KILGOROUND
MITCH LUCAS

OK - today's Kilgoround is going to be a TRUE Kilgoround.

You can get a lot of these facts from the Kilgore Historical Preservation Foundation, but I've got them right here. This is just basic old information about Kilgore, a lot of it that I found interesting, that I thought might be worth you reading. A lot of you might already know these things (some of you might know them off the top of your heads), but some people are new to Kilgore, and might find these tidbits interesting.

• The city of Kilgore was founded in 1872, named after Constantine Buckley Kilgore, and a U.S. post office came a year later.

• The Kilgore Independent School District was started in 1910.

• Kilgore's population reached right at the 1,000-person range until the cotton industry was damaged in the Great Depression in the late 1920s.

• Of course, the oil boom in the early-mid

1930s changed everything, and Kilgore's population had ballooned to well over 10,000 by 1935, 1936.

• Kilgore College was established in 1935, and the Rangerettes were created by a woman named Gussie Nell Davis in 1940.

• As was discussed at length in Sunday's News Herald, concert pianist Van Cliburn grew up here.

• Driller Park, the famed baseball stadium where minor league teams have played, where Kilgore High School currently plays and where the new college league team, the East Texas Pump Jacks, will soon play, was opened on April 24, 1947. And yes, it does sit in both Gregg and Rusk Counties.

• R.E. St. John Memorial Stadium, where both Kilgore High School and Kilgore College play football, is named after - well, R.E. St. John, a man who spent just one season coaching Kilgore High School (in 1941), but who gave his life fighting for U.S. forces in World War II. Thanks to John Slagle, a 1973 KHS graduate, we have this bit of history: Ensign Robert E. St. John of the United States Navy was assigned to serve on the USS Borie. On October 31, 1943, the USS Borie came under enemy torpedo attack in the North Atlantic. St. John helped others climb up nets to rescue, as the ship sank, but St. John never made it up the net, and was lost at sea.

The stadium here was named in his honor exactly six years to the day later, on Oct. 31, 1947, during the halftime of a Kilgore-Gladewater football game.

• Speaking of football, KHS played its first season in 1931. The Kilgore College Rangers' first season was 1935.

• As for us, newspapers have been in Kilgore almost as long as the town has been here, but the Kilgore News Herald merged with another paper in the 1930s.

• The last Census (2000), Kilgore was estimated to have 11,301 citizens.

Hopefully, you feel at least a little more informed.

+++ HAPPY BIRTHDAY TODAY to Carol Waldman, Tiffanie Elmore, Tracy Robinson, Jane Ann Beverly, Gilly Breaux, Kenneth Welch, James Ferguson, Colin Johnson, Bobbie Jean Taylor, Pat Hawkins, Kena Shorter, Nancy Collins, Jan Edwards, Freddie Lollie, Nancy Waggoner, Brannon Lear Williams, Liz Bryant, Debby Eckstadt, Lillie Mitchel.

Also celebrating today is one of the icons of country music, Roy Clark - he's 75 today. Man, I can remember spending some Saturday evenings at my grandparents' house, and them watching "Hee Haw" religiously. That's kind of a scary thought, isn't it?

Other celebrity birthdays today: actress Emma Thompson (49), singer Samantha Fox (42), actord Danny Pino (of "Cold Case;" he's 34), actor Seth Rogen (26) and actress Emma Watson (18).

Happy Anniversary today to Wilton and Jerry Jones, Chun and Falecia Halton.