World gone by
Published 1:30 am Friday, May 29, 2026
85 YEARS AGO
May 31, 1941
Grays Harbor naval reservists will be tendered a community wide bon voyage Monday afternoon when they entrain for San Francisco in answer to their call to the colors.
Mayors Herbert Horrocks of Aberdeen and Ralph Philbrick of Hoquiam will deliver briefly the cities’ farewells. The Aberdeen high school band will play.
The reservists — 95 strong — are to entrain from the port dock armory at 3:35 p.m. A special train will carry them through to Centralia without a stop in Aberdeen.
June 4, 1941
Manganese mining in the southern Olympic peninsula district apparently has become a commercial reality. Bob Steele, co-owner of a claim in the Stevens creek district, today said he and his partner will inaugurate bi-weekly deliveries immediately to Portland, Seattle and Tacoma and increase the shipments as more equipment is obtained. They hope to construct a smelter near their claim at the headwaters of Stevens creek, about five miles from Neilton.
June 5, 1941
The world would be better off if man had the habit of lying in bed one morning each week.
That’s the comforting concept of a noted physician who today told the American Medical Association that ambition is shortening the business tycoon’s life span.
Ambition and “the strenuous life” are just as hazardous to the executive’s health as his obesity and excessive use of alcohol and tobacco declared Dr. Edgar V. Allen, chief of the medicine division of Mayo clinic. He proposed a five-day week, eight-hour a day program for businessmen.
“All too frequently (the businessman) lies mumbling and muttering in a hospital bed, panting his life away as a result of high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries or he stumbles and falls from apoplexy, or after a shudderingly severe episode of cardiac pain, he is hurried off into the sleep from which there is no awakening.”
60 YEARS AGO
May 30, 1966
The commander of a Russian fishing fleet, operating about 30 miles southwest of Westport, says his flotilla is not netting salmon. The commander, Alexander Chepur, made the statement aboard the Soviet flagship Churkin in an interview with Stanton Patty of the Seattle Times, Bob Ginther of the KING Broadcasting Co and Dick O’Keef, press relations director of the Congress of American Fisheries.
U.S. commercial fishermen had reported seeing salmon air drying on a Russian dragger near Westport.
Commander Chepur, speaking in English, said the fleet totals 33 vessels and is catching mostly hake and “incidental salmon caught in the trawl gear.”
May 31, 1966
The “sew-it-yourself” crowd will probably spend over $1 billion this year for machines, fabric, patterns and notions, says Miss Ruth Warner, county extension agent with the zigzag machine being the most popular model.
Market research shows a new image of the woman who sews at home. She’s in her twenties, married, building a family and wants a sewing machine for pleasure first and economy second.
June 1, 1966
Despite the chill wind, approximately 200 persons attended the Memorial Day service sponsored by Aberdeen VFW Post 224 and Aberdeen American Legion Post 5.
Among the spectators was Frank Meldrich, the only known surviving veteran of the Spanish-American War in these parts.
Ron Dominoski, lanky tackle for Aberdeen High School last fall, plans to enroll at Puget Sound University. The 6-4, 195-pound youngster who compiled an impressive 3.5 grade average, also wrestled for the Bobcats.
Former Hoquiam athlete Frank Gayda, brother of Eddie of Spokane and Larry of Aberdeen, now owns and operates the Lake Tanwax fishing resort.
June 2, 1966
It was a thrilling experience last Friday for 52 first-year students of the A.J. West School who traveled to Tacoma’s Point Defiance to visit the zoo.
The boys and girls, from the classes of Janice Stinchfield, Ethel Keiser and Nina Shipley, cried out with glee as seals performed, peacocks strutted, lions yawned, tigers paced and bears begged. A bull elk with shaggy coat and velvety antlers paraded. Each child was laboriously lifted to a small window for a peek at the new baby elephant.
It was 3 o’clock all too quickly and time for loading for the home trip. The children slowly relaxed and some drifted off to sleep.
Army PFC Melvin P. Lukin, son of Orvilla Miller of Montesano, is participating in a four-week field training exercise conducted by the 3rd Armored Division at Honenfels, Germany. He is taking part in weapons firing and tactical maneuvers as part of an Army program to maintain proficiency in combat units.
The 23-year-old soldier was graduated from Montesano High School in 1961.
June 3, 1966
The rain pelting down upon the assembled dignitaries failed to dampen their excitement in opening a small copper box taken from the cornerstone of the old Aberdeen City Hall yesterday. The cornerstone had been placed on March 19, 1905 during the administration of J. Lindstrom.
The most mystifying paper in the box was a letter written in Finnish. Fire Chief Louie Larson asked Mrs. Sulo Katainen to translate the letter.
“Living now in the age of a huge change in the community conditions, we can notice everywhere around our nationality its feverish activity and progress. Recent trend of national individualism is diminishing. We are bending more and more not only to Americanism but to universal knowledge.”
35 YEARS AGO
May 30, 1991
The Aberdeen Police Department officially took its place as one of Washington’s top law-enforcement agencies Wednesday night. In a brief ceremony at City Hall, APD became only the 16th law-enforcement agency in the state to receive accreditation from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
Whatcom County Sheriff Larry Mount, president of the association, presented the award to Chief Bill Ellis and Captain Alan Marrs, commander of the investigation division.
Throwing out the garbage may soon get more complicated in Aberdeen. But the alternative is higher rates.
A key element in the proposal is cost incentives on monthly garbage rates for segregating refuse into recyclable aluminum, tin cans, glass, newspaper and just garbage, according to LeMay manager Delroy Cox.
Some customers could save up to $1.23 a month on their utility bill, he said.
May 31, 1991
A 28-year-old man was shot and killed in the front yard of a home in Taholah Thursday evening following an argument according to the Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office.
Terry Logan, a member of the Quinault Indian Nation who reportedly lived at Moclips, died about 7:15 p.m.
In custody for investigation of homicide is Rigoberto Baradio Garibay, a self-employed forest worker who lived at the home where the shooting took place. Because the suspect is not a member of the tribe, the Sheriff’s Office is conducting the investigation, Sheriff Dennis Morrisette said.
June 1, 1991
Rediscover Grays Harbor’s legacy of change this summer — from founder Sam Benn in the 1950s through the days of notorious killer Bill Gohl to the present revitalization of a timber-dependent town.
The Grays Harbor Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring tours of the area each Saturday beginning June 15 and continuing through Aug. 24. Teen-ages from the service-oriented Key Club will lead the tours, costumed as figures prominent in the Harbor’s past.
The Harbor’s high school music teachers are about to face the music they helped make. It’s already on juke boxes, and it’s the roar of Hall Aflame, a Harbor-born hard rock band.
The band is back from a tour where they played to crowds up to 18,000. Tonight they’ll be at the Pour House, the hometown tavern where they started.
“We were sitting here in the tavern wondering why we weren’t in bands,” drummer Tom Weber says, explaining how the group started. “Brian (Smith), the bass player, had a practice studio two blocks away from here and we went down and started jamming.”
They also got ahold of Ron Lowd, who was professionally known as a dishwasher and choker setter. He’s now the band’s vocalist. “I sing about log truck drivers and drinking too much and never having enough to pay the bills,” Lowd says.
“You’ll definitely be able to pick us out of the photos in rock magazines,” says guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof. The guys in the other bands are wearing Spandex, neon and crazy hair. Hall Aflame looks like all it did to prepare to perform was take off the caulk boots.
June 2, 1991
Harbor lifters won three titles and Aberdeen took home a third-place trophy from the state high school powerlifting tournament Saturday in Shelton.
Hoquiam had two state champions: Mike McDougall in the boys’ 123-pound class with a total lift of 905 pounds and Justa Wilson in the girls’ 97-pound class with a total of 520.
Aberdeen’s Brenda Blancas won the girls’ 165-pound division with a 725-pound total.
June 3, 1991
Last weekend’s fifth annual 24-Hour Run Against Cancer has produced $78,000 and counting against the dreaded disease. There were 67 teams, 1,000 participants and sunny weather. Tom Shap of the Pepsi Cola/Swansons team was the top individual raiser at $1,800 and winner of the trip for two for a weekend to San Francisco.
The Lamb-Grays Harbor Co. has laid off 75 people at its Hoquiam headquarters in the wake of a “continued absence of business” from the slumping pulp and paper industry. “The phone has essentially quit ringing,” said David Lamb, a grandson of the company founder. “The reason we’re making a substantial reduction is that at the moment we can’t see a turn-around for demand on the immediate horizon.”
June 4, 1991
Jack Creighton, president of the Weyerhaeuser Co., addressed a crowd of 1,000 at the Montesano High School gymnasium last night on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the American Tree Farm System.
U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., the keynote speaker, called Weyerhaeuser’s commitment to tree farming “a great new idea that timber is a renewable resource that could be grown over and over again throughout eternity.”
“You are the true stewards of the earth,” he added.
June 5, 1991
Steve Roffler, a young Aberdeen chemical engineer, exercised the other side of his brain so hard he ended up in Taiwan doing cancer research.
Roffler, who graduated from Aberdeen High School in 1976, got his Ph.D in chemical engineering at Berkeley. That field is the kind of work that is done by the left side of the brain. While at Berkeley he decided his brain had gone too far to the left and decided he needed to use the other side of his brain.
Four years ago, he went to Taiwan to try to polish his Chinese. And then, as luck would have it, the exchange rate went wacky and cut the value of his money in half. He ended up editing scientific papers written in Chinese, just to scrape by in Taiwan. In the process he came to the attention of a cancer research scientist Ming Yang Yeh.
He was home in May, visiting his folks, Ron and Jeanette at their Central Park home, and talking about the research he’s doing at the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biological Sciences in Taipei, Taiwan.
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.
