Straight From The Hart

I know many of you love stories about the people and places in Lebanon’s history.  I hope you enjoy this one about Raymond Medley and the Medley Drug Store, which was located at 221 W. Commercial in the building currently occupied by Walters, Staedtler and Allen, CPAs. Raymond, who was born on March 11, 1905 and died on March 12, 1984, was one of the most respected and well-liked businessmen in town.   He took care of his customers and their families and also their dogs and livestock. He didn’t charge for the animal care and  there were many families who received free care and advice from him over the years. When he died, his family found boxes of checks from customers which had been returned by the bank, and Raymond never tried to collect on them because he knew the customers were unable to pay. Raymond's mother died when he was a young teenager and he was the oldest of his siblings so he assumed major responsibilities early in life.  When he was abou...

The most recent Executive Order signed by President Obama was done on November 4 and entitled “Advancing The Global Health Security Agenda to Achieve a World Safe and Secure from Infectious Disease Threats” based on the premise that “promoting global health security is a core tenet of our national strategy for countering biological threats.” It is a lengthy document with multi-paragraph subsections beginning with instructions to convene a Global Health Security Agenda Interagency Review Council.  It goes on to provide  separate directions to the heads of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security.  Also to the  Office of Management and Budget, Agency For International Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and “such other agencies as the agencies set forth above deem appropriate.” The purpose of  ...

My column in Lebanon newspaper 10/12/16 I opened my Wall Street Journal Monday and turned directly to the Opinion page as I always do, and the headline “Straight Talk About Christopher Columbus” by David Tucker immediately caught my eye.  My mind went back to the 1980s when I wrote for the Springfield News-Leader and I wrote a column about Columbus Day.   It was a rather innocuous essay, as I remember, recounting my memories of stories our school teachers would tell us on Columbus Day, and how we would color pictures of the ships sailing out on the ocean or make our own ships out of construction paper.  And then we would recite the poem “In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue”.  But it seemed to provoke the ire of another columnist at the newspaper and she took after me in a column of her own.  That was the first time I realized that Columbus Day could be  controversial. That is, until this year.  Seeing Tucker’s column...

Very few of us make it through life without some kind of “Triumph Over Tragedy” story.  I talked to Lebanon’s Gail Anderson this week about her family’s experience with surviving tragedy. It was in 1948 that William and Clarise Splan with their two young children were taking a vacation in the Bennett Spring area.  Many times people return from vacation saying they wished they could have just stayed in their vacation spot forever.  William Splan actually  thought he had made his family’s dream come true when he discovered the Bennett family were wanting to sell the old Bennett Hotel and decided to purchase it for his family.  Even before the movie, he had often said he wanted to live on land where “the river runs through it”. He sold their house in St. Louis and moved his young family to what is unarguably one of the most beautiful nature spots in Missouri.  But just a year later in 1949 tragedy struck the family.  His two children, Gail and Bi...

Monday will be Memorial Day.  The mere mention  of the holiday generates swirls of memories in my mind.  Our observance of the day has probably undergone more changes in the seven decades I have lived than any other holiday we have throughout the year.  Tradition tells us it started as a way to honor the Civil War dead, but soon included all military graves, and now we decorate the graves of friends and family, too. Graves have been replaced by urns containing  ashes, and today many people have memorial services instead of funerals.  I’m not making a judgment with regard to that, just recognizing that once again things that were familiar to me so long ago are becoming more rare today,  like the fact that it is mostly the older generation who now decorates the graves. My Grandma Dame always called it Decoration Day.  That was back when we observed it on May 30, regardless of what day  of the week it fell on.   I  disli...