70 years ago

july 19, 1951

Marion home owners and businessmen and women have just completed a week of the most wearying, heart-breaking, discouraging work they have ever been faced with. They have been trying to bring some measure of order to their stores and homes following a terrible flood that left havoc everywhere in its wake.

Nearly 100 large panes of plate glass were broken during the flood in Marion. Nearly all of the store fronts have been replaced. About 50 windows have been replaced in Florence.

Jane Foster and Clara McKay are pictured as they help prepare a meal in the Red Cross canteen set up in the home economics room of the high school. Approximately 8,000 meals, plus countless hundred of snacks, coffee, and doughnuts have been served.

Boyer Jewelry is moving into the Case building in the space now occupied by the Rainbow Café. Ben Meier, proprietor of the Rainbow, says he will close his business for the time being and devote full time to his city commission job and mayor of the city.

The boys from the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company were mighty welcome sights with their two pumping rigs sent in by the company. These $40,000 outfits were furnished free to both Marion and Florence by the company who also paid the wages of the men operating them around the clock for several days.

The Canada community did a huge job from a distance during the early days of the flood, cooking and baking food and flying it in by Marvin Kreutziger’s airplane.

Avon Theatre, Hillsboro, is owned by Dickinson Theatre, Inc., which owns the Kaw Theatre in Marion. Since it has been closed for some time and since it will be some time before the Kaw Theatre can be redecorated, the projection equipment has been taken to Hillsboro in order to afford an operating theatre for the area.