This week in West Orange County history

THROWBACK THURSDAY

June 24, 1971

How would you like to pay $5 for cable? If you signed up in 1971 for TM Communications, that was the price you paid. The advertisement in The Winter Garden Times assured customers that cable would cure ghosts, snow and blur on their tube television.

Times Mirror, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, began looking at cable options in 1966, and by 1971, it had formed TM Communications as a holding company for its cable operations.

OLD TIMES

65 years ago

Lakeview High School is getting that “new look,” according to the Orange County School Maintenance Department. Every room in the school will be painted. Any master painter in this area who seeks work should contact the Orlando headquarters because several more painters are needed.

40 years ago

This is the eighth year that Steve and Connie Holland have spent the 10-week racing season at the Pompano Beach quarter horse racetrack shuttling between Winter Garden and Pompano Beach. At least 17 of the horses that run during this racing season are out of the Hollands’ stables in Winter Garden.

30 years ago

A special Recognition Sunday will be held at the First Baptist Church of Winter Garden to honor Dr. K. Fay DeSha, who is retiring from the active pastorate. He has been an ordained minister since June 1949 and has served as pastor in Winter Garden since June 1966.

The rhythm of the night sweeps guests off their feet and onto the dance floor at Pleasure Island, the new themed nighttime entertainment complex that just opened at the Walt Disney World vacation resort.

20 years ago

The city of Winter Garden renovated its old fire station on South Boyd Street for use as a recreation department facility.

Orange County’s Planning & Zoning Commission approved plans for the village of Bridgewater, putting the second Horizon West venture close behind Lakeside Village, which was OK’d earlier in the month.

10 years ago

For the second year in a row, the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation announced that Dr. Henry Nehrling’s Palm Cottage Gardens in Gotha is one of Florida’s 11 most endangered historical sites.

FROM THE WINTER GARDEN HERITAGE FOUNDATION ARCHIVES

Private First Class Dominic “Donnie” Ungaro Jr., of Ocoee, was born May 28, 1945. Fifty-one years ago, on June 25, 1968, Ungaro was killed in Long An Province, South Vietnam, during a war that he volunteered to fight in. He is interred at the Ocoee Cemetery and permanently remembered on Panel 55W, Line 39, of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Winter Garden Heritage Foundation preserves military documents and information on West Orange County residents dating back to the Civil War. Call (407) 656-3244 to make a research appointment.