From the Files of the Kosciusko County Historical Society

Editor’s note: This is a retrospective article that runs a few times a month on InkFreeNews.

Information for this retrospective series is courtesy of the Kosciusko County Historical Society. For more history of Kosciusko County in the news visit yesteryear.clunette.com

Jan. 24, 1968 — Classes have been suspended until Monday at the Beaver Dam Junior High School in southwestern Kosciusko County following a fire last night that destroyed the gymnasium and industrial shop section of the school.

All that remains today of the 39-year-old gym is the skeleton brick walls. However, the main classroom section of the building sustained only minor damage from smoke and fire.

Jan. 27, 1954 — Three young Mennonites from northern Indiana, including Manas Kuhns, 20, of Milford, yesterday received two-year prison sentences for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces.

The sentences were imposed at Indianapolis by Federal Judge William E. Steckler. Local draft boards had denied petitions by the three for classification as conscientious objectors. Kuhns, son of Fannie Kuhns, left with a group of draftees from Warsaw last July. However, when he reached Indianapolis, he refused to take the oath and was lodged in the Marion County jail.

Jan. 26, 1927 — One of Warsaw’s greatest mysteries, one that was never completely solved, occurred on the night of Jan. 26, 1927.

It involved the disappearance of Frank Tucker, a Warsaw cigar store clerk, who had never missed a day of work in four years.

His bankroll, believed to be about $4,500, disappeared as well.

It was established almost to a certainty that Tucker was waylaid, murdered and robbed while on his way from the cigar store to his home at 412 Pike St. His bloodstained cap, identified by Robert Breading, a fellow worker at the cigar store, and Frank’s brother, the late Fred Tucker, clerk at Phillipson’s, was found near the Big Four Railroad crossing at East Main Street, where it had evidently been kicked from a car by the slayers.

– Compiled by InkFreeNews reporter Lasca Randels