75 years ago
April 14, 1943
“We’re having fun — if you can call it that. But it’s really a darn serious business.”
That’s the way Lieutenant (s.g.) Bob Watkins summed up five months of continuous dive bomber flying out of Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, in a letter to his parents, Dr. and Mrs. H.C. Watkins.
“I’ve been flying every day since I landed here,” he wrote. “The mud and the mosquitoes are worse than the (enemy).”
It hasn’t been all “pleasure flying,” his letters indicate. “I picked up a few pieces of shrapnel but they didn’t do any serious harm.” He did not elaborate on the statement.
A photograph, showing Lieut. Watkins and a group of other navy flyers on Guadalcanal is featured in this week’s issue of Life magazine. Scores of his friends on the Harbor noticed the picture and called the family. Dr. Watkins said there could be no mistaking that it is his son, although he’s grown a slight mustache since he entered the service
April 15, 1943
Corporal Hjalmer Lundgren, former Aberdeen track ace, comes home on furlough with the story that Missourians think a tree three or four inches through is big. For week-end recreation they go rabbit hunting, said Lundgren, who has been training in army radio work at Camp Crowder.
Lundgren was a member of the Aberdeen high school relay team which was unbeaten in two years. The other members were Dwight Morris, Elliot Pulver and Arne West.
50 years ago
April 14, 1968
Sunday, no newspaper published
April 15, 1968
Stan Pinnick, ex-Hoquiam and GHC athlete will receive his teaching degree from Eastern Washington State in June and has already signed a contract to teach in Walla Walla next year.
25 years ago
April 14, 1993
She has performed with her renowned modern dance company on stages in major cities across the country and around the world.
But her enormous success didn’t quite prepare Trisha Brown for taking the stage in Aberdeen Tuesday night.
“Hi Trisha. Welcome Home,” read the hand-lettered pieces of construction paper flashed by two rows of the audience at the Bishop Center.
“You’re not supposed to make me cry before I start,” an emotional Brown responded, squinting into the audience dotted with familiar faces.
Before an audience of nearly 200 in the handsome theater, Brown gave her first hometown performance since graduating from Aberdeen High School in 1954.
April 15, 1993
• Charred wood and rubble is about all that remains today of the penthouse apartment at the historic Morck Hotel in downtown Aberdeen.
A “suspicious” fire ripped through the apartment late Wednesday night, forcing a three-hour evacuation of some 70 residents on the five floors below, according to fire officials.
Thirty-one firefighters from Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Cosmopolis assisted in extinguishing the blaze, reported about 11:45 p.m. by a resident on the second floor.
• A 12-year-old boy digging at the base of a sand bank at Washaway Beach died Wednesday evening after the hillside collapsed and buried him.
Ramon Gonzales was under the sand for 30 to 45 minutes before a cousin spotted an arm protruding from the sand, according to Grays Harbor Coroner John Bebich.
Bystanders dug the youngster from the sand and began performing CPR, but it was too late.
Rick Ekman, chief criminal deputy with the Pacific County Sheriff’s Department, said the boy was found at the base of a 40-foot, nearly vertical sand bank.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom
