Granby Drummer (https://granbydrummer.com/author/todd-vibert/page/4/)
For nearly 25 years, from 1944 to 1968, hundreds of teenage girls from Florida cities like Sarasota, Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando, and Miami—came to Camp Manitook in Granby to stay for two months and worked the shade-grown tobacco fields in the Farmington Valley.
At approximately 10:45 in the morning on Friday, October 9, 1936, William Shattuck looked over to the northwest hills of West Granby and saw the airship from Germany flying below the clouds, about 500 feet from the ground
Many homes in Granby are over a century old, with rich and complex histories reflecting the transformation of Granby from a solely agricultural community to a thriving suburb.
At Thanksgiving, we have dinner with our family or friends. We usually offer thanks for our families and the meal we are having and wish our friends goodwill.
From 1929 to 1935, the Manitook Hotel, and guest cottages on the west shore of the lake, was a thriving, bustling place. Tourists from New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and many other states visited to canoe, swim, play tennis, fish, hunt, and enjoy a vacation in Granby.
In the last two years, many nonprofit organizations in town have celebrated anniversary milestones.
August 30 was the first day of school in Granby and many kids were excited to get back to school to see their friends. The kids saw a clean school, a school that looks almost new, because of the silent workers—the school custodians who worked hard all summer preparing for the new school year.
In its first 75 years, the Salmon Brook Historical Society has had three amazing curators. I have written about Eva Dewey saving Granby history when she stored most of the files, genealogical files, and artifacts in her house while the SBHS was first renovating its campus. I also have written about how Carol Laun helped transform the society as we know it today and became our town historian and educator. Both Eva and Carol followed in the footsteps of our first curator, Ethel Linnell.
On graduation day, high school seniors receive their diplomas and head off to college or the workforce. Each high school diploma has three signatures: the superintendent, the principal and the chairperson of the Board of Education. For some Granby graduates, those signatures will look familiar because many had a parent serve as the chairperson of the board, including myself.
On Sept. 21, 1938, a major hurricane wreaked havoc along the eastern seaboard, especially in New England. Connecticut lost over 680 lives from this storm and Hartford was flooded so badly that the Park River was buried under the city so such an occurrence would not happen again. After the 1938 hurricane, the Granby school district, along with many others, had students record what they remembered from the storm. Below are excerpts of how students who attended the one-room schools in Granby described the 1938 hurricane.