Rollover crash injures 2
-1.JPG)
American Idol 2012 finale
News hounds (5/24/12)
Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2009 > March > 02
Monday, March 2, 2009
What will we find? Local relics? Old air?
Reily Twp. Trustee Dennis Conrad says a former military man has contacted him, saying he can open the mysterious Reily Twp. safe.
I’ll be there tomorrow morning (10 a.m. at the Reily Twp. community center) to see it opened. We’ll have a photographer there (and maybe shoot some video), so you can all see what’s inside.
What do you think we’ll find inside?
This will undoubtedly remind some of you of a similar media stunt in 1986 (but please let any comparisons with Geraldo Rivera end there):
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Butler County
Some intrigue for the week
From this story in our paper today:
For decades, a small safe has sat covered with junk in a back room of the Reily Twp. Community Center.
No one knows what, if anything, is inside. No one knows the combination.
The knee-high, steel and concrete box was retrieved from the rubble after the township fire house burned down in the late 1960s, said Reily Twp. Trustee Dennis Conrad. Before it became the fire house in 1947, Conrad believes the safe was used when the building was the town hall and opera house.
No one knows the last time it was opened.
Twenty-five years ago, when Conrad was a new trustee, he had some guys move it from the township garage and paint it black with the intention of using it.
“When we moved it in there, we carried it with a backhoe down there then rolled it in,” Conrad said.
But he couldn’t get it open.
Conrad said he has scoured through local records and thought once he found a combination. But it didn’t work.
“I sat down there for hours playing with it one day and couldn’t get it open,” he said. “The guys at the sheriff’s department want to blow it open, but I didn’t want it blown up.”
After all, Conrad said, it could have old records in it, or nothing, or, “Like my wife said, maybe there’s $1 million in it.”
The story is a segue into another piece on an interesting little museum Reily Twp. trustees are planning with a $75,000 pass-through grant from Butler County. Here is that story:
Back when West Chester Twp. was still mostly miles of uninterrupted farmland, Reily Twp. was a bustling little burg with a bank, opera house and all the amenities of small town life.
Much of this is gone, but residents are rushing to capture the memories and artifacts that remain. And with a $75,000 community development block grant Reily Twp. is slated to receive from Butler County, they hope to tell their village’s story through a museum.
The museum will include numerous newspaper clippings from the past century, telling some quirky stories. This includes the township’s embarrassment when the fire house burned down in the late 1960s. It had been the town hall and opera house until 1947.
In the late 1800s, bandits dynamited the vault at the town’s bank and rode off on horseback. They had burned down the bridge in Millville to slow down the police. Their haul: roughly $500.
The township was formed in 1807. Before that, it was home to the Miami Indian tribe, and the museum will display artifacts found from that era as well, said Reily Twp. Historical Society board member Pam Sprague.
Sprague said her group has already collected dog tags and a tank driving license from a local World War II veteran, a chair from the old barber shop, and letters from residents talking about the minutia of their lives over the past centuries.
All this will be displayed in a two-story house in the middle of the village that township trustees purchased from the federal government last year for $1.
“We hope to furnish it how the house was furnished, have newspaper clippings and things like that,’ said Carol Schwab, historical society board member.
The township will use the federal grant to fix the building, which was constructed in the early 1900s.
The historical society is rushing to get written and oral histories from residents who remember when the train stopped in Reily. “There are so many people who grew up here, so our history is already here,” said Nicholas Schwab, township trustee.
And the historical society hopes to some day bus children from the local schools — Reily’s high school closed in 1968 — to hear and see what small town Butler County was once like.
“They want kids from Reily to be proud of Reily,” Nicholas Schwab said.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Butler County
