By Bob Allen
This is an excerpt. To buy the book, click here.
The Voice of Sykesville
— Excerpt —
It’s just as doubtful that Sykesville will ever again have its own hyper-local, Sykesville-centric newspaper like the Sykesville Herald, an ultra-grass-roots publication that served as the yarn and glue that held together the town’s sense of itself and sense of place. It was the Sykesville Herald that faithfully recorded all the news, events, milestones and minutiae of the town’s progress over seven decades.
Births, deaths, weddings, graduations, business openings and closings, land sales, car wrecks, fire company calls, Lions Club awards, church events, minstrel shows, 4-H competitions, piano recitals, beauty contests, Boy Scout jamborees, bowling league standings, Little League schedules, and school lunch menus. You could find them all in the Herald.
“In truth, the Herald was the voice of Sykesville,” says Errol Smith, former curator of the Sykesville Gate House Museum. “There were papers in Uniontown, Union Mills, Westminster and elsewhere that gave their towns tremendous coverage. But events that happened here got the short end of the stick until the Herald came along.”
— End of Excerpt —