85 YEARS AGO
October 11, 1940
Sirkka Soronoff is a five-year-old Finnish girl. She was a happy child, the youngest of four children in a workingman’s home at Viipuri. That was just before the red forces of soviet Russia blasted at the cities and took the rich Karelian isthmus.
There was no cause for a smile in those dark days of despair, but now the little girl has nine new mothers.
Members of the Poppy Club of Aberdeen have “adopted” Sirkka and will provide for the new foster child until all necessity has passed. She will live at the Mannerheim home for refugee children at Helsinki, the Aberdeen women paying for her keep. They will sew dresses and other clothing for her, providing the little girl all the comforts they can send in the way of gifts from so great a distance.
October 12, 1940
Declaring “no man ever is indispensable,” Superior Judge J.M. Phillips last night told Central Park residents he opposes a third term for President Roosevelt.
“We all hate to give up public office,” the judge said. “The power of public office grows on the holder. But no man ever is indispensable and I am against a third term. It is time someone else had a chance.”
The judge was speaking in the grange hall at a meeting sponsored by Republicans. His talk was to have been on the Townsend Plan but he devoted most of his time to expressing anti-third term sentiments.
October 15, 1940
With department officers of Oregon and Washington taking part, Aberdeen’s American Legion post formally will dedicate its new hall at ceremonies Wednesday night, Ray Colby, post commander, announced today.
Visiting officials will be guests of the Legionnaires at a banquet at 6:30 o’clock at the Elks temple. The dedication program will start at 8 with a street concert by the Sons of the Legion drum and bugle corps in front of the new hall.
October 16, 1940
Louis A. Brux, 33, died today of a fractured skull suffered Monday at the Morrow logging company works when a pole catapulted into a crowd of loggers riding on a sled. He lived at Quinault and was employed as operator of a gasoline-powered loading donkey by the Morrow company.
It’s a small world. Rev. T.T. Ove of Our Saviour’s Lutheran church in Aberdeen remembers when he had the late Knute Rockne in Sunday school class in Chicago.
“He was in my class for two years,” Rev. Ove said. “I remember very clearly that he was very nimble and quick. One of his favorite stunts was to walk the board fence behind the church but Knute was so strong and had such a keen sense of balance that he could do it on his hands.”
October 17, 1940
With a tieup of virtually all Harbor lumber and logging operations threatening, settlement of a tugboat workers’ strike was stalemated today.
The tugmen, about 45 directly affected by the strike, are asking for an eight-hour day with no increase in pay.
Meanwhile Harbor mills were eyeing their log supplies, with most plants having only a two to three-day supply on hand.
The Bay City Lumber company, which started its big South Aberdeen plant early this month and is gradually increasing its list of employees, had its first ship on berth today — the Norwegian steamer, Romulus, loading for the west coast of South America. The plant, idle for two years, now has 170 men working and will increase to around 215 as more lumber becomes available.
October 18, 1940
France followed the lead of most of Europe today, establishing strict anti-Jewish measures for the first time in her history.
Persons with three Jewish grandparents or with two Jewish grandparents and married to a Jew, were excluded from all public administrations, from the press, the motion picture industry and radio, from holding an officer’s rank in any branch of the armed forces, from working in the law courts in any other capacity than as a lawyer and from the colonial administration.
60 YEARS AGO
October 10, 1965
It said “Quick Before It Melts” on the marquee at the Harbor Drive In Theater Sunday and Central Park firemen apparently took this as their cue when they extinguished a blaze in a store room at the drive-in around 3 p.m.
The cause is still unknown. The blaze caused extensive damage at about $1,500 to the store room, and about $1,500 to the storeroom contents.
October 12, 1965
Grays Harbor Veneer Corporation, a pioneer Hoquiam industry that employs up to 400 persons, will close down operations Friday afternoon.
The closure was brought about by general economic conditions in the industry and the competitive log market, President A.J. DeLatuer explained.
The corporation has been constructing parts for wood containers since 1923 and has recently been plagued by high log prices and a short supply of logs, and is being pushed out of the package market by a heavy influx of competitive paper and plastic products.
October 16, 1965
The success of Hoquiam’s 75th Anniversary Logging Show stimulated talk of making the event an annual affair. Early this week, some 15 representatives of Grays Harbor industries took the first steps toward that end.
At a meeting in city council chambers plans were made to incorporate the event under the name Hoquiam Loggers Play Day and officers were elected: Jack Reynvaan, president; J.K. (Bun) Lewis, vice-president; John Eddington, treasurer and Omar Parker, secretary.
October 18, 1965
After watching his team scramble back from a 17-3 fourth quarter deficit to beat Yakima JC 23-17, Coach Jack Elway had words of praise for his entire Grays Harbor College squad.
“That’s the greatest comeback my team has had since I’ve been coaching,” he recalled afterward. “It was a real thrill. It may sound corny but the kids really played from the heart.
“Some eight kids got hurt or shook up at one time or another,” Elway said,” but they all went back in. They weren’t about to recognize injuries. We couldn’t keep ‘em out of there.”
Mike Noski, Dave Glover, Lon Howard, Don Summers, Doane Brodie, Ron Baines and Walt Baker all suffered injuries during the fray.
“As happy as I was, I could have just cried for (Les) Vierra (the Yakima coach), He was real good afterward but he must have been awfully sick inside,” the GHC gridmaster noted.
35 YEARS AGO
October 10, 1990
Port of Grays Harbor administrators have known bad times were coming and they’ve tried to position the Port so it could weather the storm. Yesterday, it started to rain. Hard.
The 1991 preliminary budget released at the Port Commission meeting includes lay-offs and budget cutbacks in nearly every area of Port operations.
“Usually our budgets don’t reflect anything drastic,” said Commission President John Stevens.
Soft log and lumber products markets, the spotted owl controversy and impending export restrictions on logs from state lands were blamed for the Port’s financial problems.
Nine people already have been laid off, including some who have been at the Port for years. The budget doesn’t count on rehiring those nine and plans for layoffs of a few more.
October 11, 1990
The Hoquiam Fire Department, nearly done with its in-house refurbishing of an aging American-LaFrance pumper, expects to put the truck back in service by week’s end.
The 1970 pumper, which just a few months ago was rusting apart and having engine trouble, now is shiny and better than new, officials say.
Firefighters decided to undertake the project themselves to help the city save money rather than contracting out the job to a specialty company. Fire Chief Lance Talley said the rebuild cost approximately $20,000 compared to the $80,000 a rebuild company would have charged. New engines can cost about $180,000.
October 12, 1990
Gary Morean, a partner in the Aberdeen law firm of Ingram, Zelasko & Goodwin, was installed Thursday as president of the Grays Harbor Chamber of Commerce.
Revitalization of downtown areas in Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Cosmopolis is a major goal of the chamber over the coming year, said Morean. Also targeted, he said, is business diversification, along with enhanced community pride and teamwork.
Morean graduate from the University of Washington in 1978 and Willamette University School of Law at Salem, Ore. in 1981. He moved to the Harbor in 1981.
It may strike some as a joke, but to desperate loggers it’s no laughing matter.
The Washington Contract Loggers Association is petitioning the Secretary of the Interior to put Olympic Peninsula loggers and their families on the Endangered Species List.
Bill Pickell of Hoquiam, general manager of the association, made the announcement at a news conference in Seattle this morning.
“To be designated as threatened, a species must, by law, be in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range now or in the foreseeable future,” Pickell said. “We intend to make that case (for loggers).”
October 15, 1990
A new 7,300-square-foot office building in downtown Aberdeen is almost complete and will mean nearly double the space for Grays Harbor Title Co.
The company hopes to move by Nov. 19 from Broadway and Market down the street to its new office at 219 W. Market. The manager, Mike Melville, gave a ballpark estimate of $500,000 for the new building. “People have asked us why we would want to leave this corner since it’s one of the best in town,” Melville said. “But basically through our continued growth and the service we’ve been able to provide, it has enabled us to grow and now we need larger quarters.”
Grays Harbor Title Co. employs 16 people. Half the space will be devoted to title functions and the other half to escrow functions, Melville said.
October 16, 1990
For a young blind woman, getting a college education and finding a job promise to be battles.
However, a talking computer is making life a lot easier for Dawn Makos, 24, of Cosmopolis.
Last year she enrolled at South Seattle Community College to pursue a career in data entry. She did her work on a typewriter but needed someone to read back what she was typing.
Through contributions from the Cosmopolis Lions and Lionettes, Makos, daughter of Ron and Candy Makos, has acquired a computer equipped with a voice box that allows her to hear what she types into the system.
Makos, who developed diabetes when she was four, lost her sight four years ago from complications associated with the disease.
“She’s got such a fantastic attitude,” said Lions president Bill Nelson. “She really tries and she’s gone through a hell of a lot.”
October 17, 1990
A trial load of hemlock lumber to Korea from Weyerhaeuser’s Aberdeen sawmill a year ago has turned into steady business, increasing the export share of the mill’s production to about 25 percent, the company says.
The volume has grown steadily from that first shipment of about 100,000 board feet to last week’s 800,000 board-foot load, the largest so far, said Tom Tucker, who handles sales and marketing duties at the South Side mill.
October 18, 1990
In 1965, Harborites enlisting for the War on Poverty, gathered to create the Grays Harbor Community Action Council.
Those first few days included coffee houses for idealistic young “long hairs,” a family planning clinic and neighborhood centers in Aberdeen and Hoquiam.
Now, after 25 years, dozens of programs and a name change later, the Coastal Community Action Program (CCAP) is celebrating its silver anniversary of serving low-income, disabled and senior citizens.
Since its grass roots beginning — with 10 employees and a planning grant of $60,000 — the organization has expanded to served both Grays Harbor and Pacific counties, employ 145 people and administer 29 programs on a $3 million budget.
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.
