Old and Sad News - Around the Nation

March 1, 1962 -

The NIC champion NK Vikings were defeated in the first game of the sectional tournaments by the Lake Mills Bulldogs 72-66 Wednesday night to end a 16-game winning streak.  The Vikings had defeated the Bulldogs twice in the regular season and will still go down in history as one of the greatest teams in the history of the school.

Not until 2006-07 when the Vikings won a state championship was this level of performance achieved again.  The next day at school was sad, but there was a sense of relief that it was over.  The follow-up 50 years later appeared in a posting just last month.  Read more here . . .

Mrs. Dean  Morris and her daughter Barbara of rural Northwood were injured in a train-car crash Monday night at the rail crossing over Highway 105 two miles west of Carpenter.  Both were taken to Mercy Hospital in Mason City by ambulance where their condition is rated as fair at the present time.

We all know what happened here, the death from an apparent blood clot that moved in a broken leg.  It was a sad moment for the school, and we all looked at what life is about at this funeral.  Read the previous blog article  from a year ago. . .  Apparently the accident occurred on Monday the 26th, and the game on Wednesday the 28th, but if you have better information, let us know.  One loss was painful, the other devastating.

Bringing home top honors from the district declam contest held Saturday in Mason City were Donna Davenport, Robert Hickman, Gerald Sawin, Ardis Holstad, Phyllis Mueller, Carol Boutelle, Sue Bergan and Sue Drury.  These winners will participate in the state speech contest in Cedar Rapids March 30 and 31.

"Mad Men" returns on March 25 with more references to the history and culture of our era, including a mention of two simultaneously-occurring events in New York City: March 1, 1962 was a day of intense horror and immense celebration for New York City. On that momentous Thursday morning, an American Airlines flight crashed on takeoff from Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), killing all 95 passengers and crew aboard. At the same moment, a roaring crowd of four million people waited enthusiastically along Broadway to honor astronaut John Glenn with a ticker-tape parade for becoming the first American to orbit the Earth.

March 1, 1962 is the date that K-Mart opened, and the US and Britain conducted joint nuclear tests in Nevada.  Each lives in a different kind of infamy.