Page 44 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote (2001) H. Morris Williams

Leaps and Bounds

March 16,1993

Lake City was the last city in Florida to get dial telephones - at 2:01 a.m., Monday, June 5,
1961. Thirty-five years earlier, West Palm Beach had gotten the first dial phones. Approximately

90,000 calls were dialed that first day in Lake City. The previous one-day high (under the “manual”
system) was 45, 000 calls during Lake City’s snowstorm in 1958.

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Last week the 9 grade students in the gifted program celebrated the 10 anniversary of their -
academic competition by officially naming it the “Joe Sloan Memorial Think Sharp Contest.” This
was in memory of their classmate who was killed three years ago in an accident.

Two CHS school-mates got their medical degrees at the same time. Matthew Lynwood

Burns (M.D.) and Gene Wayne Hammons (D.D.S.) Both graduated from Emory University in June
1961.
Lester Scaff, who owns all those S&S stores, used to be an insurance agent with Life of

Georgia.

Last week I told you about the founding of the Bill Sheely Chapter of Future Framers of
America at CHS in 1949. I should also have told you that the first president of that chapter was
Rodney Dicks, local highly successful farmer and former chairman of the Columbia County

Commission.
The first year LCCC began, the English students started a literary journal and called it “X”

until they could hold a contest to find a suitable name. While they were waiting, the college had a
serious fire. To show their hope, the students named their journal “Phoenix,” after the Egyptian

mythological bird that was consumed in fire, but rose out of its own ashes to have eternal youth and
freshness.

In school year 1937-38, our school system bought and installed 45 toilet and septic tanks for
39 “country schools”, then rebuilt 40 more. Total cost: $910.

So you think you know area football? So what are Live Oaks’s colors? Green and white?
Partly right. Make that green and white and yellow. Take a closer look next time.

Fort White principal Bob Simmons coached the CHS Tigers 15 years. Do you remember

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