25 years. A total of 46 states had signed on to the settlement. The $15 million covered health care not paid for by insurance companies or other sources.
World famous musician and Altoona native Paul Winter was in town for a family reunion and gave an interview to the Mirror's Margaret Moses. He and his Earth Band had recently played a concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra, which was to run on
WPSX-TV.
Aug. 16, 2016
At a Cambria County Farm Bureau tour of farms in New Germany, farmers stressed the need for immigrants to do certain jobs American workers did not want to do despite how well they paid according to Patton farmer Marty Yahner, a member of the state Farm Bureau board of directors.
Altoona artist Cory Geishauser received an arts grant from the PA Rural Arts Alliance for Blair County fifth- and sixth-graders to draw or paint their favorite places in Blair County along with a descriptive narration for a traveling exhibit. At least 13 students from area elementary schools responded.
Nation, world news on this date
Aug. 15:
In 1914, the Panama Canal officially opened as the SS Ancon crossed the just-completed waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.
In 1961, as workers began constructing a Berlin Wall made of concrete, East German soldier Conrad Schumann leapt to freedom over a tangle of barbed wire.
In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York; more than 460,000 people attended the three-day festival, which would become a watershed event in American music and culture.
In 1989, F.W. de Klerk was sworn in as acting president of South Africa, one day after P.W. Botha resigned because of a power struggle within the National Party.
Aug. 16:
In 1777, American forces won the Battle of Bennington in what was considered a turning point of the Revolutionary War.
In 1948, baseball legend Babe Ruth died in New York at age 53.
In 1954, "Sports Illustrated" was first released.
In 1962, the Beatles fired their original drummer, Pete Best, replacing him with Ringo Starr.
In 1977, Elvis Presley died at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee at the age of 42; forty-one years later, in 2018, singer Aretha Franklin, known as the "Queen of Soul," died in Detroit at the age of 76.
In 1978, James Earl Ray, con-
victed assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told a Capitol Hill hearing he did not commit the crime, saying he'd been set up by a mysterious man called Raoul.
In 2020, lightning sparked the August Complex wildfire in California. More than 1,600 square miles -- greater than the size of Rhode Island -- would burn over the following three months
Local news compiled by Tim Doyle. National, world news from The Associated Press.