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This Week in Rockland: Newspaper Excerpts: Flashback Friday: Week of March 1

February 28, 1874 – 150 YEARS AGO
Rockland County Journal

AROUND HOME
   ☞ The sum of $20.85 was collected in the Reformed church, last Sunday, for the charity committee of the Y.M.C.A.
   ☞ Last Thursday a week ago, at Turners’, Richard Gorman, of Piermont, had his arm badly crushed between the cars.
   ☞ Persons desiring a supply of young trout to stock streams or ponds can be accommodated by Mr. H. Oblenis, Monsey, N.Y.
   ☞ The children connected with the Nyack Universalist Sunday school will give a concert on Sunday evening: admission free.
   ☞ Commodore Voorhis is having a sea wall constructed in front of his property, for the purpose of grading and leveling the bank.
   ☞ A frightened horse tried to knock down a lamp post on Thursday evening, but only succeeded in spilling the contents of the sleigh.
   ☞ The monthly meeting of the Tappan Zee Boat Club will be held at the usual place on Wednesday evening next. A full attendance is desired.
   ☞ On Tuesday, the principal of our public school, Rev. L. T. Beecher, tendered his resignation to the board of Trustees; no action was taken on it.
   ☞ Negotiations are pending to have the Agricultural show grounds changed from New City to a short distance west of the toll gate, on the turnpike.

February 26, 1924 – 100 YEARS AGO
Pearl River News

PEARL RIVER ORATORS PLEASE SIT UP
       Among the hundreds of boys and girls of school age there surely will be one or more who can talk about the Constitution of the United States and say it in simpler form than our serious-minded forefathers did!
       A national prize contest is on to secure the best efforts in such direction, and some boy or girl will have the best—and the largest award. Hundreds of others will secure reward for their efforts, in the fact that two hundred newspapers are conducting “branch” contests for the best group within special territory.
       Students in each branch will be awarded prizes, aside from the “national” prizes of $3,500, $1,000 and $500.
       The N.Y. WORLD offers a thousand dollars for first prize in the district in which lies Pearl River, with five hundred dollars as second prize and thirty additional prizes of fifty dollars each.
       The beauty of making effort of this kind, absolutely without any cost, lies in the fact that the student must profit from his investigations and preparatory study, whether he gets a prize or not; while, as seen above, thirty-two contestants in this territory alone will receive cash awards, whatever be the outcome of the “national” contest between those left as a final group following eliminations.
       Mr. Holman of the school will give out the data of detail; and some of it is presented in this number of THE NEWS. Come boys and girls, rise to your opportunity.

February 27, 1974– 50 YEARS AGO
The Journal News

AVON HOLDS MEMORIES FOR HER
[Image: Home of Mrs. May Jones in Suffern. Avon buildings are at right. Photo by Art Sarno, Journal News.]
       For the past seven years the sprawling grounds of the Avon Cosmetics Products Inc. in Suffern have expanded to make room for the firm’s growth. But at least one nearby resident feels a lot more coddled than threatened.
       Mrs. May Jones of 13 Division Street in Suffern has watched the plant grow steadily since her husband, Roy, died seven years ago. She has watched the company parking lot expand to nestle next to the property line of her home, the home she and her husband shared for 23 years.
       But while other houses in the area have fallen before the expansion, Mrs. Jones’s grAy, wood frame house has remained in place.
       The reason is that Avon, her husband’s employer for 66 years, acquired the house and guaranteed Mrs. Jones with a lifetime tenancy.
       With her huge corporate guardian only feet away, Mrs. Jones is never lonely.
       “I just love it here because the walls radiate so many beautiful memories,” she said Tuesday. “It was Roy’s wish that I stay here.”
       Monday was the 73rd employment anniversary of the man who began work at age 17 as one of 10 employees with the firm which then was called the California Perfume Company, Mrs. Jones said.
       “If he were alive, he’d still be working,” she said of her husband who died in 1966 at 83, still unretired from Avon.
       Avon, with more than 1,000 local employees, is Suffern’s largest employer and one of only two industrial plants in the village. The other is the Ciba-Geigy Corporation on Old Mill Road.
       For Mrs. Jones, the firm is much more than just the former employer of her late husband.
       With undisguised pride, the white-haired woman is anxious to show visitors memorabilia of her husband’s long career at Avon, especially the pictures from “Roy Jones Day,” Feb. 25, 1961, when the plant celebrated his 60th anniversary as an employee.
       Living in the shadow of the huge plant where Roy rose to be a guest relations counselor at the time of his death, and surrounded by her scrapbooks, Mrs. Jones says she would “never live anyplace else. This house is my life.”
       Many friends remain at Avon and Mrs. Jones never lacks for visitors. Even the newly hired secretaries at Avon are familiar with the “Division Street Mrs. Jones” and promptly relay her messages to company executives.
       In turn, Mrs. Jones is one of Avon’s heartiest supporters.
       “They’ve been so wonderful to me since Roy passed away,” she said. “I feel more a part of Avon now than ever.”
_____

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