.jpg)
The Laurel Advocate of April 24, 1946, was the last issue published by Roscoe Ray Allison. The lead story that week was Allison’s announcement that he had sold the paper to Roger F. Hill.
Hill had edited - but did not own - the Allen News from 1940 until he was called up by the Navy in July 1942. By the time he was discharged in October 1945, the News had suspended publication. In December he was hired by Editor Allison to help with the Advocate.
About the time Hill began working for the Advocate, Estelle Allison – usually referred to as “The Boss” – developed serious back trouble. Shortly after the first of January 1946, she was taken by ambulance to the St. Joseph hospital in Sioux City where doctors determined she needed major back surgery.
On Feb. 9, a piece of bone was removed from one of her legs and grafted into her spine. She remained hospitalized for two weeks and then returned home with strict orders to remain in bed for at least six weeks. During this time, daughter Jean Allison Bullock helped take care of her mother and also assumed some of her duties at the Advocate.
The only reason Editor Allison gave for his decision to sell the Advocate was to take care of Estelle.
“We are primarily interested in getting The Boss back on her feet which will take several months,” he wrote. “For the present, we will keep ‘the mansion’ and continue to call Laurel our home.”
In his final “The Safety Valve Pop Offs” column he wrote: “It is with a pang of sorrow that we approach the end. We feel we are parting with a lot of friends and we just don’t know how to say goodbye in the happy-go-lucky style that has been part of Pop Offs throughout the years. We still insist that the old Black Ford was a reality and still is although, because of mechanical troubles, it ain’t what it used to be. To one and all we humbly bow and with a tear close to the surface, we say thank you, goodbye, and good luck.“ On May 25, 1946, Allison tendered his resignation as Chief of the Laurel Volunteer Fire Department, a position he had held for 17 years.
Members of the department voted him honorary fire chief for life.
By June Mrs. Allison had recovered sufficiently to travel. On June 27, they left for Deer Lodge, Montana, to spend time vacationing and visiting with Allison‘s mother and other relatives.
He returned to Laurel briefly in October to take care of some business and to dispose of the family’s remaining household goods. That seems to be his last visit to Laurel. The Allisons then headed for the West Coast where they had planned to retire. But after only a few weeks of retirement “Al,” as he was usually called, agreed to help out temporarily on a newspaper in Stevenson, Washington. That turned out to be four years.
In 1950 the Allisons moved to Dayton, Oregon, a small town southwest of Portland, where Al purchased a small weekly newspaper.
He operated the Dayton Herald until a year before his death in 1960. Despite recurring health problems, Estelle lived until 1966. Both are buried in McMinnville, Oregon, along with daughter Jean (1914-1995), and her husband Joe (1917–2007).
In other news of April 1946: In order to increase the supply of building materials for erecting houses for returning veterans, the government placed restrictions on all non-essential construction.
Under the new regulations, only limited repair work could be done on houses, apartment buildings, farm buildings, stores, offices, theaters, roadhouses, and factories.
With the U.S. assuming the role of policing the world, the military needed more than a few good men.
To provide the manpower, Congress voted to continue the draft and also increase pay in the hopes of attracting more volunteers. Under the new pay schedules, buck privates and apprentice seamen would receive $75 a month instead of $50; sergeants and petty officers would get $115 instead of $96; and top ranking generals and admirals would get $732 a month instead of $666.
Emma Collins, a Civil War widow and one of Laurel‘s oldest residents, died at the age of 96 on April 24. Emma Cordelia Bingham was born in Michigan in 1850. At the age of 14 she came to Iowa in a covered wagon drawn by a team of oxen.
At the age of 17 she married James Carter, a Civil War veteran. Following Carter’s early death, she married John Collins of Audubon, Iowa, in 1880. Three years later, they came to Cedar County and settled on a farm near the old town of Norris east of the present site of Coleridge. Later they moved to a farm near Claramont.
In 1893, the year Laurel was incorporated, Mr. Collins bought a lot on the South Hill at what is now 506 Oak and built a small house. On Oct. 9, 1915, Mrs. Collin’s found her husband dead in bed. He had been in good health and had spent the day before picking corn by hand.
“Grandma“ Collins, as she was commonly known in later years, spent the remainder of her life as a widow. At the time of her death she was one of Laurel‘s oldest citizens.
