75 years ago
January 16, 1945
Pfc. George Powers is pretty busy these days — fighting a war — and planting gardens.
Private Powers, son of Mr. and Mrs. C. H. (Herb) Powers of Karr Avenue in Hoquiam, has planted several gardens already in New Caledonia, New Zealand and New Guinea, with seeds sent from home, only to be transferred to another area each time the vegetables are well along. He expects to plant them “all the way to Tokyo.”
Now stationed in the Netherlands East Indies, the former Hoquiam high school student recently met one of his best friends, Selmar Parker, also of Hoquiam, who was stationed about two miles further down the beach. The two boys, friends since childhood, were together every day until Parker was sent to the Philippines.
January 17, 1945
Coach Dan Shovlin today said the Aberdeen Bobcats for the next two days will concentrate on dead-eye shooting and accurate passing to cope with the speedy Hoquiam Grizzlies in Friday night’s hoop classic at the Hoquiam gymnasium.
50 years ago
January 16, 1970
Harborites breathed a collective sigh of relief this morning. An economic haymaker punch was pulled at the last moment.
A strike that would have idled 900 Grays Harbor Paper Company and ITT Rayonier workers was averted today following a marathon mediation meeting.
The 16-hour session in a smoke-filled room of the Nordic Inn concluded at 5 a.m. And by a margin described as “very close,” the 25 office staff members of Local 25, AWPPW, voted to accept a proposal from the managements of Grays Harbor Paper. The 14-month contract was negotiated, calling for a 19.4 per cent overall wage increase, according to the union bargaining committee.
January 17, 1970
Saturday, no newspaper published
25 years ago
January 16, 1995
It’s Henry Ford meets Frank Lloyd Wright.
In a warehouse in the Port area of Aberdeen, Gilco Construction of Alaska is building three- and four-bedroom houses on an assembly line.
On tracks built into the floor, they roll from station to station. The floors go together at the first station, the walls go up at the second, then the roof trusses and so on.
The assembly line produces about 2 ½ houses a week. They aren’t mobile homes. They are standard, wood-frame houses — stouter in fact than you’d build around the Twin Harbors because they are being barged to Nome, Alaska, just below the Arctic Circle, and it gets cold there.
January 17, 1995
A woman and her 16-year-old son escaped with only their pajamas from a fire Monday morning in their mobile home about 1 ½ miles south of Aberdeen.
Karen Tuffery and her son, Brandon Reeder, escaped without serious injury, but once they were out, all they could do was stand and watch their home at 29 Newskah Road burn to the ground.
No firefighters responded to the blaze in the South Shore Village mobile home neighborhood because it is located in an unprotected, unincorporated area.
The neighborhood has no volunteer fire department. It is too far outside the city limits for the Aberdeen Fire Department to respond unless someone’s life is in imminent danger.
The unprotected area includes between 30 and 40 homes off the Westport Highway, from Emery’s Auto Sales to Archery Hill.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom
