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Jun 24, 2023

Vintage newspapers from 1918 found in family keepsake

Photo by Skip Vaughn Larry Keel, ticket specialist in the MWR Ticket Office, shows the Stars and Stripes newspapers from 1918 which he found in plastic at the bottom of his late aunt’s handmade sewing

Photo by Skip Vaughn

Larry Keel, ticket specialist in the MWR Ticket Office, shows the Stars and Stripes newspapers from 1918 which he found in plastic at the bottom of his late aunt’s handmade sewing container.

Redstone worker Larry Keel doesn’t know why his aunt kept several copies of the Stars and Stripes newspapers from 1918.

But there they were wrapped in plastic at the bottom of a handmade sewing container belonging to his late family member. Considering that they’re 105 years old, they are well-preserved.

“I just about couldn’t believe it when I saw it,” Keel, a recreational assistant in the MWR Ticket Office at the Redstone Library, said of the find. “She’s got a whole week of this thing. It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.

“There had to have been a reason she kept those. I just don’t know what it is.”

Keel, 62, who runs the ticket office, will start his 23rd year at Redstone in February. The Huntsville native and his wife of 32 years, Nedia, reside on Monte Sano Mountain.

The sewing container belonged to his mother’s older sister Elizabeth Kimsey, who was in her 70s when she died in the late 1990s. They were from Sparta, Tennessee. Kimsey lived in New York for a while and then moved back down South. Keel’s mother, Sarah Reynolds, 91, lives with his sister in Arden, North Carolina.

The sewing container was in a room in the house for years until Keel’s mother told him he could have it. He found the historic newspapers in plastic underneath various spools of thread, yarn and thimbles.

There are seven copies of the Stars and Stripes, including articles updating action in World War I. The 1918 editions include Sept. 20, Oct. 4, Oct. 11, Oct. 18, Nov. 1, Nov. 22 and Nov. 29. The Friday, Oct. 18 front page includes a letter from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to the Soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces. The Friday, Nov. 1 front page includes the latest poem by Rudyard Kipling, titled “Justice,” reprinted with Kipling’s permission.

“I feel like this is living history. It’s incredible,” Keel said. “I’m going to hold onto them and preserve them as best I can.”

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