85 YEARS AGO
September 2, 1940
Expansion of the 248th coast artillery to full regimental strength and promotion of four Aberdeen officers were announced today by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Forbes, commanding officer, as the entire enlisted and commissioned personnel prepared to answer yesterday’s call to active service, set by the president for Sept. 16.
Promotion of Robert Stone from captain to major and of Melvin Erickson from second to first lieutenant was announced today by Forbes. In addition, Roy Dunn and Don Spoon, master sergeants, have been promoted to first lieutenants.
Three hundred twenty children rescued from Britain’s first torpedoed refugee liner were brought back to London today to boast to their parents that it took only three and a half minutes to jump out of bed and get to their lifeboat stations. The ministry of information did not name the liner nor did it say where the torpedoing occurred.
German spokesmen said it was “noteworthy” the British named neither the ship nor the place of the reported torpedoing and added that “Germany … isn’t in the business of sinking child refugee ships.” They said no U-boat commander reported an attack and suggested the liner might have run into a mine.
September 3, 1940
Totem Fine Foods at the corner of G and Wishkah as well as 110 N. Broadway in Aberdeen is advertising green beans for 4¢ a pound, a box of peaches for 69¢, butter for 35¢ a pound, Chinook salmon for 15¢ a pound and eggs for 19¢ a dozen.
Now appearing at Warners theater, “The Sea Hawk” with Errol Flynn and Claude Rains; at the D&R, “Rhythm on the River” with Bing Crosby and Mary Martin; at the Bijou, “Alias the Deacon” with Bob Burns and “Bad Man from Red Butte” with Johnny Mack Brown; at the Hoquiam, “Torrid Zone” with James Cagney and Pat O’Brien and “Grand Ole Opry” with the Weaver Brothers; at the Roxy, “On Your Toes” with Zorina and “Three Cheers for the Irish.”
September 4, 1940
Jack Morris, son of PUD Commissioner and Mrs. Oliver S. Morris, will leave tonight for Harvard University where he has been chosen for a fellowship and scholarship in physics.
The coveted Honnold scholarship and fellowship were won by Morris last spring before he was graduated with honors at Pomona College in California. He graduated from Hoquiam High School in 1936, being an honor student and a star athlete.
September 5, 1940
Snorting tractors rumbled out of the woods this week with one of the largest trees cut in the Humptulips Valley in years. It was a spruce, 11 feet on the butt, that cut four logs scaling 25,000 board feet. Three of the “cuts” were No. 1 logs. Loggers working for the Trio Logging company said it was a “beautiful stick,” one of the finest they had ever seen. The tree was not as large as some others cut in the Grays Harbor section recently but for grade and size combined it topped any spruce felled here in years.
September 6, 1940
Oswa returned home from his annual summer migration at 9:30 o’clock this morning, paused for lunch at the West Bridge and took a sightseeing flight over the Harbor area preparatory to settling down for the winter.
Oswa is a pet seagull who has made his winter home at the bridge for some 20 years even before the present span was built. He is a friend of the entire crew although A. Tetzlaff is his official trainer. Each summer Oswa disappears, returning for the winter. He permits his human friends to hold him after he becomes thoroughly acquainted with them on his return home.
His summer “vacation” was 158 days this year, being just two days short of the record disappearance of 160 days last year.
60 YEARS AGO
September 1, 1965
Rumors that the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang of California is going to visit the Grays Harbor beaches are strictly rumors with no foundation, Sheriff A.M. Gallagher said today.
“Personally,” he said, “I don’t think that any motorcycle groups will come to this area. It’s just a lot of talk.”
However, he said that certain precautions have been taken in case such a problem does arise.
“We are not going to tolerate any lawlessness on our beaches or any other place in Grays Harbor,” he stressed.
September 2, 1965
Tom Birk Drug Store at 108 E. Wishkah in Aberdeen is advertising school supplies — cellophane tape for 13¢, a box of 64 Crayolas for 59¢, a jar of “Yogi Bear & Friends” white paste for 33¢ and a pack of 36 lead pencils for 88¢.
September 3, 1965
Industrial Development District 2, located near the confluence of the Chehalis and Wishkah rivers, became a reality yesterday with purchase of the property by the Port of Grays Harbor. A $100,000 hake processing plant is planned on part of the 25-acre site which includes three buildings, a railroad spur and pier. The land was purchased from the City of Aberdeen for $15,000.
September 4, 1965
In California, just outside of Oakland, award-winning architect Warren Callister works over the final plan details for an extensive retirement village development.
At Pago Pago in tropical American Samoa a shirt-sleeved contractor presses ahead to finish a string of new housing units for teachers.
In Phoenix, Arizona, a ribbon is cut to celebrate the opening of a sprawling new medical center.
Widely spread across the map, these three isolated structures have at least one thing in common. They were roofed with red cedar shingles and hand-split shakes manufactured in the Grays Harbor area.
Within the Pacific Northwest area — the only area where the Western Red Cedar grows — Grays Harbor is the “hub of the wheel.” In 1964, 27 percent of the total United States production of shingles came from local mills and more significant, 29 percent of the heavier hand-split shakes.
September 6, 1965
Mournful African tribesmen paddled dugout canoes down the Ogooue River today to relay the news that Dr. Albert Schweitzer was dead. The 90-year-old physician, philosopher and musician was buried Sunday near the jungle hospital that was his life work. He died quietly Saturday night in his wooden hut after suffering a stroke.
“He wanted to be buried here in the place he loved, next to my mother,” said Rhena Schweitzer Eckert, the physician’s daughter. Schweitzer’s wife, Helen, died in 1957.
Dr. Walter Munz, 32, the Swiss physician, who will continue Schweitzer’s work at the leper colony, read a simple funeral service.
35 YEARS AGO
September 1, 1990
Skipper’s, one of Westport’s more popular gathering places, was destroyed by fire in less than an hour Friday afternoon.
Owner Sylvia Wincure estimated the loss at about $500,000 and says it was insured. But she couldn’t watch as the business and home into which she had invested 20 years went up in smoke.
As hundreds gathered to see thick black and blue smoke surge through the restaurant-motel’s roof and windows, she wept behind a warehouse across the street. Friends consoled her.
Firefighters were called at about 1:15 p.m. and despite the efforts of the Westport, Grayland and Ocosta volunteer fire departments and a Coast Guard crew, the blaze had destroyed most of the building within an hour.
Skipper’s will be missed by commercial fishermen who swapped stories over drinks there and the tourists who enjoyed the view of the marina from the dining room.
The establishment was like a home away from home for the city’s die-hard trawlers and shrimpers, said Bob Charles, a fisherman who frequented the establishment.
Charles recalled coming to Westport in 1982 and being among the first of about 10 skippers to ply the waters off Westport during the winter.
Wincure let boat crewmen short of cash stay at Skipper’s free for two or three winter months each year, Charles said. “She kind of took us all in.”
September 2, 1990
Police logged a string of complaints about strikers at the ITT Rayonier pulp mill in Hoquiam over the past two days, but both company and union representatives say things were under control as of Saturday.
Tom James, president of Local 169 AWPPW, said he was unaware of any violations to the restraining order which became effective Friday.
ITT Rayonier spokeswoman Wendy Pugnetti said, “There have been a few problems, but none on the scale we had before.”
25 years ago
September 3, 1990
A young California man who mysteriously left the Los Angeles area after work Friday was discovered dead in the sand dunes at Ocean Shores Sunday morning. Police believe it’s a suicide.
His body was discovered about 7:30 a.m. by a vacationing couple from Iowa as they took a morning stroll north of the Chance Ala Mer beach approach. Although car keys were found in his possession, police say there’s been no sign of his black Honda CRX either in Ocean Shores or at his home in Long Beach, Calif.
September 4, 1990
Striking pulp mill workers at the ITT Rayonier plant in Hoquiam got a Labor Day boost Monday from Congresswoman Jolene Unsoeld.
Facing a strong challenge for her 3rd District seat from Republican Bob Williams, Unsoeld met with local AWPPW leaders and declared her support of their efforts to abolish a two-tier pay scale.
First-round draft pick Cortez Kennedy was itching to put on a Seattle Seahawks uniform. But first he had a $6 million contract to sign.
Kennedy, a 293-pound defensive tackle from national champion University of Miami, on Monday agreed to a series of five 0ne-year contracts reportedly worth an average of at least $1.2 million per year. He is the highest paid rookie defensive player in the history of the game, according to Mike Moye, Kennedy’s agent.
September 5, 1990
Tom “Butch” Williams “greeted his woman” Maria Modica in a down to earth, back to basics way Saturday at Point Grenville. The Satsop couple’s traditional Indian “joining ceremony” was the first in at least 15 years to be celebrated on the Quinault reservation.
Even in the eyes of the family and guests, the ceremony was a far cry from any conventional wedding.
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill,” said Vicki Fenton of Aberdeen. She didn’t know the couple personally, but took advantage of their invitation to the public.
Participants wore buckskin outfits — most dyed and handmade by Maria. They stood barefoot in the wet, surf-packed sand, as their “teacher and guide” Charlie Richardson read the ceremony.
The script was the result of about six months of research to combine Plains and Northwest traditions into a ceremony acceptable to both. Maria is a Mohawk while Butch is Clallam.
September 6, 1990
With a neighborly “Hi, old buddy!” image bolstered by a genuine common touch and skillful advertising, Duane Dewees probably sold at least 10,000 cars to Harborites over the past 38 years.
Dewees, who died of cancer Tuesday at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, was the dean of car dealers on the Harbor. He was 64.
He opened his first used car lot in 1952 on Wishkah Street in Aberdeen in partnership with Fred Potts of Aberdeen. In 1959, Dewees became one of the first Datsun dealers in the U.S. when the Japanese automaker introduced its line of funny-looking “Bluebird” cars to Americans He prospered as compact cars became the rage and Datsun vehicles became durable and increasingly more sophisticated.
He moved the dealership to its present location at Wishkah and Alder in 1960.
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.
