Remember When Dec. 31, 2020

10 years ago (2010)
•Luverne High School Band Director Tyler Woods presented information about the summer band trip to Boston to Luverne School Board members at their Dec. 21 meeting.
Woods said that the East Coast experience will “allow the band students an opportunity to represent the school and community in two Independence Day parades.”
The band will march to Randolph, Mass., and Bristol, R. I., during the trip June 29 through July 5.
Luverne band members have the chance to make a trip such as this every four years,” Woods said.
“This year they will learn about or nation’s early history as well,” he said.
Board member Bill Stegemann agreed. “There’s nothing like experiencing it firsthand,” he said.
 
25 years ago (1995)
•Local theater organizers announced this week that they’ve booked the national a cappella group, Tonic Sol Fa, for a performance at the Historic Palace Theatre next spring.
Minnwest Bank and First Farmers and Merchants National Bank are sponsoring promotional expenses for the event on April 2 in Luverne.
The Blue Mound Area Theatre Board will release more details as information becomes available, but organizers have confirmed that Luverne High School choir members will perform the opening act. …
Tonic Sol Fa is self-described simply as “four voices and a tambourine,” but The New York Times recently called the group a “vocal kaleidoscope … unique to the human voice.”
The quartet has sold over 1 million albums and recently won an Emmy Award.
 
50 years ago (1970)
•“We’ve wanted to enlarge the elevator for about two years now, only we never had room for any additions, now … I guess, we’ve got plenty of room.”
R. C. Juhl, president of the board of directors for the Beaver Creek Co-Op Elevator, reflected on Monday night’s events after fire completely destroyed the three-part structure and most of its contents.
“We’ll stay in operation,” he said. “We’re constructing a small office at the site and our customers can continue to conduct their business with us as usual. Area elevators will be helping us out on a few items for a while, but nothing has changed except for the loss of the building.”
Plans for reconstruction were discussed by the board at a meeting on Tuesday morning, and they are hopeful that a new elevator can be started in the near future.
 
75 years ago (1945)
•Luverne property owners will pay 16½ per cent more taxes on their non-homestead real estate this year.
The mill rate on non-homestead property in the city of Luverne for 1945, to be paid in the form of taxes in 1946, is 109.1 mills, as compared to 93.7 for the year just past, according to County Auditor Koehn.
 
100 years ago (1920)
•The fiftieth anniversary of the formal organization of Rock county will be commemorated at Steen on next Friday, January 7th. Appropriate exercises will be held in the hall and these will be followed by a dance and supper. All  “old-timers” are especially invited to attend.
Rock county was formally organized on January 7, 1871, when the first elective county officers were sworn in, and the occasion was celebrated with an inauguration ball given at the home of the late Philo Hawes in Luverne. Ole P. Steen, one of the county’s earliest pioneers and likewise one of the two brothers in whose honor the village of Steen was named, and Dudley Whitehead, of Rock Rapids, furnished the music for the inaugural ball, both making the trip to Luverne across the snow-covered prairies by ox team.
The violin used by Ole P. Steen, who died in 1903, for the dance in 1871, is now owned by his son, P. C. Steen, of Steen, and this instrument will be used, in connection with a four-piece orchestra, in providing the music for the commemoration ball to be given next Friday.