In 2022, I researched the Triangle Refinery fire in Doraville. The fire began with an overfilled storage tank. Vapors from the overfilled tank reached nearby homes on Doral Circle and ignited a pilot light at one of the homes causing an explosion. The explosion then set three storage tanks on fire. (Atlanta Constitution, April 7, 1972, “Killer gasoline fire rages into 2nd day”)

In Vivian Price Saffold’s 1983 book, “A History of the Community and the City of Chamblee,” which celebrated 75 years of the city, there is a 1904 photo of children at Wylie School. The school was located near what is now Embry Hills. The children’s ages are described as from six years old to “as old as the teacher would keep them.”

Yolande Gwin was a popular reporter and columnist for the Atlanta Constitution and Atlanta Journal newspapers. She often wrote for the society pages, but also covered other stories and wrote advice columns. She started out writing for the Atlanta Georgian newspaper in 1927, then for the Atlanta Constitution from 1934 until 1961. It was interesting to me to discover that she lived in Brookhaven for many years.

Ken Anderson, a wonderful source for Dunwoody history, told me several years ago that the land where Dunwoody High School is located was once home to the Martin farm. He remembered they lived on the land in the 1940s and 1950s, but they owned that land at least as early as the 1920s.

I first learned of Hilbert Margol during the pandemic. I attended a zoom presentation where he shared the story of himself and his twin brother Howard during WW2. The twin brothers, part of the 42nd Infantry, are Dachau liberators. Jan Slimming arranged for me to attend the presentation to the Atlanta Chapter of the Churchill Society. You can read this history on the Appen Media/Dunwoody Crier website here. It is also available in a Past Tense GA blog post from 2021.

You might recall the Milk Jug store if you lived in Atlanta in the 1960s. There is still a small store with the classic shape of a Milk Jug and the Milk Jug sign in Tucker at 3988 Lawrenceville Highway. My family always had Mathis Dairy milk delivery, but occasionally when we had an emergency milk shortage in the home, Milk Jug was an easy drive through store.

The name New Hope comes from the church that was once next door to this cemetery. The church was New Hope Presbyterian. It was the third church to be established in Dunwoody, after Ebenezer Primitive Baptist Church and Providence Baptist Church.

Those who lived in or near the path of the April 9, 1998 tornado that crossed Dunwoody just after midnight remember well the sight of snapped trees in the days following. There were many fallen trees, but the sight of the snapped pine trees made a indelible impression.

The tornado went right through the campus of what was then DeKalb College (now part of Georgia State University) at the intersection of Womack and Tilly Mill Roads. 

One of my favorite subjects as Christmas approaches is the Pink Pig at Rich’s downtown Atlanta.

Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s recall the Pink Pig downtown. Many recall when the ride was a monorail that rode above the toy department, so that children got a good a look at all the toys available. Some remember an elevator that went upstairs to Santa’s igloo.

Cherokee Theatre first opened in 1963 at 3861 Peachtree Road, just one year after the Brookhaven Theater down the street on Peachtree Road had closed. The first film shown at Cherokee Theater was the three hour film “55 Days at Peking.” The film starred Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner.

Peeler Road in Dunwoody is named for the family who once lived along the road.  The Peelers first became interested in the Chamblee Dunwoody Road area when some of their family, Uncle Joe and Aunt Mabel Powell, began working for Dr. Luther Fischer. 

As World War II veterans returned to the United States following the end of the war, there was a shortage of housing across the country including the Atlanta area and a rush to build housing for the soldiers. Oglethorpe Apartments on Ashford Dunwoody Road were built to help with this shortage. During this time, some returning soldiers and their families lived in military tents on rented land and in mobile home parks.

The red brick apartments were on land that is Blackburn Park today.

On the property of Life Center Ministries is a historic home that originally belonged to the Ware family.  You can best see the small home by pulling into the church parking lot.  The property was purchased by publisher Norman Berg in 1938 to use for hunting.  He was the Southeast representative for MacMillan Publishers.  He later sold all but five acres, remodeled the barn, and made that his home.  He used the old Ware home as a guest house, letting authors stay there when a quiet place in the country would help them with their writing.