YESTERDAY …
10 years ago — Sept. 22, 2001
(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)
ORONO — In 1943 and 1944, as battles were being won and lost overseas, a band of young soldiers trained for war at the University of Maine.
The enlisted men were part of a group of soldiers the army began singling out in December 1942 for their exceptional IQs. Right out of boot camp, the soldiers were sent to select universities around the country to be trained as a specialized corps of officers to replace the engineers the army predicted would be lost if World War II continued much longer.
By March 1944, however, casualties were mounting rapidly in Europe and the Army Specialized Training Program was abandoned so that the soldier students could be shipped to the front lines. Among them were Richard Glidden, George Huntington, William Lynch and Gerald Fierman.
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BANGOR — When the ram’s horn was blown the first day of Rosh Hashanah, members of the city’s only Orthodox synagogue marked more than just the beginning of a new year. They were celebrating the arrival of a new rabbi.
Fred Nebel and his family had not even finished unpacking when the observance of the High Holy Days began.
The 41-year-old rabbi has spent the last seven years teaching at Hebrew day schools in Providence, R.I., and Boston.
Nebel is the second rabbi in 26 months to serve Beth Abraham, the only Orthodox synagogue in northern Maine. He succeeds Rabbi Boaz Tomsky, 28, who arrived in Bangor in July 1999. Tomsky succeeded Rabbi Henry Isaacs, who served the Orthodox community in Bangor for almost 40 years.
25 years ago — Sept. 22, 1986
ORONO — Internationally acclaimed violinist Isaac Stern and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, in concert with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, helped dedicate the $7.5 million Maine Center for the Arts at the University of Maine before a capacity audience of excited patrons who showered the performers with repeated and prolonged applause.
The Maine Center for the Arts — 15 years in the making and built entirely through private funding — represents the fulfillment of a dream that began in the early 1970s with a proposal to build one of the foremost performing arts centers in New England.
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GLENBURN — Sam White and Bertha Wilson of Glenburn got married on Sept. 20, just as they had planned. It was a small ceremony that went off without a hitch, despite the fact that it took place in a hospital.
White became the first patient ever to exchange wedding vows with his bride in the chapel of St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor.
Holding the wedding at the hospital solved a big problem for the betrothed couple, who were busy making last-minute plans to get married at East Orrington Congregational Church when it became apparent that White should be hospitalized. A leg infection that had bothered White since he broke his leg last June had flared up.
Concerned that being in the hospital would put a crimp in Bertha’s wedding plans, White said he would be admitted on the condition that the wedding could take place as scheduled.
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EDDINGTON — Potatoes and pine trees are two Maine trademarks that Peter Godley of Eddington has brought together with the help of a green thumb.
Godley’s first encounter with a Maine potato dates back to 1948 and the Englishman’s first job when he picked potatoes for farmers in East Corinth. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep up with other workers until one day he looked back on the freshly dug rows, where they had left behind a lot of small potatoes.
“Potatoes were rationed in England,” explained Godley. “We couldn’t leave any behind. That’s why I couldn’t keep up.”
It is 38 years since Godley tried to beat a path behind the potato diggers in East Corinth, and he’s still picking potatoes, now in his home gardens in Eddington. A former shoe factory worker, Godley has retired with his wife in a pine-shaded log cabin on Route 9 where he has developed a new method for producing easy-to-grow, easy-to-harvest potatoes.
“No fertilizer, no pesticide, no hoeing, no spraying, no weeding, no nothing,” he said. He has planted his potatoes in pine needles. Godley started the experiment five harvests ago, not long after he read that potatoes thrive in acidic soil.
50 years ago — Sept. 22, 1961
BUCKSPORT — Now let ‘er come, said Max Leavitt, owner of the Bucksport Flower Shop, as he reinforced his shop windows against the possibility of damage from Hurricane Esther. He said he prepared for the hurricane and would sleep sound regardless how hard the wind blew.
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BREWER — Brewer Police Chief Ralph W. Willoughby was elected third vice president of the New England Chiefs of Police Association at the group’s 36th annual meeting at Dixville Notch, N.H. Willoughby is also the chairman of the association’s education committee, which works with the FBI to develop training programs for law enforcement agencies throughout in New England.
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BANGOR — The public safety committee met with the Bangor Merchants Bureau to talk over the placing of signs directing people to downtown Bangor, and other safety matters.
The committee directed the police department to determine just where confusion may exist in exiting from the Interstate Highway for the motorist heading downtown.
One of the areas described was the junction of Broadway and Center Street, where a motorist coming off the highway might not know whether to take Broadway or Center Street. The committee agreed that signs would be needed there and that another would be called for at Broadway and State Street.
100 years ago — Sept. 22, 1911
BREWER — There are many reports of lawlessness, stealing, sneak-thieving and intoxication throughout the city and to a NEWS reporter, City Marshall Lunt stated that this fall seems set to break records in that line, adding that on Saturday nights it is almost impossible for him to attend to the many affairs in crying need. Both ferry and bridge seem to need much police attention just now, while irate householders are keeping their watch dogs a bit hungry and all sorts of traps are being laid. In several houses, residents are instituting all-night vigils in an attempt to keep criminals at bay.
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BUCKSPORT — A carload of furniture and poultry arrived on the noon train from Bangor in care of Mr. Goldburg, who will start a poultry farm on the John Bridges place at Silver Lake, under the name of the Bucksport Poultry Co. They intend to do a large business in poultry and eggs,
COMPILED BY ARDEANA HAMLIN