World gone by
Published 1:30 am Friday, April 24, 2026
85 YEARS AGO
April 18, 1941
The Wishkah street Western Thrift store, housed in its completely remodeled home at 108 East Wishkah, will stage a grand opening celebration between the hours of 7 o’clock and 9 tonight.
“The opening of this new store,” Tom Birk, owner and manager of the company commented today, “is the result of the fine patronage we have received from Aberdeen shoppers at our Heron street store during the past eight years.”
April 19, 1941
“I can readily see why many might object to moving out of the city, but if you will stop for just a minute and listen to what Central Park has to offer, I believe much of the opposition you might have is overcome,” said a recent transplant to the rural area.
“A well attended Sunday school is held at the community hall. The Central Park school takes children through the sixth grade and then they go to Aberdeen. A bus is provided for this purpose.
“A splendid telephone service is maintained. You can step to your phone and call any one in either Aberdeen or Hoquiam with no extra charge. Electricity is available in every home. The air is not of the salty kind. Good wells with electric pumps and septic tanks make your home as modern as any in the city.
“The soil is good and nearly every home has its own garden and orchard and berries of all kinds are in evidence.”
April 21, 1941
Oregon made a big fuss about finding the “largest fir tree in existence” in southwest Clatsop county, but George Northup, former Jefferson county legislator, today pointed out the claim is unfounded. The Queets valley, he said, has a bigger fir.
The Oregon tree measures 15.5 feet in diameter. Northup showed an Olympic national forest booklet published by the department of interior, in which is a picture of the 17-foot eight inch Queets tree, which stands five miles above the Kelly ranch. There are reportedly several giant firs in the upper Quinault valley that measure more than 15 feet in diameter.
The Queets tree was originally measured by the United States forest service. It is nearly 300 feet high.
April 22, 1941
William Bailey, 73 years old, has been “high dig” on the clam beaches around Grayland twice within the last week.
“I got 62 pounds one day and 53 the next, which is higher than any other digger, including those young fellows,” Bailey said with justifiable pride.
Bailey pointed out that 62 pounds of clams dug on one tide was, ordinarily, “nothing to write home about” but explained that the clams are scarce this year, and smaller than in previous years.
April 23, 1941
A blanket of high explosives spread in the blue sky two miles above the Grayland dunes as three batteries of the 205th coast artillery cut loose with new, long-snouted, three-inch guns today.
Each of the 12 big rifles flung five shells into the air over the sea this afternoon. Although dwindled by distance, smoke puffs from the explosions were clearly visible to onlookers.
The first shell was fired by Battery D at 1:10 o’clock. The gunners then had to wait a half-hour while an unidentified coastwise ship scuttled away from the danger zone, which extends 10 miles to sea.
April 24, 1941
Lt. Alfred Aho, naval aviator stationed in Hawaii, is home for a two-day visit with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Aho. Aho has been stationed in the islands for 18 months with a navy utility squadron. He is a pilot.
Aho said Robert “Rob” Watkins, flying with a patrol squadron and Martin McDowell, attached to the carrier Yorktown, both Grays Harbor men are also at Pearl Harbor.
Breaches of wedded bliss kept Aberdeen police busy last night.
Officers McManus and Elliott hurried to a North F street residence about midnight on receipt of a call that a man was beating his wife.
“We found it was the other way around,” they reported to the night sergeant. “The wife was beating her husband.” She was jailed for drunkenness.
A few hours later an excited woman reported a “prowler” at her West Heron street home. Siren screaming Officers Auer and Williams sped to the place.
With some wonder at the way of wives, they told the night sergeant later: “This was just her quaint way of getting her husband out of bed to go to work.”
60 YEARS AGO
April 18, 1966
Michael Carr, a Port Orchard student pilot, learned one of the flying don’ts Sunday afternoon when his single engine plane got away from him at the Ocean Shores airport and ran into three other planes, causing an estimated $5,000 damages.
Carr, who was making his solo cross-country flight from Port Orchard to Ocean Shores Sunday, was about to return when, standing outside the plane, he flipped the propeller and discovered too late that the throttle was advanced too far. The plane bolted away pilotless from its parking space with Carr running close behind.
A witness described the scene that followed as a bad act in a silent movie.
Carr almost caught the plane several times as it ran an erratic circular course around the landing strip, but his wind gave out and he fell behind as the plane took a straight course toward a group of startled golfers.
After scattering the golfers, the plane picked its final collision course and slammed into a 1966 Skyhawk and then veered into a 1965 Bonanza and a 1962 Beachcraft.
No one was injured.
April 19, 1966
The death rate from lung cancer in males in the United States has increased tenfold since 1930 and the disease is now in first place as killer of American men, Aberdeen radiologist Dr. Richard Kegel told persons attending the Cancer Crusade kickoff yesterday in the Aberdeen Federal courtesy room.
Dr. Kegel said the rising death rate in this area is unquestionably due to cigarette smoking, which is also a factor in coronary heart disease, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, sinusitis and peptic ulcers.
April 20, 1966
The governor of Washington Wednesday returned to his old ship — the destroyer USS Leonard S. Mason — on which he fought during the Korean War. Gov. Dan Evans, in Hong Kong heading a 32-member Washington state trade mission, was last in Hong Kong 14 years ago – aboard the Mason.
During his tour of the ship, Evans was introduced to four crewmembers from Washington state, including Seaman Lee Bakotich of Aberdeen.
Bakotich is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Pasco Bakotich and was on board the Mason when it picked up astronauts David Scott and Neil Armstrong after the early termination of their space flight forced them to come down in the Pacific last month.
April 25, 1966
A drive was staged Sunday trying to force a herd of 80-100 elk off farmlands west of Port Angeles back into Olympic national Park but no one knows if it succeeded.
The elk have been eating crops, damaging fences and creating a traffic hazard in the area.
State game men, park rangers, farmers and a few Explorer Scouts took part in the drive.
35 YEARS AGO
April 18, 1991
An estimated 22,000 gray whales are expected to pass along Grays Harbor’s Pacific Coast in the annual spring migration from Baja, Mexico, to the abundant feeding areas in the Bering Sea near Alaska. That’s 2,000 more than in recent years, says John Smith of Aberdeen, marine biologist and retired Grays Harbor instructor who coordinates whale watching excursions with Whales Ahoy charter.
On a clear, bright morning last Friday, Whales Ahoy hosted a group of some 30 high school juniors and seniors from Seattle. In four hours, the youngsters had sighted numerous grays whales, including one that crossed under the bow of the boat.
April 19, 1991
A fascination with firefighting and a sense of obligation to his community burn steadily in Herb Newton.
Driven by those two urges, Newton was a firefighter for the City of South Bend for 44 years, leading the volunteer force as chief for the past 37. He was also Pacific County sheriff from 1976 to 1986.
For all that, and more, he is The Daily World’s 1991 Firefighter of the Year.
April 20, 1991
Most police agencies rely heavily on the State Crime Lab to sift through and analyze evidence.
But the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office doesn’t need to. It has Detective Lane Youmans.
“He’s the first guy on the crime scene and the last guy to leave,” said Det. Rick Scott. “He’s on his hands sifting through dirt, clipping a piece of grass, vacuuming carpets, or looking for high-velocity blood spray,” said Scott.
It’s for that expertise along with tenacity, sensitivity with victims and his quick-witted humor that Youmans was selected as this year’s Daily World Police Officer of the Year.
Farmer’s Market, the popular spot for Harborites to buy garden-fresh produce, homemade bread, herbs, spices and other items, opens this morning for its 17th season.
This is the market’s second season operating indoors near the foot of historic F Street in Aberdeen.
Market manager Nancy Lachel of Central Park says she expects anywhere from 20 to 25 vendors to take part this weekend.
April 21, 1991
People find it hard to say no to Jim Coates, because chances are he’s already done something nice for them.
Coates’ job is to help workers who don’t have jobs. Officially, he’s supposed to be getting dislocated timber workers into training programs. He does, but he also helps hungry families find food, cold families find warmth and discouraged families find hope. For those reasons, he is The Daily World’s Citizen of the Year for 1991.
“I’m just struck by the fact that here is an ordinary guy who cares so much about his fellow human beings,” Gov. Booth Gardner said when he was in Aberdeen earlier this week to appear on the television show Coates hosts.
April 22, 1991
Trout Unlimited of Grays Harbor has a new grants writer who types 20 words a minute.
That’s a snail’s pace for most 10-fingered typists but Greg Mooney taps the keys with a pencil. He broke his neck in a car accident in 1975 and has little movement of his arms.
One of the things his is doing for Trout Unlimited is writing grant requests to get money to allow disabled people to enjoy outdoor sports, such as fishing.
The project has 70 percent of the $167,000 necessary for the first phase of construction.
“As soon as I get the other 30 percent of the funding, they’ll get started,” Mooney says.
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s name was being carried on the inside pages of local newspapers when he left quietly for Saudi Arabia 240 days ago, and many readers must have wondered what the “H” stood for.
When he came home Sunday, the world press was waiting to put him on Page 1, and more than a few folks had decided the “H” must stand for hometown hero.
Commander of the 37-nation U.N. coalition forces that liberated Kuwait, brilliant strategist who saved American lives while shortening the war in the gulf, four-star general who administered a good licking to Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein – Schwarzkopf (whose nickname is “Bear”) had become all of these and more.
At least one person welcoming him home at MacDill Air Force Base on Sunday, was wearing a “Stormin’ Norman for President” T-shirt.
April 23, 1991
Johnny Green has lived in the little yellow shack he built at the east corner of Hoquiam’s Riverside Dike for more than 60 years now, feeding the ducks and keeping the grassy knoll free of litter.
The 91-year-old Swede, who often sits outside, cane in hand, watching the traffic pass, has practically become a landmark himself.
The Hoquiam City Council, by a vote of 11 to 1 last night, voted to rename Riverside Dike “Johnny Green Dike.”
The former circus worker and mill hand says he built his one-room cottage for 25 cents during the Great Depression. A house was being torn down on the other side of town and he floated the lumber down the river and used it to build a home of his own.
April 24, 1991
The new co-owner of Grays Harbor Flight Inc., at Bowerman Field has just one little thing to learn on his new job. He has to learn to fly.
His flight instructor is his daughter, Kim Jacob. “It’s really kind of difficult,” she says of teaching her father Dick Jacob how to operate an airplane.
The new operators at Grays Harbor Flight are the latest in a long line of businesses trying to make a go of an aviation business at Bowerman Field.
Grays Harbor Flight will offer charter freight and passenger service and flying lessons, as well as offering aircraft maintenance, fuel sales, car rentals, scenic flights and of course, the cafe food.
“You have to be a jack of all trades here. Even our mechanic cooks hamburgers and chili — the specialty of the house,” says the other co-owner, Jim Heikel.
April 25, 1991
David G. Wayman, 47, principal of Hoquiam’s Washington School, and an innovator of student, teacher and parent programs, is Grays Harbor’s recipient of the annual Washington State’s Distinguished Principal Award.
Wayman attended Grays Harbor College, and received degrees from Western Washington University and Central Washington University. He started at Hoquiam as a 6th grade teacher and coach at Washington School in 1967 and then moved to the middle school in 1974 where he worked as both a teacher and administrative assistant. In 1978, he was promoted to principal at Central School and in 1980 he returned to Washington School, this time as principal.
Dorothye Logue, a longtime volunteer worker at Harbor hospitals and for Driftwood Players, was presented with the 1991 National Community Service Award from the local chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom, Editorial Assistant at The Daily World. You can contact her at karen.barkstrom@thedailyworld.com or call her at 360-537-3925.
