Past Pages for Thursday, March 17, 2016

150 Years Ago

St. Patrick’s Day. A ball will be held at the Pavilion in honor of St. Patrick’s Day for the benefit of the Catholic Church. Everybody and his sweetheart will be there. Tickets are three dollars.

130 Years Ago

All sorts. Today is St. Patrick’s Day all over the earth. E. D. Sweeny, as has been his custom for years, had the green flag of Ireland extended across King Street in honor of Saint Patrick. Sweeny had a blooded colt born on his place on the 17th and would name it St. Patrick ... if the sex wasn’t in the way.

110 Years Ago

Celebration. Col. E. D. Sweeney has never failed to fling the green flag of Ireland to the breeze from his residence on King Street. On Saint Patrick’s Day he had it there along with the health of “Ould Ireland.” After he had given his native sod the bibulous consideration it deserved, he got busy in the evening drinking to the health of St. Patrick and sank to rest at midnight singing “The Wearing of the Green.”

70 Years Ago

St. Pat’s Dance. The annual St. Patrick’s dance will be held tomorrow night in the civic auditorium under the auspices of St. Teresa’s Alter Society.

50 Years Ago

Traditional Shamrock arrives. Silas Ross received a small cardboard box from Ireland as he had every March but one since 1925. The box contained a true Irish shamrock to be placed at the grave of Billy Blanchfield, a pilot, killed in a plane crash in Reno on Aug. 1, 1924.

20 Years Ago

Photo caption. The luck of the Irish was with the children of the Kinderland Nursery School in Carson City with great weather for its annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade Friday. Two-year-old Jared Zaro was one of more than 40 children participating in the traditional tricycle ride, which dates back 15 years.

Sue Ballew is the daughter of Bill Dolan, who wrote this column for the Nevada Appeal from 1947 until his death in 2006.