Reflections From The Editor
Every week we see citizens coming to the Centreville Press office, looking for family history that is not documented elsewhere and not discoverable by a modern google search. They walk through our doors to search through our preserved archives. They look for a family wedding or birth announcement, an obituary, an article about their ancestors, or even a photograph of old businesses, sports teams, or a parade down our main street. They are not looking for old news, they are looking for their family’s history. News lasts a day, memories last for generations.
Tomorrow we celebrate the birth of our Nation 250 years ago. What better holiday than this to reflect upon our nation’s history, the history of Bibb County, and our own generational history. The history we have only read about plus the history we have lived and personally experienced.
We learned about our country’s history, the patriots, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution from the prolific and earnest writers who preserved it. They wrote it down. They published it.
You learned about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and all of the patriots who gathered in Philadelphia to birth a nation during your primary education and formative years. You learned about it because it was carefully and historically archived for the generations to come.
My Hobson ancestors arrived in Bibb County, settling as early as 1800. This writer arrived in 1945. We have deep generational roots in Bibb County.
That eventful 1945 year recorded the ending of a World War, the return to Bibb County of our surviving father’s and veterans, and the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Warm Springs, GA where Roosevelt drew his last breath is only a few hours drive from our Bibb County home.
Our baby boomer generation grew up; we lived with eight decades of Bibb County and American history. All of our history, including the unspeakable, the grotesque and the glorious. Our history has been written, witnessed, and lived.
Much of that important community history we witnessed was first documented and has been preserved in the archives of the Centreville Press. We can learn about the Indian Nations that preceeded us here. We can study the land grants that led to the settlement of the territory. We can read about the great fire that destroyed much of the Centreville business district in the early 1900’s. We read about the birth and eventual demise of the great lumber industry that existed here for most of the 20th Century. We were present to witness the destructive fires that destroyed Alexander Consolidated school, our magnificent high school building and its gymnasium. We remember the recorded murder of a beloved town pharmacist. We know more than we should about the illegal liquor industry in our county back in the day. We saw the tornadic destruction of the Town of Brent in 1973 along with the loss of many important lives. The list of important events can be longer than the writing space we have when we look back.
The baby boomers enjoyed the best life had to offer for our generation. A safe, uncomplicated, and carefree lifestyle. At least, that is how we choose to remember it. And then came the long march into adulthood and responsibility. Our history marched along with it.
In our youth we can only read about our history. After all it is only history and not often rememberable in our immaturity.
When one passes the age of eighty years we remember and treasure every minute of it. History becomes an invaluable asset that we can hope to pass on to our descendants. When we are young, history is something we studied in school. When we are old enough history becomes something we remember.
Preserving our community history rises to the top of my list as the most important responsibility of a rural community media editor. Two hundred and fifty years from now, someone may walk into a library, museum, or newspaper office looking for the story of Bibb County in 2026.
They’ll want to know who we were.
How we lived.
What we celebrated.
What we believed.
What kind of neighbors we tried to be.
They won’t be looking for yesterday’s news.
They’ll be looking for our story.
The question is not whether our story deserves to be remembered.
The question is whether someone was there to write it down.
Happy 250th Birthday, America.
