To the editor:
One hundred years ago, there was a brand new newspaper in central Pennsylvania named The Sentinel. In an effort to build subscribers, a contest was held to send the four top subscription gatherers on an overseas trip to London. For that era, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. And still today, that would be an enormous prize to obtain.
In McVeytown, there was a young lady postal clerk who decided that was something worth working for. She was a 22-year-old, working single woman by the name of Beulah Stine. By signing up subscriptions for the folks she knew in her little hometown, she earned a winning spot in the contest.
The year of the trip was 1913, just one year after the sinking of the Titanic and one year before our country's involvement in a horrific war in Europe, then called the war to end all wars. In later years, unfortunately, it had to be referred to as World War I.
Other than her family, which came after her marriage in 1915 to Perry Powell, from Reedsville, nothing in her life compared to her trip to London, courtesy of The Sentinel. They settled in Lewistown and had six children, myself being the youngest and always the "baby" of the family. Our father was hired as a timekeeper by a new corporation coming to town call the American Viscose Corporation. Through the Great Depression years of 1929 through 1939, he had advanced to employment office manager and was responsible for many individuals finding work during our country's hardest of times.
I tell you this because from my humble observation, Beulah and Perry lived a truly American Dream life story, one that I pray others will be able to realize in generations ahead, including my grandchildren, their great-grandchildren.
But in order for this to happen, we need to come alive as to where our country is now headed. Let's stand up for our businesses like The (Lewistown) Sentinel, that must provide the distribution of the honest truth with reliance upon its subscribers to know the truth and act accordingly.
Thanks so very much for what your newspaper has done for the good of the Lewistown community.
Jay Powell
Fort Wayne, IN
