75 years ago
November 11, 1942
A drive to enroll 1,000 block mothers for Aberdeen will be started Thursday by the Aberdeen council of PTA. Purpose of the drive is to provide a refuge home in every block in the city where children may go during an air raid or blackout.
The refuge homes will be identified by bright red PTA stickers and a defense council sticker. The program has the endorsement and cooperation of the Aberdeen public schools.
November 12, 1942
Elimination of double features for the duration of the war was urged today by Lowell Mellett, chief of the bureau of motion pictures, office of war information.
Mellett urged theaters to devote a part of their program to factual films that would give people “the feel of the war and their own relation to it.”
“The habit of sitting three or four hours, he said, “with one’s mind afloat in a fictional world, hardly equips the American population for the serious job of dealing with real life. That way lies degeneration rather than growth. And we must grow. We must grow into a people competent to win this war.”
50 years ago
November 11, 1967
About 35 Elma fifth-graders will show their parents and television audiences in Western Washington Wednesday night that they can be ladies and gentlemen.
It’s Operation Dine Out day. The students, their parents and their teacher, Jim Saari, will travel to the Smoke Shop Cafe in Aberdeen for a steak dinner earned with a car wash, a bake sale and a bottle drive.
Crews from Seattle television station KING will be on hand to film the event.
Saari has been instructing the prospective diners with a table setting provided by the Smoke Shop and the students are catching on fast.
“When six of us were having hamburgers one day,” the teacher recalled, “one student scolded me for having my elbow on the table.”
November 12, 1967
Sunday, no newspaper published
25 years ago
November 11, 1992
• After “27 months on the snow,” the 1990 Montesano High School grad voted most likely to succeed is headed to the South Pacific for backpacking on Fiji and Tahiti and perhaps a stroll the length of the southern island of New Zealand.
“I’ll stay as long as my Visas allow,” said Steve Lofgren, 20, who has already walked half-way across Europe solo, served as a Mt. Rainier climbing ranger this summer and two seasons as a ski patrolman in California.
“He’s living the outdoorsman’s dream,” said his father, brick mason Ron Lofgren of Montesano.
• Doctors were baffled when Al Leighty took sick at age 43. They told his wife, Betty, he was dying and they didn’t know why. It was Aug. 19, 1986: “I’ll never forget,” Betty says. “It changed our lives forever.”
It’s fitting that his story be told on Veterans Day. All the evidence points to Agent Orange as the culprit for his sickness.
Leighty was hospitalized for two years. He underwent heart surgery nine times. On four of those occasions, doctors called the family together for a death watch.
Today Betty and Al, more than anything else, want other veterans who may have been exposed to Agent Orange to get on file with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Also, there’s still time to take part in the settlement of the class action suit against chemical companies. The payments aren’t much “but at least it’s some acknowledgement of what these guys were exposed to,” Betty says.
November 12, 1992
Looking toward the mouth of the Quinault River on a cold, gray Veterans Day, some members of the Quinault Indian Nation, along with VFWs from Skagit County, Hoquiam and Aberdeen took time Wednesday to dedicate a new memorial to members of the Quinault Nation who gave their lives in war.
After the ceremony and a brief a moment of silence for all those who lost their lives in conflict, everyone attended a dinner at the Nation’s Community Center.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom
