75 years ago

August 10, 1944

• The city park board last night adopted a tentative 1945 budget, and authorized Jozep Zelasko to proceed with arrangements for a monument honoring the late Kazimierz Zelakso to be installed at the east city entrance of Zelasko Park.

Zelasko said the tentative plan of the estate is to install a stone pyramid with a plaque bearing the inscription “Zelasko Park” and a water fountain.

• Nu-Way grocery store at the corner of 2nd and B streets in Aberdeen is advertising 3 cans of Campell’s soup for 25¢, a 25-pound bag of Fisher’s flour for $1.15, a pound of butter for 47¢, beef pot roasts for 28¢ a pound, 5 ears of fresh corn for 29¢ and cantaloupe for 7¢ a pound.

August 11, 1944

Lieutenant D. Wayne Purcell, member of the “Flying Bulldogs” Marine fighter squadron, is home on leave after participating in 65 missions against Bougsinville, Kavleng and Rabual, where he logged 189 hours of combat flying.

Purcell’s squadron for a time operated in conjunction with Major “Pappy” Boyington’s “Black Sheep” at Vella Lavelia. He described the famed “missing Black Sheep” as a squadron commander “who cannot be praised too much for the spirit he had instilled in his fliers.”

Purcell piloted a Corsair fighter plane.

50 years ago

August 10, 1969

Miss Carol Ann Berken, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Frederick W. Berken of Aberdeen, has completed her training at United Air Lines stewardess school near Chicago, Ill., and now is flying aboard Mainliners out of San Francisco.

A graduate of Weatherwax High School, Miss Berken attended Washington State University at Pullman before serving aloft.

August 11, 1969

A monster man-eating shark, caught in the waters of Grays Harbor Bay, is a show-piece of the waterfront in Westport today.

The shark was caught by Ed Rydman, Hoquiam gillnetter, between Hoquiam and Westport.

Equipment normally used to lift cargo was unable to cope with the shark so it was taken to the Westport Shipyard where it was hoisted to the dock. Preliminary estimates set the length of the shark at some 15 feet.

25 years ago

August 10, 1994

Roger Landberg will be the guest of honor Wednesday at the opening ceremony for the 1994 Grays Harbor County Fair.

Years ago, Landberg was one of three men who gave up every weekend and provided dirt moving equipment for more than a year to build a new horse and car racing track at the fairground.

Talk of a new fairgrounds track began after a race car flipped over the old track’s wall and landed in a crowd of people during the 1976 fair, killing one person.

The decision was made to build a three-tenth-mile car track inside a five-eighths-mile horse track.

Landberg, the late Boyd Zepp and the late Harold Ortquist became the primary builders, using their equipment to haul thousands of tons of dirt to shape the new tract.

The opening ceremony also will feature the Aberdeen Elks National Band.

August 11, 1994

Joanne Coker, 56, has been the coordinator of the Rock ‘N Rest Baby Station at the Grays Harbor County Fair for 32 years.

The baby station is a quiet oasis, a small house at ground zero of the fairgrounds, where music blares and fairgoers compete for space in crowded food and carnival lines.

It’s a place where parents can rest, change their babies with free diapers supplied by local businesses, borrow a stroller or take their children to play with toys or other toddlers.

Coker has decorated the two-room cottage, which once housed the fair office, with dolls and child- and family-oriented pictures and crafts.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom