75 years ago
January 17, 1944
Theater tickets will be presented students turning in the most tin cans at Aberdeen schools during the coming tin can scrap drive Wednesday, Salvage Chairman Bert Moore announced today.
Forty-four tickets to local theaters will be awarded.
Moore urged an intensive campaign by all students to salvage enough tin cans for a carload, which will require about 43,000 pounds of metal.
Persons who do not have youngsters in school were urged to get in touch with neighbor children to make sure their tin cans will be delivered.
January 18, 1944
Ramsey Ames, beautiful Hollywood star and Edgar Kennedy, film comedian, will appear with six war heroes, all members of “Hollywood Bond Battalion” from 12 o’clock noon until 2 Monday at the Miller auditorium, Noel Lowry of the “Retailers for Victory” committee announced today.
Stores will close at 11:30 o’clock Monday morning for the show. Tickets to the show may be obtained with the purchase of war bonds from retail stores, banks, or other agencies selling bonds. One ticket will be issued with the purchase of each $25 bond.
50 years ago
January 17, 1969
Larry Miller, the 245-pound barrel of muscle and desire who found his way to Grays Harbor College from Martinez, California, is the Aberdeen World’s choice for this area’s Athlete of the Year for 1968.
Captain of the ‘68 Choker grid squad as well as GHC student body vice president, Miller fought off the effects of a painfully injured knee to earn first team all-Washington JC honors for the second straight year, as well as honorable mention for Junior College all-America.
Veteran AHS mentor Al Eklund, who headed the smooth-working staff which molded an unlikely-looking group of pounders into Aberdeen’s first undefeated football team in more than a half century, wins the nod as Coach of the Year while the Bobcats themselves, whose 8-0-1 record brought them the Southwest Washington crown and No. 3 or 4 rating in the state, depending on which poll you read, draw Team of the Year honors.
January 18, 1969
Hoquiam’s towering Grizzlies stood a few inches taller last night in Vancouver following their pulse-pounding, come-from-behind victory over Hudson’s Bay 53-52, in the season’s initial showdown between Southwest Washington cage powers.
“We went to John (6-7 all SWW center Quigg) when we needed the points, and he got ‘em for us,” said Grizzly coach Jerry Anderson. “And we came from 7 points down — against a good team.”
25 years ago
January 17, 1994
An apartment complex designed to suit the needs of senior citizens may be built in Aberdeen right next to Bridges Restaurant.
The owner, Sonny Bridges, is studying how he can use his restaurant at 112 North G Street to serve an 80-unit “assisted living” apartment complex.
What is now the restaurant parking lot could become senior citizen housing, along the lines of the highly successful Channel Point Village in Hoquiam.
January 18, 1994
None of the bridges in Grays Harbor County have been retrofitted to withstand a major earthquake, nor is the work scheduled any time soon.
But even if bridges and roadways survived a major coastal quake, aging buildings and soft fill could be a recipe for disaster. That’s before any tidal wave action that would roll in off the Pacific.
John Hart, the local project engineer for the Washington Department of Transportation has faith, however, that the Chehalis River Bridge in Aberdeen completed in 1955, and the Riverside Bridge in Hoquiam, which opened in 1971, would perform well in an earthquake.
“They’d both be real noisy and it would scare the hell out of you, but if you could hold on you’d probably be OK,” he said. That’s primarily because “They both have extremely good foundations … That and the way the girders are attached to the piers.”
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom
