Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

An overflow crowd packed the Lewis and Clark High School auditorium to hear Helen Keller speak.

Keller, sightless and deaf since a child, told the crowd that her message was simple.

“I am glad to stand before you and feel your love and fellowship and loving kindness,” she said in a voice described as difficult at times to understand. “It makes me happy. What I have to say is simple and very plain. We must live by each other and for each other. God has bestowed on you people and me wonderful senses and he wants us to use them more fully and more honestly.”

The highlight came when she recited the 23rd Psalm in a “wonderfully sympathetic interpretation” that sent listeners “home with wet eyes.”

From the assault beat: Margaret Allbaugh, 12, was picking flowers with two other children near Deep Creek when a “nude fiend” wearing nothing but a handkerchief over his face sprang out of the bushes and grabbed her.

Fortunately, Margaret was “large and strong for her age.” She began stabbing her assailant with her hairpin, “to such good effect that he finally emitted a scream and fled.”