On May 9, 1933, a storm damaged Brookville’s bank building and uprooted trees. The Brookville Star reported the storm traveled from Arcanum in strips one to 10 miles wide and acted “like a rubber ball, dipping and rising.” (The weather service at the time did not report tornadoes as efficiently as now.)
Residents had bigger worries that month. With only $30 in the treasury, the school board disallowed payment of some bills. It hired a superintendent and several teachers, but the salaries would be determined later. The bank closures tied up funds for streetlights. But E P. Landis Jewelry advertised “Depression Prices on Graduation Presents.”
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation could supply some money to improve the sanitary sewers, but the village appealed to individuals to supply the rest.
Prosperity following World War II brought growing pains. Plans for a night watchman in the business district had involved merchants paying $1,200 a year, but by May 1948 none of the money had been paid, and Mayor Dale announced the plan was discontinued. The council imposed a $3-a-month service charge on trash collection for businesses.
The council forbade residents to burn refuse at the village disposal plant, and Clay Township trustees declared dumping of dead animals and trash along township roads was to be stopped.
A cleanup at Ward Park was rescheduled after only three volunteers showed up.
By 1973 the village seems to have been clean, and the major news was the auction of the Hay and Powell business after 60 years. The business was Koch & Stutz Furniture and Undertaking when Judy Hay joined, became Koch and Hay in 1924 and Hay and Powell in 1941, but closed after Judy died in January 1973.
Increasing activities at Golden Gate Park in 1998 led the police to begin enforcing a ban on parking on the grass at the park.
In 2022, Clay Township trustees found an assistant for the fiscal officer was necessary.
Despite the problems, improvements continued. In 1948, Allis Chalmers advertised a “power-driven tractor rake” which would leave straight, loose and fluffy windrows.
Brookville council agreed to join the newly formed Council of Governments for the area, and Five Rivers MetroPark announced plans to pave the Wolf Creek bike trail.
All “progress” wasn’t welcome; in 1998, officials from Dayton, Perry Township and western villages opposed an interstate bypass to the west of Dayton, I-892, which would have destroyed farms and housing developments.
News in May 1973 focused on student achievements. The Brookville High School Band scored a superior rating at a state contest, and the Brookville track team won the AA state track meet. Byron Flora received the Star Student award for being an outstanding student in Farm Management at the Joint Vocational School.
In 1998, Perry Township police solved the theft of medicines from a house. Learning the cleaning woman had been arrested for theft before, they placed marked bottles of medicines in a house she was scheduled to clean and caught her leaving with them.
That same month, Amy Jeffers won a camper and several trips as a contestant on “The Price is Right.”
In May 2022, Wayne Wolf died—not an achievement, but he was remembered for organizing blood drives in Brookville for almost a quarter of a century and personally donating 80 pints of blood.
Tornadoes again made news in May 2022. Montgomery County’s RETREET program provided more than 50 trees to replace those destroyed in the 2019 tornadoes.
