Photo provided
Two things before sharing about 10 huge tobacco barns once seen on what, at the time, was farmland on the west side of North Broadway. Some of us remember when there were only two barns left but others remember when all 10 were there.
First – Let’s never forget that Dr. Leroy Burney, who was appointed the eighth Surgeon General of the United States in 1956 -1961 by President Dwight Eisenhower, was the first Federal official to publicly identify cigarette smoke as a cause of lung cancer. Dr. Burney was born in Burney, right here in Decatur County on Dec. 31, 1906.
Second – Last week’s column about the Erdmann building on the east side of the square brought some great comments. Beth Lowe, daughter of the late Walter B. and Anna Paul Lowe, has one of the Erdmann Cigar Boxes and posted a picture of it. She said the cigar box was a childhood treasure that her father saved and that it probably belonged to his father Cassius Clay Lowe who died in 1909.