Twin Towers celebrates 50th

By BARBARA ANN HORTON

Staff Writer

A lot of things in Poplar Bluff have changed in the last 50 years, but one thing has not changed, John Stanard told the group attending the Twin Towers 50th anniversary celebration Tuesday.

Poplar Bluff Housing Authority Board Chairman John Stanard reflects on the 50-year history of the city’s Twin Towers during a celebration ceremony Tuesday afternoon. DAR/Paul Davis

“That would be the importance to our community of these two 14-story, high-rise apartment towers,” Stanard said. “Thousands of our elderly citizens have been proud to call this place home over those five decades.”

Today, the Poplar Bluff Housing Authority serves more than 1,100 patrons in 575 housing units and for years has been a model public housing agency, Stanard said.

“My role here today is quite different from my job on this same spot 50 years ago,” Stanard explained. “In 1969, I was a 29-year-old newspaper reporter, with dark hair, covering the Twin Towers for the DAR. Today, I’m here, of all things, as chairman of the Poplar Bluff Housing Authority Board of Commissioners,”

Poplar Bluff Mayor Robert Smith (right) presents a proclamation Tuesday from the city to Housing Authority Board Chairman John Stanard (center) and Executive Director Darrin Taylor, recognizing the 50th anniversary of the Twin Towers housing. DAR/Paul Davis

Stanard reminded the crowd the general contractor, who “built these impressive” buildings was Ray Clinton, who later donated the land for the city park that bears his name in the Round House Bend on Black River, near the Union Pacific Railroad yards.

The former newspaper editor recalled, 1969 was a historic year in America. President Nixon took office. Astronaut Neil Armstrong walked and talked on the moon. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in March to the murder of the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was the year of the Woodstock Music Festival, the debut of Sesame Street and John Wayne won the Academy Award for best actor in True Grit.

Local voters approved the city manager form of government and elected five brand new city council members, he said. One of them was Jim Short, the retired principal of Wheatley School, who was the first African-American member of the council and mayor pro-tem.

Rep. Hardy Billington (MO-152, right) presents Poplar Bluff Housing Authority Executive Director Darrin Taylor Tuesday with a flag flown over the state capitol. It was presented in recognition of the Twin Towers’ 50th anniversary. DAR/Paul Davis

Another milestone was the first graduating class of Three Rivers College.

Stanard recalled as a student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, working summers on the local newspaper, “We had families in houses with dirt floors and no indoor plumbing within a stone’s throw of this room. Demolition of those sub-standard homes and construction of modern housing for low income people coupled with Poplar Bluff’s new sanitary sewer system drastically improved the quality of life for many.”

While Stanard remembers the past, Darrin J. Taylor, executive director for the Poplar Bluff Housing Authority, joined the local housing authority in April. He welcomed those who braved the cold temperatures to celebrate.

He said, “I am glad to be here,” working for the organization who “does a lot of good in this community.”

Taylor and Stanard accepted a proclamation from Poplar Bluff Mayor Robert L. Smith. Smith told the group, “I am not a talker, I am a doer,” before he described the last 50 years as amazing and recalled watching the Twin Towers being built.

State Representative Hardy Billington (R-District 152) presented Taylor a U.S. flag that has flown at the Missouri Capital. Billington said, the Twin Towers has for a half a century provided quality shelter and homes for thousands.

“The housing authority helps provide a safe and good quality of life,” Billington said. “We offer more than a house; we offer a place to call home and to live happy, healthy lives.”

State Rep. Jeff Shawan (R-District 153) was ill and unable to attend.

U.S. Rep. Jason Smith was represented by Mike Shelhamer, constituent services specialist.

Other commissioners attending were Mark Henson, Terry Bishop, Billy Cobb and Lonnie Taylor, as well as the housing authority attorney L. Joe Scott. The Rev. David Stewart of the First United Methodist Church offered the invocation. Tim Ingle, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church, offered the benediction.