Yesterday…

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10 years ago – July 4, 1992

(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

BANGOR – In the Greater Bangor area, there will be lots of food, fun, entertainment. Events begin with a Kiwanis pancake breakfast from 6 to 10 a.m. Saturday, July 4, at the Brewer Auditorium. At 9 a.m., a crafts fair opens on the first floor of the Pickering Square Parking Garage. Food vendors will be in the area.

After the parade, musical groups will perform from 1 to 6:30 p.m. on stage at Pickering Square. Harness racing will begin at 1:30 p.m. at Bass Park.

At 7 p.m., celebrators can relax to the patriotic sounds of the Bangor Band’s annual Fourth of July concert at Paul Bunyan Park.

The night will wrap up with a half-hour of 3-D fireworks shot off the Chamberlain Bridge at 9:30 p.m.

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HERMON – The Hermon Recycling Committee plans to take an activist role during Hermon Fun Day Saturday, July 11.

JoJo Bingham will present a display of the amount of materials recycled in her family and a write-up of the size of the family and how easy it is to recycle.

Town Manager Kathryn Ruth has put together a display of the types of high-grade paper that can be recycled. Pam Capetta is creating a poster listing reasons to recycle.

Donna Smith is collecting information on recycling to put into fliers informing the public about recycling.

25 years ago – July 4, 1977

BANGOR – Laurel “Mike” Bamford was in the right place at the right time Saturday morning, and if he hadn’t been, much of riverside Bangor might have gotten an unexpected face lift.

Banford lives near the tight corner of Hancock and Birch streets where a gasoline truck overturned early Saturday morning, dumping a large quantity of the fuel onto the street.

As the gasoline from the truck’s ruptured tanks flowed down the street and created the conditions for a devastating explosion, Bamford crawled through the shattered windshield into the cab and shut down the engine.

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BANGOR – Back in the cold winter of 1963, a young Mexican journalist worked for the Bangor Daily News as a columnist. He did some special reporting, and wrote a regular “Letter to Pepe,” a friend in Mexico, which appeared in the NEWS and in a Mexican newspaper as well.

Today, Gabriel Parra is secretary for press and information for Mexico’s ruling party; the Institutional Revolutionary Party is for all intents the only party in Mexico, and Parra’s position is an official position. Unlike American press secretaries, Parra’s position is a party job, not a presidential appointment.

50 years ago – July 4, 1952

BREWER – A Fourth of July celebration will be held tonight at the Doyle athletic field, sponsored by the Brewer firemen for the children of Brewer.

Refreshments will be served at 7 p.m., followed by an entertainment at 7:45 p.m. Rev. E. Charles Dartnell will be master of ceremonies. The program will include musical numbers by the Wilson family and dance specialties by pupils of the Polly Lynch Thomas school of dancing, with Miss Ann Coffyn as piano accompanist. The display of fireworks will follow at approximately 9:15 p.m.

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BANGOR, Ireland – Two Bangor men met for the first time in Bangor, County Down, Ireland, recently when the Sixth Division of the Atlantic Fleet made port at Erin’s Bangor. Lt. Maurice C. Orbeton, USN, son of Mrs. M.B. Orbeton of Grant Street, serving aboard the Flagship Macon, and P. David Searles, a graduate of Yale, and a midshipman on the Des Moines, met in the mayor’s “parlour.” Midshipman Searles is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Paul J. Searles of Wiley Street.

Although both men had lived within a short distance of one another they had never met. Lieut. Orbeton found Bangor, Ireland, more beautiful than Bangor, Maine.

“Fancy never meeting ’till now” was the simultaneous remark of both men as they met in the mayor’s parlour.

100 years ago – July 4, 1902

BANGOR – Young America, and old as well, cut loose for the first few hours of Thursday night and opened the celebration of the Fourth of July of the year of our Lord and Master 1902 with a heap big noise and a brilliant display of fireworks. For days the boys have been getting ready for the coming of Independence Day, and the girls have not been far behind in that respect, though their celebrations consisted mostly of the tooting of tin horns decorated with red, white and blue ribbons and saying “oh!” when a real boisterous boy fired a cannon cracker or revolver in close proximity to them.

All day Thursday there was more or less exploding of fire crackers, torpedoes, cap pistols and revolvers loaded with blank cartridges – the skirmishing line, so to speak, of the noise that was to come.

It was about 7 o’clock when the annual celebration began and from that hour until 10 there was something doing in the noise line all the time, though it had begun to abate about 9, when the curfew rang and the boys went home to catch a few hours sleep, so as to be well up at the head of the game after 12 o’clock, when the noise once again went to top notch.