30 YEARS AGO: It’s been 30 years since the Bradford Centennial
Celebration and we remember vast amounts of copy being churned out
for a special edition to mark the occasion. The anniversary was
celebrated in style with a parade and a host of other
activities.

Karen Crouse Sherwin phoned recently to tell us she had been the
Miss Bradford Centennial and, as such, attended many of the
functions such as the governor’s luncheon and parade. Seems to us
that, opera legend and Bradford native Marilyn Horne was in town to
join in the festivities.

Karen says all the hoopla was recorded and logged in a time
capsule but we don’t remember if that’s the one inserted in a vault
when the East Main Street wall was reconstructed, or perhaps placed
in some other location around town.

ODDS, ENDS: Hal Harmon passes along a tidbit we hadn’t known:
Not only is the old hangar building from the West Branch airport
still standing on the Pitt campus but so, too, is a building which 
had served as the control tower. Hal tells us it’s behind the fire
department building which sits on West Washington Street.

Hal tells us his uncle had flown his own plane from New Mexico
into that airport — once known as the Harri Emery airport. Hal even
got a plane ride from his uncle in the 1950s.

On another subject, Hal notes that there had been a swinging
bridge below what has been called the Ten Foot swimming hole. All
that was removed, however, when the flood control project was
constructed.

On a very very different theme, Hal tells us of a 5th ward
connection to the first moon landing. A friend of his named Jim
Brink, who lived on Rochester Street, eventually left town and
worked in Houston for a company that was involved someone in
constructing the flagpole used for that infamous flag planted on
the moon. Jim apparently was the machinist or had some similar role
involved in the flagpole construction.

We say, “infamous,” of course, because moon landing debunkers
always point out that the flag appears to be flying in the breeze —
and there is no breeze in the zero-gravity location.