75 years ago

Sept. 29, 1941

An auto driving class for women will begin sessions at the Samuel Benn trade school at 7:30 tomorrow night, Carl Johnson, vocational training head, announced today. The course will be open to anyone of 16 years or more.

Students will be given thorough training in driving fundamentals, Johnson said, special emphasis to be laid on driving on slippery streets and in sand. Those in the course will be taught how to put on a spare wheel, learn the importance of dashboard instruments and instructed how to park on a hill.

Sept. 30, 1941

Ranson Minkler, Aberdeen automobile dealer, returned last night from his annual deer hunting trip into southeastern Oregon. There were 22 hunters in the party, including several from Aberdeen who returned last week. All but one hunter brought down his buck. The largest was shot by Glen Minkler of Raymond, who bagged a 275-pound mule deer.

50 years ago

Sept. 29, 1966

In a formal statement signed by Mayor Oscar Holm and City Commissioners Merle Smith and Bill Morgan, the City of Raymond served notice it will terminate the ambulance service for North Pacific County as provided through the fire department next Jan. 1.

Revised figures on the ambulance business were provided. Annual billings are estimated at $7,200 with net collections listed at $6,660 per year on a collection ratio of about 85 percent. From Jan. 25 through Sept. 10, the service had answered 168 call with 14 of them designated as “long hauls” to Portland, Seattle and Tacoma.

Sept. 30, 1966

You save your money, buy your son books and send him to college and what does he do?

He joins the Volkswagen stuffing team.

By an intricate mathematical process, which consisted mainly of pushing and squeezing 20 engineers from the Illinois Institute of Technology Wednesday night won the first intercollegiate Volkswagen stuffing contest. Northwestern University, which finished second by placing only 19 into the compact car, took defeat like gentlemen and sportsmen.

“Fraud!” the Northwesterners yelled, “they didn’t use men, they used boys!”

25 years ago

Sept. 29, 1991

When Nina Georg came to Elma just more than 30 years ago, it was “a sleepy little community” of 1,811.

She supplied that number off the top of her head last week without a moment’s thought.

Clearly, there was nothing sleepy about Nina then — and at 59, she’s still a lively lady with plenty of spunk.

Friday was Nina’s last day as clerk-treasurer at Elma City Hall. Co-workers organized a retirement party for her Saturday at the Elma Eagles Hall.

And it wasn’t a stuffy, formal affair. In the past, such events have been at City Hall, but alcohol can’t be served there.

“I’ve lived in the fast lane all my life and loved every minute of it,” Nina says. Her hearty laugh and bright eyes impart her underlying energetic spirit.

Sept. 30, 1991

• Some 50 years ago as a teenager in Pennsylvania, Jackie Stanley discovered that a neighbor lady couldn’t read. The woman had just arrived from the hills of Kentucky and she hadn’t even been to a town before.

“One day she told me she couldn’t read. I was shocked. So, I taught her. We started with reading labels on canned food.”

The memory of that wonderful experience prompted Mrs. Stanley, 66, to become a tutor through Twin Harbors Literacy. Now the Hoquiamite has two students who are making great progress. She was grinning across her dining room table at Iva Bodey, 53, of Aberdeen and Kay Archie, 42, of Hoquiam.

The women agree that Mrs. Stanley is helping open up an exciting new world.

• Students from Malone to Moclips soon will be able to work toward a college degree without leaving the easy chair in their front room.

Correspondence courses are entering the realm of high technology as Grays Harbor College introduces “distance education.”

The innovative electronic linkup brings the college classroom into a student’s TV via KCTS Channel 9, video cassette or satellite distribution.

Seven courses will be available this quarter — introductory psychology and chemistry, freshman English, philosophy, business, sociology, and poetry.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom