Sifting Through the Sands of Time from the Courier Archives

Putnam’s Returned Heroes Receive Medals Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Saturday October 25th, is the day when the people of Putnam County will hold a reception for the returned service men of the county and award to each a medal as a token of appreciation of the service they rendered in the World War. The reception will be held at Carmel, the county seat and a very interesting day has been planned by the board of supervisors who authorized the celebration.

The exercises for the day will begin at one-o’clock with a parade of the returned men. The parade will form on the main street near the fire house and will pass the reviewing stand twice. The line of march will be down main street, through Church street, returning up Brewster Avenue.

The board of supervisors, county officials and speakers will occupy the reviewing stand, while the legal advisory board and exemption board members of which were employed under the selective service system and others have been invited. The reviewing stand will be on the porch of the county court house and from this point the speakers will address the gathering.

Clayton Ryder, so well and favorably known throughout Putnam county as an ardent worker in the Liberty Loans, W.S.S. Campaigns and who was chairman of the district board during the selective service draft has been secured to act as chairman of the meeting and he will also award the medals to the boys. Rev. C.P. McClelland president of Drew Seminary and Dr. S. Wright Butler of Poughkeepsie, have been secured to address the gathering and the Carmel Memorial Committee has secured Mr. Feldman of the War Camp Community Service to speak upon the subject of community houses, one of which is under consideration in Carmel.

The Civil War veterans, G.A.R., have been invited to attend and take part in the parade.

The returned men will be received by the American Legion officers of the county at the headquarters of the local Marne Post, and the Putnam County Red Cross workers will serve lunch to the boys at the Smalley Inn between twelve and one o’clock.

Mr. Osborn is Returning Home

Hon. William Church Osborn and Mrs. Osborn will return to their home in Garrison on Wednesday next. He writes that he takes a deep interest in the election and this fact brings him home in time to vote.

In writing of Japan where they have been traveling he said that “it is all so like our own life and yet so queer. The Japanese are a most pleasant, laughing, polite people and the children and babies have all the fun in the world.

“They have a lot of virtues, kindness, loyalty, frugality, etc., that we may well envoy or admire and they are nimble-minded, lively folk. Somehow the people who know them, do not seem to like them; perhaps they are a bit stuck up with their sudden elevation into a world power. Anyhow it’s a great country to knock about in; the scenery is charming, the old temples and images of Buddha are delightful and the shops are novel, but the real show is the great Japanese movie of life in the streets and fields, the open houses and the railroad trains. The clothes and the lack of them, the bowings and scrapings as they meet and part, the babes on the mother’s backs, the rickshaw man and the porters hauling loads we would give horses, women head carriers, the extreme cleanness of everyone and everything, they are the things that fill the eye and mind. Incidentally their material goods are pretty slim, no chairs, tables, or beds or stoves or shoes or woolen clothes, and a rise in the price of rice causes no end of trouble.”

“I have heard nothing from home since I left but I suppose nothing much has happened except trouble I am glad to miss.”