World gone by
Published 1:30 am Friday, June 5, 2026
80 YEARS AGO
June 6, 1941
The newly renovated Harbor Drug store and Dr. W.L. Curtis’ new medical office will be open to public inspection Saturday. The store and office are on the ground floor of the Watkins-Carbery building at Eighth and J streets in Hoquiam.
Dr. Curtis’ quarters include a waiting room, finished in knotty pine, a private office, surgery, treatment room, fluoroscope and X-ray room and laboratory.
The arrangement of small clinic and drug store in one building is proving successful in large cities, it was said.
June 7, 1941
There’ll be no bottleneck in Aberdeen’s toy supply this Christmas — not if Tom Brennan, owner and manager of Brennan’s Crockery and Hardware store, can help it.
Brennan is leaving tonight to visit the New York toy market and order his holiday line of toys right now.
“I have learned that many toy factories are having difficulty securing raw materials,” he said. “This is especially true in the case of steel toys.”
Brennan also will take in the housewares show in Chicago and spend a few days in the larger pottery centers of Ohio.
June 9, 1941
Thirteen University of Washington journalism students will give the Daily World staff a one day vacation tomorrow when they will publish the paper.
Fresh from a year of intensive training in journalistic techniques, the students are on a field trip in an attempt to put into practice what was gleaned in lectures and laboratories. Most of the same students will edit the Grays Harbor Washingtonian on June 12.
Included in the group is Marty Abrahamson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Nis Abrahamson.
June 10, 1941
From one end of the University of Washington campus to the other, more than three score students for whom Aberdeen is home, are beginning and ending their respective courses toward the ultimate goal of a college education.
The Donovan twins, Catherine and Mary Jane, members of Delta Gamma sorority, are active tennis players. Prominent in university musical circles is Beryl Eggleston. Aberdeen’s second set of twins at the university, Betty and Daphne Severson, are members of Alpha Xi Delta and dead-eye shots on the university rifle team. Jay Goldberg of Zeta Beta Tau is junior manager of intramural sports.
June 11, 1941
At the request of the Wishkah Valley Grange, the school board set a sale price of $750 for the Robert Gray school house and about one acre of land. The Grange also was given an opportunity to lease the building for $50 a year, providing the structure is maintained by the lessees.
June 12, 1941
A.M. “Pat” Gallagher, captain, last night was appointed and unanimously approved by the city council as Aberdeen police chief. He succeeds Chief George Dean, resigned, one of the most widely known police officers in the state.
Gallagher, one of the first two men to join the Aberdeen police under civil service, started as a patrolman March 12, 1932 and has served through all grades of the Aberdeen force.
55 YEARS AGO
June 6, 1966
Swanson’s grocery stores in Aberdeen and Hoquiam are advertising four cans of Snow Mist tuna for $1, cake donuts for 29¢ each, brownies for 5¢ each, orange rye bread for 31¢ and from the snack bar, a tuna sandwich for 19¢.
June 7, 1966
More than 24 aviation enthusiasts landed in the Grays Harbor county commissioners’ hearing room yesterday to protest closure of the Copalis Beach light aircraft landing strip and as a result the commissioners tabled the motion.
The commissioners got stacks and stacks of letters and telegrams protesting the closure. Seattle-area pilots urged that the strip was a “real asset” to Grays Harbor County.” One flyer wrote, “We’ve hundreds of miles of highway for motorists … all we want is this 3,500 foot landing strip.”
June 8, 1966
Leonard Elton Watson received the coveted Class Hearts award, voted to the most beloved senior at class day at Hoquiam High School today.
Watson was active in sports, earning his three-year letter in football and one year letter in baseball and wrestling.
June 9, 1966
Pacific County Sheriff Herman Felber and his staff have under investigation one of the most unusual and brash incidents of thievery ever recorded in the county.
Earlier this week, officials of the PUD reported the loss of more than a ton of copper wire. The wire was taken from 3.7 miles of its transmission lines and had been cut down by thieves as there was evidence that utility poles had been climbed with spurs and the wire cut on both sides of the poles and allowed to drop to the ground.
June 10, 1966
Harborites who wanted to travel by water to Astoria, Ore. in the 1880s had to plan ahead and sometimes that didn’t assure success.
The Ilwaco Steam Navigation Co., which operated the steamer Gen. Miles from Hoquiam, Aberdeen, Cosmopolis and Montesano, to the Oregon port, cautiously advertised that the boat would leave Oregon on or about the 5th, 15th and 25th of each month.
The six to eight-hour trip including meals could be secured with a $5 fare.
Today’s Daily World includes a special 16-page section in celebration of Cosmopolis’ 75-year anniversary.
June 11, 1966
Representatives of four state governors and fishermen’s organization officers from both the West and East coasts, as well as representatives of national news media, are expected to attend the rally Sunday staged by the Westport Offshore Fisheries Conservation committee to protest the presence of the Russian fishing fleet off the Grays Harbor -Willapa Harbor coastline. Aberdeen Mayor Walt Failor, chairman of the Westport committee, will be master of ceremonies.
Summer term begins June 20 at Grays Harbor Business College, at 215 1/2 E. Market in Aberdeen, and classes will be offered in shorthand, typing, office machines, bookkeeping, English, spelling and Gregg Notehand.
30 YEARS AGO
June 6, 1991
One of the nation’s largest wholesale nurseries opened a new site at Porter Wednesday. Eventually, it will bring close to 60 jobs to Grays Harbor County.
Briggs Nursery Inc., headquartered in Olympia, opened its new site just south of Porter partly because local officials worked with the company to help it find land and financing. Local economic development officials were interested not only in bringing new jobs to the county but also in bringing a new kind of business to the county, in this case, a large agri-business.
“This is the beginning edge of our economic diversification,” the Grays Harbor Chamber of Commerce manager, LeRoy Tipton, said.
Judith Altruda has owned the Dock Street Gallery in Westport for four years, mostly showing conventional art done by herself and other artists — things like water colors of beach scenes. Last month, Altruda graduated from Cornish Institute of the Arts in Seattle.
She’s from California but she doesn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about that. “I grew up in a small little beach community, and it changed and grew so much that I came up here looking for a place that was like where I grew up.
“I’m not one of those rich Californians who came up here and bought up everyone’s property.”
She worked as a waitress. She got a job framing pictures. Finally she opened her Dock Street Gallery. “I’ve been able to make a living at it,” she said. “I’ve had the gallery in the summer and gone to school in the winters.
“Now I plan to teach at the gallery, too. Children’s and adult’s classes.”
June 7, 1991
Stephanie Hatfield, senior class president at Hoquiam High School and daughter of Jim and Sherry Maki, received the Class Hearts award this week. Classmates traditionally bestow the honor on the “most beloved” senior according to school counselor Joye de Carteret
Pete Rattie carried the letter around in his pocket for several days. The principal of McDermoth Elementary School in Aberdeen knew it was time to retire but “the toughest part was turning in that letter.”
Rattie’s retirement sets off some shuffling.
Leif Tangvald, now principal at Robert Gray, will take Rattie’s post at McDermoth, Judy Astells, now at Central Park will go to Robert Gray and filling her spot at Central Park is Jim Sawin who in now a teacher at Alexander Young.
June 8, 1991
The First Baptist Church of Elma will celebrate its 100th anniversary this weekend. The celebration will start with a potluck dinner tonight at the Grays Harbor Pavilion.
The Rev. Willard Buckner, pastor of the Elma church from 1953-1960 and a former Elma citizen of the year, will preach at the 8;30 and 11 a.m. services Sunday.
June 9, 1991
Veteran log chaser Jack Poukkula, 53, won the “Knottiest Logger Legs” contest at this weekend’s timber rally at the Wishkah Mall. The knotty leg competition was one of the zanier events at what was designed to be one of the more cheerful rallies protesting proposed set-asides for the endangered spotted owl.
Aberdeen and Hoquiam high school students were doing a brisk business washing log trucks for $5 each in the lot between Pay ‘n Save and Price Plus, said Jeanne Rux, manager at Skipper’s Seafood which is sponsoring the rally.
Donna Stamwitz of Hoquiam and John McDonald of Grayland were among the millions who didn’t win the state’s richest lottery prize last week.
The $13.78 million will go to a cocktail lounge boss in Skamokawa.
But don’t even think that Stamwitz and McDonald are pouting about it.
Stamwitz, 41, a bubbly hostess at the Aberdeen Elks Lodge, won $25,000 April 25 playing Lucky Draw. and McDonald, 66, a retired logger with the Weyerhaeuser Co., discovered last month that he’d won $5,000 playing Double Feature.
June 10, 1991
On the T.I.P. line (“turn in a pusher”) detectives field up to 600 calls a year. Almost 200 cases have gone to the county prosecutor since 1988 as a result of information developed through the T.I.P line, said Sgt. Rick Scott of the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office and supervisor of the countywide Drug Task Force.
“Hardly ever do we have a drug case that did not begin with a tip,” Scott says.
June 11, 1991
Power rates are going up next year, but PUD officials say it has nothing to do with the construction of the new PUD building in Aberdeen. The money for the building was already in the budget, said Tom Casey, president of the PUD board of commissioners. The PUD decided to build after going through a public process and considering other options such as remodeling and additions.
For those who heat with electricity, the new rate will mean an average increase of $5 a month.
The Long Live the Kings hatchery on the Wishkah River may close because the state Department of Fisheries plans to withdraw its share of the funding, hatchery supporters say.
The small hatchery, about 15 miles north of Aberdeen, was originally built by the Mayr Bros. Logging Co. It raises Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead.
The Fisheries Department has been asked to make across-the-board reductions in its next biennial budget and the $13,500 annual contract with Long Live the Kings is one place it chose to cut, said Larry Peck, who is in charge of hatchery programs for the department.
June 12, 1991
Never before in the history of Grays Harbor commerce have 65 tons of nails meant so much. The nails are part of a load of general cargo that arrived at the Port of Grays Harbor on the Hansa Bremen. Hardly anyone can remember the last time general cargo came into the Port, and many people are hoping more will come.
Along with the nails, which were manufactured in Indonesia, the Hansa Bremen brought 92 tons of hardwood veneer and 371 tons of iron and steel pipe to the port.
When it was all put together, it made a surprisingly small pile in the Port’s sorting and storage areas.
But it wasn’t the size of the pile that counted. It was the beginning that counted, the beginning of the Port being not just an exporter but also an importer.
“Expect the unexpected.”
That is the maxim vice principals live by says Frank Morrissey. And he should know.
With 23 years as assistant principal at AHS, Morrissey, 59, is doing the expected.
After a total of 33 years in education — the first 10 in Kansas — Morrissey will join his recently retired wife, Mary Beth, who taught at the Central park Cooperative Preschool until last year.
The two look forward to spending more time with their four grown children and three grandchildren. In addition, he is exploring the idea of becoming a national park ranger.
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.
