Jim Kershner’s this day in history
From our archives, 100 years ago
About 100 children wearing blue felt hats and carrying banners marched through the Central Baptist Church in Spokane singing, “The liquor traffic must go, who wants Washington dry? I, I, I. Who will make it dry? I, I, I!”
They were at the Women’s Christian Temperance Union convention and they were part of the Young Campaigners Temperance Union group.
At the end of the meeting, the children marched out singing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
From the robbery beat: Ralph Doud, 19, made an awkward escape after he was left manacled by two masked robbers.
He “reached home by a succession of short steps and hops.” The journey took him two and half hours, and he didn’t get home until 2:30 a.m.
Doud said he was walking under the Great Northern viaduct when two men stuck a gun in his face and said, “Stick ’em up!”
They marched him to Minnehaha Park and took $50 in cash he was saving for college, earned at his job in the Hillyard railroad shops.
The two men also took his watch, a high school graduation gift from his parents. He was about to beg them to give it back when the highwaymen looked it over and handed it back.
They bound his hands and feet with lengths of metal barrel hoops and left him immobile – so they thought – on the ground.