Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A black soldier from the 25th Infantry, stationed at Fort George Wright, decided not to re-enlist when his regiment was sent to Hawaii. He decided to stay in Spokane.

It only took him about a week to change his mind. He was making plans to join up with them in Hawaii as soon as he could.

The Spokesman-Review rendered his interview in exaggerated dialect (“sho nuf”). But here’s what he apparently said, shorn of most of the dialect: “It has been a lonely town since all my friends done went away. And then it got so dog-gone cold. I most like to froze to death. I want to get to Honolulu first off, sure enough.”

From the heart beat: An elderly woman ventured out into Spokane’s snow and cold to get her long-ailing husband his medicine from a pharmacy.

As she struggled back up the steps to her home, she collapsed from heart failure. Passing children saw her and gave the alarm, but she was already dead. Her husband, overcome with grief, “will probably survive but a few hours.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1793: Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J.