Around Town

The class of 1981 will meet on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, at 7 p.m., at SPJST, 1901 E. Ennis Ave.

Ennis Care Center will be hosting a Pfizer Covid Vaccine Clinic on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The second dose will be on Monday, May 24, beginning at 10 a.m. A consent form is required before both clinics.

The 2020 cancellation of the Ennis Bluebonnet Trails Festival for only the second time in its 59-year history didn’t stop the memories of this city-defining event and this year hopes that it will resume have come true.

An elderly Ennis resident, R. L. Sparkman, was interviewed in 1955 about the changing times, and among the things he recalled was that “when he went away to college, students had to bring along their own featherbeds.”

A new lake was proposed by Ennis Mayor J. P. Clark and City Commissioners J. N. Goodwin and Howard Thomas in 1938 and a citizens meeting was called at City Hall.

In 1951 an Ennis family was trying to locate a family member who had disappeared.

An Ennis man was elected to head Louisiana’s Anti-Saloon League in 1922. Dr. A. H. Ziemer was at that time a resident of New Orleans, having moved there from Ennis in 1913.

Ennis and surrounding towns were struck with an epidemic of infantile paralysis in 1937 but it was fairly quickly contained.

Another old timer’s memories made national news the same year. Frank Fowler, who claimed to be 109, had been a resident of Ennis for 85 years, since 1870, two years before the city was officially founded.