In 1967, Rayonier crane breakdown causes gigantic log truck jam

From the archives of The Daily World

75 years ago

May 16, 1942

• A 7 1/2-cent hourly increase was granted more than 25,000 AFL workers in the Douglas fir industry in the Pacific Northwest as a result of an arbitration award announced today by the war labor board.

The wage award boosts the minimum pay from 75 to 82 1/2 cents an hour.

• Wayne Toivanen, Aberdeen high school basketball coach for the past three years, has been called by the Aberdeen selective service board to report for induction in June.

The first two years as coach, Toivanen’s Bobcat quintets fell short of a game for the championship. Last season his quintet was tied with Olympia and Hoquiam but lost in the playoff for a berth in the state tournament.

May 17, 1942

Sunday, no newspaper published

50 years ago

May 16, 1967

• Work has begun on the $285,729 addition to A.J. West School, the Aberdeen School District office reported today.

The addition includes 11 classrooms, a multi-purpose room, library, two conference rooms and teachers rooms.

• Undefeated singles ace Dan Henry swept the singles title in Olympia Saturday to pace Aberdeen to the team championship in the SWW Northern Division tennis tourney.

Earning the decisive points for the ‘Cats, however, were the doubles teams of John Carberry-Kalin Gunderson and Ray Sundquist-Dennis Yakovich, which placed second and third respectively.

May 17, 1967

• There was a gigantic log truck jam at the Grays Harbor Port Dock yesterday. The logs were on 35 logging trucks waiting to dump their cargo into the brink.

Meanwhile, Rayonier pulp mill mechanics were repairing the company’s bundle-deck crane, which hoists logs onto a deck, from where they are fed into the mill.

Incoming logging trucks were diverted to the dock to unload so they could be freed for more runs.

• Asked to name the most influential people in Hoquiam, 40 citizens interviewed decisively selected a trio of two businessmen and a politician — Mayor Rolland Youmans, Rayonier vice president Len Forrest and First Federal Savings and Loan President Donald Arthaud.

25 years ago

May 16, 1992

• As the Oldtime Fiddlers filled the Cosmopolis Lions Club Friday afternoon will music, 80 residents from six of the Harbor’s nursing homes tapped fingers and toes. Some even sang. And there were barbecued hamburgers, hotdogs, and bingo games to help celebrate “National Nursing Home” week.

The Cosi Lions donated the hall and members volunteered to help push wheelchairs and clean up.

The nursing home activity directors got what they hoped for — an enjoyable afternoon for everyone.

• Black tar heroin is the new scourge of Grays Harbor County.

Brown, sticky and far more addictive than cocaine or marijuana, the drug is now coming to the Harbor straight from Los Angeles, aggravating an already stubborn local drug problem.

“The supply is such that, when we arrest a dealer, other people fill the void,” said Aberdeen Police Sgt. Bob Johnson, who heads the Drug Task Force.

May 17, 1992

Looking through an old scrapbook, Bessie Dills Moore of Elma recently discovered pages of “Lightning Bug,” the official publication of White Star School.

“There sure was a lot of excitement when people found out about this,” said her brother Leo Dills, who passed the copies of the paper among his former classmates.

The newsletter announces that Evelyn Kearney (now of Elma with the married name Larson) took first place in the arithmetic tournament on Jan. 8, 1926. It also notes that Bessie Dills was elected to be assistant editor of the paper that same day.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom