MDJ Time Capsule: The Week of July 29

This week’s Time Capsule looks at a hospital, a fire, a murder trial, the Vietnam War and Sam Nunn.

75 years ago ...

The Tuesday, July 29, 1947, edition of The Marietta Daily Journal reported that the City of Marietta had accepted the title to Cobb County Hospital, which was being constructed on Montgomery Street for the exclusive use of Black residents. Marietta was to complete, equip and operate the building as a branch of their new hospital being erected on Church Street.

During a special council meeting that morning, Marietta Mayor L.M. Blair read a resolution of the Black hospital’s board of trustees, who said that the group had “reached the limits of its financial ability.” Black residents of Marietta raised nearly $20,000 in cash and approximately $10,000 in pledges to provide their own hospital facilities in 1946.

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Fire was reported in the Thursday, July 31, 1947, paper as doing an estimated $90,000 in damages and destroying a lumber mill for U.S. Homes Inc., a veterans’ housing company.

The factory on Roswell Road, 10 miles west of Marietta, was reduced to ashes before the flames were put out. Firemen from four suburban Atlanta fire departments fought the blaze for five hours, but were never able to bring it under control. Those involved were the Marietta Fire Department, the Roswell volunteer company, the Buckhead and the Naval Air Station Fire Departments. Firefighters were also hampered in their efforts when a group of fuel oil drums stored in the plant exploded. There were no injuries.

Over an acre of lumber was said to be ablaze when Roswell’s volunteer fire chief Elbert Winkler and 25 members of his department arrived on the scene. Firemen stretched 25 sections of hose to a nearby lake to secure water when they were unable to get sufficient water pressure from the plant’s installation.

Over 300 chickens, belonging to Harold McGinnis and Woodrow Coleman who lived near the lumberyard, suffocated as the west wind blew hot air from the burning building. Another 5,000 chickens were saved by setting them free.

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Rufus Gilbert Thompson of Powder Springs was reported in the Friday, Aug. 1, 1947, paper as walking out of the courtroom as a free man, just 40 minutes after a Cobb County jury cleared him of the murder charge in the fatal stabbing of Harold Smith.

Smith died from knife wounds received in April 1946 at Fred’s Place near Powder Springs during a labor union dispute. Thompson pleaded self-defense, declaring he had to do it to save his own life.

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The Sunday, Aug. 3, 1947 paper reported the following:

♦Fannie Coleman, 75, formerly of Marietta, was reported as having died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida the day before.

Coleman was the mother of Mary Phagan, 13, who was brutally murdered at the National Pencil Company factory in Atlanta on April 26, 1913. Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of Phagan’s murder. His trial, conviction and appeals drew national attention.

On Aug. 16, 1915, in response to Gov. John M. Slaton commuting Frank’s sentence from capital punishment to life in prison, he was kidnapped from prison by armed men and lynched in Marietta. Today, researchers believe that Frank was wrongly convicted and that factory janitor Jim Conley was likely the actual murderer.

♦Laura Margaret Hoppe, 80, of Blackwell Lane in Marietta, was reported as registering the week before to vote in her first city election. She was also reported as pledging her support to the candidate that would have “as the major plank of his platform” be the “repairing of the gong in the courthouse clock.” Hoppe, mother of renowned Dr. Lewis Hoppe of Atlanta, had feelings for Marietta’s courthouse clock like Londoners did about Big Ben. She said that she “can’t live here unless they fix that clock.”

50 years ago ...

In the Friday, July 28, 1972, paper, a United Press International story reported that President Richard Nixon had declared the chance for a negotiated peace in Vietnam was “better now than it has ever been” and pledged to try to end the war before the Nov. 7, 1972 presidential election.

Nixon met reporters in the oval office and told them he did not want to raise false hopes but believed the enemy was failing and suffering the consequences of the American blockade and bombing campaign in North Vietnam. He also denounced United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim for criticizing the bombing.

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State Rep. Sam Nunn, 33, was reported in the Tuesday, Aug. 1, 1972, paper as having risen from “relative obscurity” six months earlier to being a strong contender in the Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate. Nunn, the youngest candidate in the race, was confident that he would emerge the winner the following week from the crowded, 15-man Democratic field.

Most observers saw Nunn as the prime contender for a runoff, along with incumbent David Gambrell and former Gov. Ernest Vandiver. Nunn was endorsed the week before by former longtime U.S. Rep. Carl Vinson, his uncle, and received the day before the endorsement of The Columbus Enquirer, the first major daily newspaper to issue an endorsement in the senate race.