For my “Front-Page History” series, today we are looking at headlines from July 2, 1977, just one day after the new Virginia laws passed by the General Assembly went into effect. In 1977, the most popular new law was described with this headline in the Northern Virginia Sun: “Hi-Test Beer Available”.
BEER NEWS: Some folks might remember back when beer was limited to an alcohol content of 3.2%. This was based on a 1933 federal law, after the repeal of Prohibition. The 1933 law expired within a few years, and yet most states kept the low-alcohol requirement on the books for decades.
The Virginia General Assembly not only permitted a higher alcohol content in 1977, but a number of alcohol-related laws were also passed. Bingo fans could “now sip a brew” in private clubs, and another law repealed a ban on beer advertising on t-shirts, provided “they do not depict messages that would tend to induce minors to drink.”
METRO: Headlines in the Washington Post announced the opening of the Metro’s Blue Line. The first Metro line was the Red Line in 1976, consisting of 5 stations from Farragut North to Rhode Island Avenue. On July 1, 1977, the Blue Line opened, with 17 stations from RFK Stadium to National Airport. There were maintenance troubles with jammed doors and squeaking brakes, though the biggest difficulty involved the new entry and exit system that required the use of that new invention called “farecards”.
There should be no surprise that construction cost estimates were rising, with the original 1960s estimate of $2.5 billion jumping to an estimate of $5 billion by 1977. The final costs to date? Well, I could not find any records, but one assumes it went beyond $5 billion. It should be noted that the original plan was for a 100-mile system; today’s Metro has 129 miles of tracks.
SCHOOL CLOSINGS: The School Board garnered a lot of attention, with a front-page story about the closing of two junior high schools (Stratford and Gunston). In the 1970s the school population declined rapidly in Arlington, causing the School Board to close 11 elementary schools in that decade. There was much reorganization going on in 1977, as the article also pointed out that the School Board decided to move 9th graders out of junior high and into the high schools, creating 4-year high schools, and leaving only two grades in junior high schools. Arlington waited until 1990 to take sixth graders out of elementary schools, and into the junior high school system.
HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS LAWSUIT: “No Progress Seen In Suit”: This headline referred to a lawsuit filed by Arlington’s Bishop O’Connell High School against the Virginia High School League (VHSL), the organization that governs athletic activities for public high schools. Bishop O’Connell, the state’s largest Catholic high school at the time, had been denied in their application for membership. The three Arlington public high schools had been delegated to different athletic districts, making it difficult to fit O’Connell into their schedules in the major sports.
The lawsuit claimed that the exclusion from the VHSL would cause financial difficulties for O’Connell and would deny their athletes the chance to compete against kids in their neighborhoods. Bishop O’Connell lost its lawsuit at trial in 1978, and eventually the high school joined the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, which consists of 13 Catholic high schools in the region.
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES: What was going on in the larger world? The Washington Post had two interesting stories, with headlines that effectively summarized the international troubles in two parts of the world: “South Africa Told To End Apartheid Or Risk U.S. Ties;” and “2 Rights Activists In Ukraine Receive Lengthy Jail Terms.” It would take more than 15 years to end apartheid in South Africa. As for the Ukraine story, its headline could possibly be used as an example of the old phrase attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”