Bound Volumes, Hometown History

April 24, 2025

70 YEARS AGO

A new physical therapy department, a new basal metabolism and electro-cardiograph room and a new three-bed patients’ room in the enlarged and improved Fox Hospital will be made possible by a memorial gift of $43,200 received from Mrs. Beatrice W. Blanding, president and principal owner of the Oneonta Sales Co., Inc. One of the rooms selected by Mrs. Blanding will stand as a memorial to her father Riley J. Warren, who in 1912 founded the company which has continued ever since as the agency for Ford cars. Mr. Warren, who was born in Pleasant Brook, had a country store there for many years. He served two terms as Otsego County treasurer before establishing his new venture in Oneonta. His daughter assisted him as a partner in the business until his death in 1941 when she and her mother took over the business.

April 1955

50 YEARS AGO

Oneonta Police Sergeant Allen W. Case has been cleared of charges that he harassed Oneonta City personnel technician John Insetta. The Safety Board, in a two-page “finding of fact” said that Sergeant Case employed a very poor choice of words when he asked Insetta “Have you ever been shot at? Would you like to be?” But the Board also found that there was “no reason to believe that Sergeant Case intended any harassment or threat to John Insetta.” The Board also found that “the term ‘being shot at’ is a figure of speech commonly used within the Oneonta Police Department to express a feeling of ‘being picked on’ or ‘misused.’ Sergeant Case was facing a disciplinary hearing on four charges at the time that he made the remark and felt that he was ‘a target’ and ‘was being shot at from many angles.’ Case was convicted earlier on a charge that he failed to report an accident involving a police car in “a timely and proper manner.”

April 1975

40 YEARS AGO

State and federal prisons held nearly 464,000 people at the end of 1984, a record inmate population for the 10th straight year. The prison population grew by 6.1 percent over 1983, and the number of state and federal inmates has skyrocketed by 40.6 percent since 1980. The largest prison population increases last year (1984) occurred in western and northeastern states. Despite adding an estimated 100,000 beds over the past four years, state prisons are operating at 110 percent of their capacity. More than 11,000 prisoners are backed up in local jails. Fourteen states reported giving early releases to more than 17,000 inmates last year because of overcrowding. The number of female prisoners, though only 4.5 percent of the total population increased by nearly nine percent last year to a total of about 21,000.

April 1985

30 YEARS AGO

A former soldier was arrested Friday and accused of bombing the federal office building in an apparent attempt to exact vengeance against the U.S. government for the cult disaster at Waco, Texas, two years earlier. A second man, Terry Nichols, surrendered in Kansas. Timothy McVeigh, 27, was arrested by the FBI at a small-town Oklahoma jail where he had spent two days on minor traffic and weapons charges.

April 1995

20 YEARS AGO

New York lawmakers this week approved a $150 million dollar, five-year capital program for private colleges and universities in New York. Hartwick College is eligible for close to $775,000 under the program which provides a state dollar for every $3 in college funds. “It certainly helps private colleges like Hartwick to leverage the private money they raise,” college spokesman Robert Clark said. Hartwick may seek state funds for the proposed Golisano Hall.

April 2005