Dusting off the Archives
News from Verndale's Past
75 Years Ago, February 3, 1948
• Shirley Baker, Margaret Kern and Delores Winterfeld will represent Verndale at Long Prairie. Three girls from Verndale were selected Monday night of this week to represent Verndale in the Todd-Wadena queen contest at Long Prairie on Friday evening this week. Before the judges selected the three girls to represent Verndale, a dessert luncheon was served to the five judges and seven queen contestants, the pianist, Mrs. Cecil Seaton and Commercial Club President James Thompson.
• The New York Mills High School Eagles thumped the Verndale Pirates last Thursday evening by a score of 54-40. Mills pulled out in front 10-0 at one time, and from there on in Mill’s had some hot shooting and led at the end of the first period 16-8.
• Country school had a remarkable attendance record for the second six weeks. Only two schools had an attendance average less than 90%. District 16, Miss Strom, teacher, took high honors with a 99% attendance average. District 42-N, Mrs. Gaer, was second place with 98.3% and District 49, Miss Thompson, was third with 98.1%.
40 Years Ago, February 1, 1983
• Coming out to welcome the snow last week were Snowcoming candidates Brian Richter, Pat Lovelace, Jim Sommars, Mary Line, Mike Cypher and Tammy Krell. Coronation will take place during an 8 p.m. ceremony on Friday evening in the school auditorium.
• Four soft-sculptured dolls are among the items to be auctioned off at the annual hospital auxiliary dinner-dance on Saturday, February 11 at the Elks Lodge in Wadena. Sue Madsen of Verndale has several pre-school children and finds it difficult to give her time away from home, so she made these dolls to donate to the fundraiser which is held to purchase equipment for Tri-County Hospital in Wadena.
• The Bertha-Hewitt-Verndale wrestling team brought its score to 9-0 by defeating Battle Lake 52-18 on Thursday evening, January 26. The grapplers finished their Park Region schedule with a perfect 6-0 record.
15 Years Ago, February 5, 2008
• Last Thursday the Verndale School held an awards ceremony for Verndale’s Science Fair projects. The participants came into the school library to find out how their projects had done. First place winners for fourth grade, experiment, Mac Schluttner; and research, Jensyn Schluttner. Fifth grade first place experiment was Mitch Blaha; research Ethan Orlando; sixth grade experiment, Tabitha Perish; and research, Jeremy Engebretson.
• Verndale Sweetheart Days 2009 will be held the second week of February from the 9th through the 13th. The Verndale Sweetheart candidates are seniors Jason Runyan, Jeff Toftum, Curtis Barrett, Brett Mason, Kirsten Lollar, Jodi Kenyon, Jessica Sly and Taryn Fuller.
• The Verndale City Council has decided to give Verndale police officers what other Verndale city employees have received—a 2.5 percent pay raise. Mayor Carr pointed to some of the additional reimbursement funds from the state the department received which was about $30,000.