10 years ago – July 10, 1993

(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

BANGOR – Call it sultry, even steamy, but it’s not a heat wave until the weather wizards say it is. Despite nearly a working week’s worth of haze, heat and humidity, Bangor fell short of the official heat wave mark – three consecutive days of 90-degree temperatures.

At Bangor International Airport, the temperatures peaked at 84 degrees by 1 p.m.

By 3 p.m. thundershowers swept through, cooling the city after two days of temperatures higher than 90 degrees.

“Saturday it’s pretty much more of the same thing, hazy, and if there are thunderstorms they’ll be in the late afternoon or evening,” one of the crew in the flight operations center said. “The conditions are right. It’s just like winter when there’s always a chance of snow.”

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MILFORD – Town Manager Bruce Locke gave the Board of Selectmen an update on the town’s new boat launching facility in Costigan next to Burr’s store at Wednesday’s meeting.

Work is on schedule, he said, and the site work has been basically completed.

“We’ve been waiting for the river to go down so we could get the concrete planking in, and [placing the planking] started last night.” Other than the paving, the project should be completed within a week.

Selectmen reviewed a request from the Fantastic Food Factory Restaurant for permission to build a deck on the back of the building, and to allow the owners to sell alcoholic beverages there during meals only. The board gave its approval on condition that when the restaurant closes, the deck closes.

25 years ago – July 10, 1978

BANGOR – “Sometimes I wish Charles G. Bryant would come back just long enough so I could ask him why he built this place on so many levels,” remarked Andy Voikos during a tour of the gutted Bangor House.

Voikos, project manager for the reconstruction of the hotel into apartments for the elderly, was referring to the Bangor House’s architect, who built the hotel in 1933. It was the second “palace hotel” built in the United States, modeled after Boston’s Tremont. Originally, the Bangor House had more than 100 fireplaces in it – at least one to a room. Nearly all the building’s plaster and interior partitions have been removed, exposing the fireplaces and other interesting early details of the hotel, which was renovated repeatedly during its long history.

Perhaps the most unexpected discovery made by the contractor, the Salter Corp. of Augusta, is a ballroom on the hotel’s third floor, directly over what had served in recent years as the Bangor House dining room.

Voikos said its existence -unknown to historians – became evident about a month ago. The sagging ceiling in the dining room indicated that an unintended load had been placed on it. When a warren of partitions was removed on the floor above, two large fireplaces and the remains of a handsome plastered ceiling with curved mouldings appeared. The room, about 25 feet wide by 60 feet long with an 18-foot ceiling, is nearly identical to the one on the floor below it. Both rooms originally had balconies, probably for musicians.

50 years ago – July 10, 1953

ORONO – A pair of tigerish scrappers, Fred Rice of Penobscot Valley Country Club, and Brunswick Naval Station sailor, 23-year-old Dick Diversi of Waterville, are finalists in the Maine amateur golf derby.

Rice and Diversi will fight it out over 36 holes.

This was a day of tense, dramatic shooting.

Rice earned the right to move into the finals by winning his fourth consecutive match by the squeaky margin of 1-up. Diversi, a terrific shooter, blitzed his way to the finals with a sensational spree of sub-par firing.

Diversi fashioned a startling skein of five birdies and an eagle to erase Bill Lever 3-2 in the semi-final brace. The little guy birdied the second, 7th, 8th and 9th for an outgoing 33.

Lever, the husky Martindale walloper, was nearly as sensational, ripping off a man-sized 34.

Diversi bumped Lever completely out of contention on the 13th, 14th and 15th holes with a birdie, par and eagle, nine strokes for the distance, or three under the regulation of 12 blows.

Lever failed to respond from the shock, the match ending on the 16th when a pair of fours left the pair with two holes to go and Diversi holding a three-hole spread.

100 years ago – July 10, 1902

ORONO – On Thursday night a prominent labor official stated to a Bangor Daily News reporter that a rally of 1,000 men, representing every union in Bangor and its vicinity, will go to Orono on Sunday afternoon to participate in the great labor demonstration there, full details of which have already been exclusively published in the Bangor Daily News.

The union men, divided into 20 or more big divisions and accompanied by the Eastern Military Band of South Brewer, will leave West Market Square at 2 o’clock on a long line of special B.O. & O. cars.

At Orono, the unions will form before the Town Hall and march to Basin Mills, where the line will countermarch and return to the main square of the town. Immediately following the parade, Joseph Carey, general secretary of the federated labor unions of Boston, will deliver an address, and there are likely to be other orations at which Albert P. Richardson of Bangor will preside.

Every union will be represented by a delegation of members, and the president of each will be present in person. The demonstration was arranged by the saw mill employees of Bangor who are to attend in a body.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin