10 years ago – June 12, 1993

(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

The annual spring cleanup recently completed in Brewer cost taxpayers $97,767, according to Gerald Bowie, head of the city public works department.

The public works crew spent eight hours a day, 17 days in May, picking up debris. The cleanup started at the Eddington town line and proceeded throughout the city toward Orrington.

When the cleanup had concluded, city workers had picked up 1,021 tires, 333 white goods, 400 cubic yards of leaves, 950 cubic yards of wood and brush and an additional 2,141 cubic yards of debris. The crew, as a whole, had put in approximately 1,177 man-hours. Collection costs amounted to $90,972.

Spring also is the time for the public works department to paint stop bars and crosswalks. This year the crews used 116 gallons of white paint.

By the end of May, the winter buildup of sand and gravel was collected by the street sweeper. With 70 percent of the city completed, 272 cubic yards were collected and disposed of.

In other routine maintenance, workers used 10.13 tons of cold mix to fill potholes.

25 years ago – June 12, 1978

EDDINGTON – Myra J. Stack, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Stack of Merrill Road, was awarded the First Class Badge during a mother-daughter supper that concluded activities for the year of Junior and Cadette Girl Scout Troop 127 on Friday evening. The badge is the Girl Scout equivalent of the Eagle Scout that the Boy Scouts of America award.

The international supper which featured dishes from France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Canada, was also the occasion to award several other scouts. Recipients included Shari L. Stack, who also became a Cadette Scout, Hope Mills, Julie Butterfield, Michelle Kogat, Tanya Baker and Anne Macauley. Myra also advanced to Senior Scout status and received several badges.

Mrs. Sally L. Stack is troop leader.

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ORONO – “We’ve gotten bad breaks in the other three state games so it was about time we got a good break. I guess it’s the law of averages.”

Orono High School baseball coach Dave Ekelund was referring to a dropped fly ball in the third inning of Saturday’s state Class B championship game, which allowed three runs to score and helped the Riots claim their first state baseball title, 8-2, over Gorham at Capitol Park in Augusta.

The miscue by senior left fielder Barry Saunders gave brilliant southpaw Dave Paul all the runs he needed as he scattered four hits and fanned 13 to conclude his superlative high school career with a 20-5 record, including a 9-0 mark this season.

50 years ago – June 12, 1953

Bangor has plunged wholeheartedly into the latest Civil Defense program to confuse the enemy while calming the home folks. According to James F. White, Civil Defense director, the three local radio stations are giving full cooperation to the plan – a system of public emergency broadcasting.

Normal broadcasting methods previously have been forbidden during an enemy air attack. Aircraft navigational instruments now in standard use enable the pilot of an airplane to use broadcasting stations as navigational aids.

But defense officials realized that to silence broadcasting under enemy attack is to lose the quickest and most direct contact from Civil Defense to the civilian population at the moment when it is most needed. To overcome the handicap of air silence a plan was developed for “control of electromagnetic radiation.”

“Control of electromagnetic radiation” is a mean mouthful. Washington “abbreviationist” triumphed. The plan is known by the pseudonym “Conelrad.”

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Master Sgt. Charles L. Buckner of the Marine Corps recruiting sub-station in Bangor said Thursday the deadline for enlistment in the current Pine Tree Platoon has been extended to Monday evening at 6 o’clock.

Approximately 40 youths, mostly recent high school graduates, have enlisted in the platoon to date.

The Bangor-Brewer Lions Club and the Bangor Kiwanis Club will entertain the recruits and Wednesday noon at a joint luncheon in the Bangor House.

Master Sgt. Buckner announced on Thursday that the platoon will be presented with a unit flag at the luncheon. The unit will leave for Portland Wednesday afternoon where the men will be sworn into the Marine Corps.

100 years ago – June 12, 1903

Of the hundreds of persons who pass the large frame structure in lower Main Street which is, so the large sign in front tells, the factory of the J. F. Parkhurst & Son Co., manufacturers of trunks each day, few have the slightest idea of the enormous amount of business which is done there, and the great growth which the business has made since it was founded by the late Jonathan F. Parkhurst in 1866.

Neither do they have more than the vaguest conception of the large amount of room which the factory uses or the amount of help which is employed there for 12 months in the year, for it is a business which seems to have no dull times. The demands for trunks and saddlery, for the firm carries a full line of such goods, seem to be ever on the increase, a fact which has necessitated many additions to the factory room, until now the large wooden building which fronts Main Street is the smallest building of the factory.

As a matter of fact, although the members of the company are not men who do a deal of bragging, the industry which they have built up is one of the important ones of the city and to have it closed would be a decided loss, for its salary list of the year round amounts to a great many thousand of dollars, every cent of which is paid out to Bangor people.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin