Bound Volumes, Hometown History

February 15, 2024

70 YEARS AGO

Violet Marie Bradshaw’s long masquerade as a man exploded dramatically in a criminal court in Columbus, Ohio after a judge sentenced her to the penitentiary for embezzlement. Arrested last summer as Vernon Bradshaw, 35, of Kenova, West Virginia, on a charge of embezzling $2,000 from an ice cream company, Violet served three days in a county jail before release on $1,500 bond. After sentencing at her trial on February 10, a man who identified himself as Patrick Bradshaw, the defendant’s brother, came to court to reveal his sister’s sex. “I was not masquerading,” Violet explained. “I always have considered myself a man”

February 1954

50 YEARS AGO

Faced with one their worst wrecks in recent years, D. & H. Railroad workers are preparing for a massive cleanup operation near Emmons where a 25-car derailment has shut down all traffic on the line. D. & H. Railroad President C.B. (Bruce) Sterzing, Jr., said he hopes to restore traffic movement by tonight. That will depend entirely on when fires in seven 30,000 gallon tanker cars filled with liquid propane burn themselves out. No dollar estimate of damages was available when Sterzing met with newsmen late last night. A train out of Binghamton leaving Oneonta at 4 p.m. picked up speed and was moving about 30 miles per hour when the locomotive crew felt a sharp jolt in the units just to the rear. Twenty-five cars of the 127-unit train and one of its three locomotives derailed. The two remaining locomotives and crew moved beyond the wreckage and called for assistance. A yard engine dispatched from Oneonta pulled the remaining cars out of the area and took them back to the Oneonta yard. A fire started immediately in one of the propane cars and within minutes the fire spread. Soon, searing explosions followed about every twenty minutes and a number of firemen were injured, many of them badly.

February 1974

40 YEARS AGO

The calendar says it is February but the thermometer reading made it seem more like late March over the weekend as unseasonably mild temperatures in the 40s and 50s melted snow and ice accumulated over the winter. The mild weather is expected to continue. National Weather Service estimates for coming days predict highs in the 40s and 50s and lows in the 30s and 40s. Five years ago the February 12th temperature fell to 28 degrees below zero, a record for that date. And, on that date in 1944, a record 11 inches of snow fell on Oneonta in a 24-hour period. Water levels are elevated but no flooding has occurred.

February 1984

30 YEARS AGO

A theological squabble has broken out over an ecumenical conference on women that invoked “Sophia, Creator God,” and used other feminine images of the deity. The conflict reflects attempts to modify pervasively male references to God as “He” or “Father” and to bring out biblical indications that God has “motherly” qualities. United Methodist Bishop Earl G. Hunt says deifying Sophia is an “attempt to reconstitute the Godhead,” and “no comparable heresy has appeared in the church in the last 15 centuries.”

February 1994

20 YEARS AGO

Computer expert Bo Lipari will present a talk titled “Will Your Vote Count? The Challenges of Electronic Voting Machines” at 7:30 p.m. in the new Red Dragon Theater in the basement of Hunt Union on the State University College at Oneonta campus. Lipari will address questions raised about the reliability of electronic voting machines.

February 2004