IN 1977

Douglas County Sheriff Rex Johnson said a doubling of his staff on the county payroll led to the 50 percent increase in his budget request that had tentatively been approved for calendar 1978. Johnson’s budget was up to $593,534 from $397,000.

Salaries for Douglas County department heads, with increases ranging from 6 to 15 percent, were included in the 1978 budget approved by the county commission.

A search for a safe way to handle eventual Safeway supermarket traffic occupied city commisioners for more than two hours as they considered a site plan for the proposed Southwest Shopping Center. The area of 23rd and Iowa was involved and many were concerned about the traffic pattern for the store and the hazards it might create.

With farm prices and profits down, local implement dealers admitted they were feeling “a sharp pinch.”

IN 1962

Voter registration had been closed for the Aug. 7 primary election with about 12,500 names on the books. However, evidence was that fewer than 25 percent of those voters would cast ballots this year (1962) in the primary.

IN 1902

On July 28, 1902 the Lawrence World had a long letter from George ‘Nash’ Walker, famous black vaudeville entertainer from Lawrence, who wrote “To the Good People of Lawrence, Kansas.” Walker noted that since his departure from Lawrence in 1893 that in “every prominent city of the United States. I have been feted, wined and dined by the representative people therein, but none assume, in my eye, the magnitude of the memories of Lawrence, Douglas county, Kansas.