Atmore was fortunate to have had, and still does have, great people who devoted their time and efforts to wonderful causes that made our community a better place to live.

I remember when Red Vickery returned to Atmore following a successful career as a member of the University of Georgia football team. He devoted time to Atmore’s young men by taking them to Mobile Bear baseball games and Southeastern Conference football games in Mobile. Through his SEC affiliation, he was quite successful coming up with football game tickets. Leon Akins told me one time Red took some of the Blue Devils team members to Mobile to watch the Bears play the Atlanta Crackers. One of Red’s college teammates was a coach on that team. Leon said “everybody was thrilled getting a chance to meet members of the Atlanta ball team.”

Back in those days, that baseball league was called The Southern League. It was made up of The Mobile Bears, The Memphis Chicks, The Louisiana Pelicans, The Chattanooga Lookouts, The Knoxville Smokies, The Nashville Vols, The Arkansas Travelers, The Birmingham Barons and The Atlanta Crackers.

Dr. Hugh Long spent much time on the sidelines looking after local high school athletes’ football injuries. Having established his practice here in the 1970s, he found time to look after these athletes. He also devotes time to the Gideons, the Atmore Prison Farm ministry and Sunday school teacher at Brooks Memorial Baptist Church.

In the 1950s, attorney Robert Maxwell spearheaded the Atmore Jaycee fund raising drives raising money for under privileged children. One of his favorite projects was the annual Christmas Shopping Tour, where these kids were taken to local businesses to receive Christmas toys and clothing.

Twinette Watson, native Atmorian , took her talents to Judson College, where she helped many Atmore young ladies find college success and employment.

Over the years, dating back to the 1940s, Atmore’s Little League and Babe Ruth League received honors and recognition for such leaders as Charles and Root Lowery, Kimbrel Cunningham, Buddy Vickery, Joe Everette, Claude Steele, Wheeler Crook, Tony Albert, Bill Hendricks, Gene Akins, Murray Johnson and many more.

In some current news, I sometimes fail to understand why some of my friends shy away from my telling them how I save a lot of money from my TV service. On several occasions, I have discussed with them my costs for my TV service and I have written about it, too. To refresh it, I explained that I now have Playstation Vue, a $35 a month program that supplies me all the stations that I got when I was with DISH. That service cost me $95 a month. So adding up my current $35 PSVUE fee with my $55 Internet fees, I get it all for $90. This is a tremendous savings from my previous $150 a month DISH and Internet plan.

For your information, there are other Internet TV services out there. DirectTV Internet, Sling TV Internet and HULU TV Internet are the other more popular ones. And I understand YOUTUBE TV will be introduced very, very soon. It is quite apparent that Internet TV is the “thing” of the future. Most folks do not want to pay for channels they never watch and now they don’t have to when they subscribe to one of these new Internet TV services.

For your information, I also found out that our local cable service offers very reasonable TV service, phone and Internet. Their prices are much lower than DISH and DirectTV. With cable, as opposed to Dish and Direct TV, you do not have to worry about Internet stalling and “drop outs.” For some reason, many are experiencing these Internet problems locally.

Now, in some news from 1970, the Bratt Volunteer Fire Department elected these officers, Charles Lowery, Robert Stewart, Thomas Bradberry, Lamar O’Farrell, Colvin Davis, Lester Godwin, Douglas Morgan and Hubert Brown.

The Rev. Dewitt Allen was called as the new pastor at Brooks Memorial Church after serving three years at Court Street Baptist Church in Montgomery.

Dr. C.S. Crawford was named chief of staff at Greenlawn Hospital.

The Huntsville youth league named its Whitesburg field the Fern Bell Park in honor of his association and accomplishments with that league.

The Atmore Jaycees captured state honors in the drive to sell honey, a project that benefitted retarded children’s Partlow Camp. Terry Jones was chairman of the Atmore organization.

Sponsored by The First National Bank, one of our peewee football teams received special recognition for winning so many games. The players were as follows: Robby Ferguson, Jay Blackshear, Dusty Harrison, Jimmy Woods, Marty and Mike Hadley, Tommy Pickens, Chuck Madison, Pat Reeves, Ed Staff, Bryan Flowers, Allen White, Steve Dees, Dough McAnalley, Steve McGill, Randy Miller and Tony Luker. Jack Madison was the coach for the team.

One of my readers told me recently she went back and counted the number of names of people that I have mentioned in my column over the last 10 years. She told me she had to quit counting when she reached 1,000 names. I do not know how she managed to do this, but I was flattered when she informed me. I hope my health will allow me to continue “mentioning” names of Atmore and area residents.

Next week, we will take a look at another year depicting more glorious and nostalgic events from the “yesteryears.”