Carolyn (Gant) Towles, a retired Florida elementary school principal, was clearing out files at her home recently when she stumbled upon a piece of Chattanooga history.
Towles, 86, discovered a copy of the Chattanooga Free Press from 1936, the year she was born. A closer inspection showed it wasn’t just a random newspaper but an original copy of the first Free Press edition ever published, dated Aug. 31, 1936.
“I looked at it and I was astonished, really,” Towles, who lives in Longwood, Florida, near Orlando, said in a telephone interview this week. “I enjoyed reading it and gave it to my children to read.”
Towles’ daughter, Brenda Brewer, reached out to a Times Free Press editor about the discovery and later mailed the 86-year-old newspaper to Chattanooga to be placed in the newpaper’s archives.
The banner headline on the newspaper reads “Pour Concrete On Dam Tomorrow,” a reference to the then-emerging Chickamauga Dam. The front page also contained a “good luck” cartoon featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse and apparently signed by Walt Disney himself.