Byline: John Clayton

They gave their lives for their country, so we in Manchester honor them with bronze plaques in squares that bear their names. But even as we approach Veterans Day – when the tablets erected in their memory are bedecked with flags – these monuments can be easily overlooked. If we aren’t careful, the men they honor may also be forgotten, and the fallen sons of our city might be lost in the mists of history.

In the beginning – this was back about the time that God created the heaven and the earth – a guy named Dick Clark created ”American Bandstand.” So I guess that means we have to go way back, back to before the beginning, if we’re going to talk about ”The Donn Tibbetts Show.”

See, Joe fell in love with a pretty switchboard operator here in town – the former Ruth Ball from Lake Avenue – and when Ruth agreed to marry Joe and follow him back to New York where an engineering job awaited him, Joe vowed that, one day, he would bring her back to her home town. And again, for those of us who love the Millyard, it was serendipity.

His four terms as mayor were not without their controversies. City councilors balked at the extravagant notion of paying for city sidewalks, for example. Furthermore, Frederick Smyth’s efforts to upgrade conditions at the “House of Reformation for Juvenile Offenders ” were derided as “a $40,000 Palace for Prostitutes” – bet that headline got some pulses racing back in 1855 – but it was a time when Smyth was out of office, as was the case in July 1863, that his true commitment to public service was even more in evidence.

Yes, we in Manchester have been blessed over the years with a high-class class of visitor, but let the record show that George Washington never slept here. Booker T. Washington? Yes. George Washington? No.

Can you get at least 10 right on this pop culture quiz? Then congratulations; you’re what we call ‘city literate.’

After an anxious week of false alarms – a week in which hopes had been raised and dashed almost hourly – a radio flash at 7:03 p.m. caught the ear of an unknown soldier. He jumped from his table at the Puritan Restaurant and stepped onto Elm Street. His cry, according to newspaper accounts filed by Cpl. Norman Leighton, was simple: ”The war is over!”