75 years ago
October 16, 1943
• More than 560 local workers, mostly women, have thus far been employed at the Boeing Aircraft company, sub-assembly plant, Manager Wesle Holbein said today.
The firm’s greatest need now is for qualified mechanics, who are being hired under the new evaluation pay rates. Beginning mechanics are paid 32½ cents an hour.
• Robert S. Espedal has been promoted from corporal to sergeant in the Marine corps somewhere in the South Pacific. He enlisted September 10, 1942, spent six months at San Diego and went overseas February 8, 1943.
Sergeant Espedal was graduated from Aberdeen high school in June, 1941. He was a basketball and tennis player.
October 17, 1943
Sunday, no newspaper published
50 years ago
October 16, 1968
Robert Bickar, 38, Hoquiam logging operator, was knocked unconscious Tuesday when he was struck in the head by a boom on his operation near the Humptulips River Bridge on the Ocean Shores Highway.
He was removed in a pickup truck and transferred to a New Aberdeen Garage ambulance, the ambulance delivered him to Grays Harbor Community Hospital, where he was listed in satisfactory condition this morning.
October 17, 1968
• Evans products just completed another $110,000 in its general modernization program — for expansion of its shake-producing facilities at Aloha, one that will, according to H.M. Stilson, manager, quadruple Evans’ shake production and add $153,000 annually to the Harbor’s payroll.
• Among those local duck hunters bagging limits on opening weekend was 12-year-old Tom Copeland of Aberdeen.
• The Issacson brothers — Charlie, Dick and Tom — traveled 15 miles up the pike from Santa Clara to Palo Alto last Saturday to watch fellow AHS alum Walt Failor perform for Southern California against Stanford. In a letter , they report the former prep all-American saved a touchdown on one kickoff return with a jarring tackle and was consistently used as a defensive linebacker in third-and-long yardage situations. On one play, the report continues, Failor broke up a Stanford swing pass and had a clear field to a TD if he could have held one.
25 years ago
October 16, 1993
Taholah’s new principal has more work than one person can handle, the Taholah School Board decided Friday.
In a special noontime meeting, board members agreed that Principal Oscar Sisk would no longer be responsible for athletic director duties, Superintendent Mary Hall said. Instead, head football coach Ron Dorothy, who is also the science teacher, will take over the AD duties, Hall said.
Hall stressed that Sisk is doing an excellent job and “we want to provide him with the time that he needs to do that job.”
October 17, 1993
Scientifically speaking, Mount St. Helens is a bit like a tantruming toddler.
That’s just part of a mountainful of information Wishkah Valley teacher Rob Ashler’s sixth grade class brought back with it after an 18-hour field trip to the volcano in their backyard.
“She’s like a spoiled brat,” Joe Baxter, 12, explained. “Geologically, the mountain is real young, only 40,000 years old. In geological time, that’s like being a 4 year old,” he said.
Inside the blast zone, the students observed thousands of trees lying like broken matchsticks all lined up facing the same direction.
And 13 years after the blast, shattered stumps, sheared and shredded, still show signs of the cataclysmic event. But now, trees of various species are growing up around the rubble, Ashler noted, making the entire mountain a “living laboratory,” for how the land recovers after such an event.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom
