Feb. 5, 2025: TIMES PAST compiled by Sue Ann Jones
Horsedrawn snow-removal in Gainesville This photo of a man riding a horsedrawn snow-removal drag bar is reprinted from the The History of Ozark County 1841-1991 (available for purchase on searchable CD at the Ozark County Historium). The photo was taken between 1917, when Sid Amyx opened a Ford dealership in a building he constructed on the northwest corner of the Gainesville square, and 1926, when the garage was rebuilt and a second story was added.
Ozark County News
Feb. 7, 1889
The expense of keeping up the public roads is becoming considerable. It amounts this year to over $800.
Feb. 11, 1904
The Central hotel resembled a hospital yesterday evening. Nearly a dozen of the guests were under the watchful care of a physician until a late hour in the night. All of them were affected similar.
Ozark County Times
Feb. 6, 1925
On Thursday afternoon of last week, Sheriff Endicott and Deputy Ed Gilliland, armed with a search warrant, searched the residence and premises of Fred Acklin on Lilly Ridge. They found a half gallon of corn whiskey hidden in the house. Mr. Acklin was absent at the time of the search but a short time later rode up to his home to find the officers awaiting him. He was riding a mule and in a sack thrown across the saddle carried two more half gallons of moonshine. He was placed under arrest and brought to town where charges of transporting liquor were preferred against him in Justice Ebrite’s court. He waived preliminary hearing and gave bond of $1,000 for his appearance at the May term of circuit court for trial.
Feb. 8, 1945
Two men, one from Ozark County and the other from Howell County, members of the U.S. Army who have been held in a Japanese prison camp on the island of Luzon since the Philippine Islands were captured by the Japanese early in the spring of 1942, were among the more than 500 allied soldiers rescued from the camp Tuesday night of last week by the Sixth U.S. Ranger Battalion and Filipino guerrillas, who made a Commando raid 25 miles behind the Japanese lines.
Released from the horrors of the prison were: St. Sgt. Roy A Gatewood, 25, son of Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Gatewood of the Elijah vicinity, [and] Pvt. Early Edward Quay, 30, a brother of Mrs. James Summers of Elk Creek community, just east of West Plains.
The rescue of the prisoners . . . is described in news dispatches as one of the most daring and dramatic exploits of the Pacific war.
Since their son had been held a prisoner . . . Mr. and Mrs. Henry O. Gatewood had received only three small messages from him, mere form cards filled out with meager information concerning him and only two of them signed in his own handwriting.
April 5, 1945
St. Sgt. Roy A. Gatewood, 26, of the Elijah community, who was liberated on January 30 from Prison Camp No. 1 at Cabanajau in Eastern Luzon, after having been a Jap prisoner of war for nearly three years, has returned home. He arrived home the first of last week and appears to be in good physical condition now and regaining his normal weight, although at one time his weight had dropped down to 90 pounds while he was a prisoner. . . . Sgt. Gatewood was one of the thousands of Americans who made the 80-mile “march of death” across Bataan in April 1942. He doesn’t know how he survived the long march through the tropical heat and without food and water, but he believes that a box of Colgates tooth powder which he had in his pocket helped to save his life.