1973 was a light and dark year for Marion citizens. On the light side, the property tax, often a staple of city financing, was eliminated in this year. The city annexed three parcels of real estate, including Scotsboro, for a total of almost 400 additional acres. One of the commercial annexes, included property that was part of the city’s first industrial park off N. Carbon Street, and would serve as a location for Marion’s third bank, the Peoples Bank of Marion. Ray Fosse Day was held November 27th to celebrate a visit by Fosse after playing with the Oakland Athletics in the World Series.
On the dark side, expansion of the city outward and the arrival of new department stores forced out an institution in Marion in the form of F.W. Woolworth downtown on the square which closed on December 31st. Ozark Airlines, which operated out of the county airport, would experience its first fatal crash in a thunderstorm on July 23rd, claiming several area citizens, including 13 year old Mark Wilhite, son of Trevor Wilhite, formerly of Marion. Mark had been visiting his grandmother, Mrs. Aileen Smith, owner of the Egyptian Drive-In, next to the airport. And lastly, the absolutely needless murder of Martha Damico, a 50 year old paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, who was brutally murdered by Cynthia Barnes, a 17 year old Marion girl, for $15.
It was a year of “compassion” for Marion taxpayers.
The City Council started 1973 with a belated Christmas gift by amending the annual tax levy to abate $40,280 for Carnegie Library.
Mayor Robert butler said Jan. 2, “Any government can always find some place to spend money and find some justification for spending it. It shows some compassion to the taxpayer if we cut it.”
The council went all the way on Sept. 4 by adopting an ordinance eliminating the city corporate tax on property altogether, except for a tax required to pay off a $595,000 bond issue approved in a referendum for Memorial Hospital improvements.
It said, “No ordinance levying a tax on personal property within the city of Marion for city, corporate or other city governmental purposes for the fiscal year 1973 shall be passed or adopted.”
No city taxes in 1974 comes not only by compassion from a government cautiously spending its funds but also one getting $547,000 in sales tax shares, $107,000 in state income tax shares, $204,000 in federal revenue sharing and $137,000 in motor fuel taxes during the year.
Annexations
The city continued numerous annexations, including 60 acres of the former Scottsboro area on January 24, a 37 acre commercial area on May 14 and more than 300 cares on October 16.
The commercial annexation is the site of a $1.5 billion Mohr-Value Store which opened on October 16. A $1.2 million Rodeway Inn Motel and the city’s third bank, The People’s Bank of Marion, will be built in the same area.
Outward expansion and growth of shopping centers had its effect on the Public Square. F.W. Woolworth Co. officials announced October 3 that the store on the square for 47 years will be closed December 31.
A Brutal Murder on Feb. 19 Stunned Marion
Martha Damico, a 50 year old paraplegic confined to a wheelchair for three years, was found in her low rent federal housing apartment stabbed in the heart with a meat fork and strangled with an electric cord on February 19th.
Police three days later arrested Cynthia “Cindy” Barnes, 17, Marion, in Chicago, where she had gone after buying a pair of slacks with the $15 she got from the Damico apartment.
Miss Barnes pleaded guilty to murder May 29 and was sentenced to 20 to 100 years in prison on June 21.
Ozark Crash
An Ozark Air Line plane which left the Williamson County airport on July 23 crashed 45 minutes later in a violent thunderstorm at Lambert Field, St. Louis, Mo., killing 36 of the 44 persons on board.
Among those who died in the first fatal accident of an Ozark Airline plane in 23 years of operation were: Aristotle Katranides of Carbondale; Bert Hall of Murphysboro; Jane Doyle of Knoxville, Tenn., formerly of Anna; Mrs. Robert Moore and son Jeff of Sacramento, Calif., formerly of Vienna; Duane Mayberry of Marion; Mark Trevor Wilhite of Dallas, Tx., formerly of Marion; and Sgt. Darrell Mitchell of Crainville.
Ray Fosse Day
“Marion Is Proud” was the theme November 27 for Ray Fosse Day when the hometown here returned to be honored after playing with the champion Oakland Athletics in the World Series.
(By O.R. Wiley of the Southern Illinoisan, December 31, 1973)