10 years ago – April 1, 1994

(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

BANGOR – Shaw House, a shelter for homeless children in eastern and northern Maine, has opened a new program.

Shaw Days will join the current Shaw House Overnight program to enable the shelter to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Shaw Days program will operate as a drop-in information center for homeless youths age 10-17.

The purpose of Shaw Days is to provide children with a safe place to spend the day, according to Bill England, Shaw House executive director. The program will provide clients with information about other community services which might help them resolve their homelessness, England said.

At present, the Streetlight Project of Project Atrium and the Bangor School Department’s Homeless Education Project will be involved in the Shaw Days program. In the past 12 months, Shaw House has served more than 330 children.

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BREWER – The Brewer City Council will meet with members of the Brewer School Committee to review the proposed school budget.

Prior to the school discussion, councilors will discuss funding for new city outdoor basketball courts. Two new basketball courts will be constructed in the city-owned park land across the street from the Pendleton School on Parkway South.

The city received a grant of $16,000 from the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to pay for a portion of the court construction.

Although the federal grant demands a 50 percent match from the recipient, Brewer taxpayers will not have to come up with the full $16,000. A group of local citizens formed the Friends of Brewer Basketball and through various activities during the last four years have raised approximately $12,000 of the local matching share.

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BANGOR – When Milo officials turned to Sen. William Cohen for help in getting a postponement of a federal mandate to build a water filtration plant it cannot afford, the senator’s off ice turned to Nancy Jacobson.

Jacobson, who is now working with Milo Water District and municipal officials in seeking an extension on the deadline to construct a federally mandated $2.2 million water filtration plant this year, has an extensive background in helping Maine communities deal with state and federal bureaucracy.

Jacobson, who is head of the RHI Rural Community Assistance Program located in Bangor, runs a one-person office with the whole state of Maine as her beat.

25 years ago – April 1, 1979

BANGOR – Fashion models aren’t beautiful, the beauty expert told the disbelieving women in the audience.

“Farrah Fawcett isn’t beautiful. Her face is too square and she has a thin upper lip. You’ll never see her with dark lipstick; they play up her hair and eyes, which are her best features,” said George Burson, who should know something about makeup. He is a sales representative for Calvin Klein Cosmetics.

In Bangor two days last week to introduce and demonstrate the fashion designer’s spring line of cosmetics and fragrances to go with his spring clothes, Burson said cosmetics are an integral part of the fashion statement. He held his demonstration at Nancy’s Designer Fashions.

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BANGOR – The Calvin Klein empire got its inauspicious start 10 years ago with the sale of five coats to Bonwit-Teller. Today, a simple thing like a little red linen coat in his spring line sends shock waves through the fashion world.

“Calvin is using color” describes the new mood of the designer in the words of one of his youthful designers. Red is a considerable departure from the earth and desert tones that characterize the New York couturier’s ideas – a faithfulness matched only by his love of natural fibers.

His spring line was introduced in Bangor at a rare trunk showing this week. Clothes that are closer to the body, pared down and paired with previously incompatible colors and patterns that are a part of the statement Klein strives to impart.

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HAMPDEN – Preservation of historic structures and objects that are important links to Hampden’s past should concern “more people in town,” according to the president of Hampden Historical Society.

That is why Betty Milner is hopeful that the historical society will become more visible to townspeople when it moves into an office in the Town Hall later this spring.

The historical society in Hampden can “help people in Hampden get a consciousness of saving things,” said Deana Knowles, a relatively new member of the historical society. She added that it is particularly important to interest young people in preservation.

The room in the Town Hall will be used primarily for storage of papers, including many town records dating back to 1790, Milner said.

“For researchers and family historians, these records are invaluable,” Knowles said.

50 years ago – April 1, 1954

ORONO – Bennett Cerf, humorist, author, columnist and publisher, will give a lecture at the University of Maine. His appearance at the university will be in connection with the University-Community lecture series, which is open to the public.

Nationally known through radio and television programs as well as his publications, Cerf is called a human dynamo. A recent article in The New York Times featured the fact that he had five minutes of unscheduled time.

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BANGOR – A candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator declared Wednesday that Maine has had “too much double talk, promises and fence-straddling, and too little constructive action.”

“As a result,” he said, “Maine gets nothing.”

The speaker was Robert L. Jones of Biddeford, who is opposing Sen. Margaret Chase Smith for the Republican nomination in the June primaries. He addressed members of the Kiwanis Club at their weekly luncheon at the Bangor House.

“Maine,” he said, “has had enough of modest senators and now needs someone who will fight and tell the truth even if it hurts.”

He declared that he is not campaigning against Mrs. Smith. “She means nothing to me,” he said. “I have no personal differences with her.”

“Maine is in dire need of new industries,” he said, “at a time when the nation is engaged in a great productive output. Why then,” he asked, “with our resources and skilled labor, can’t Maine share more prominently in the national effort?”

100 years ago – April 1, 1904

BANGOR – It is within the limit of possibility for a singer gifted by nature with a beautiful voice to make a certain success in the musical world without possessing other qualifications to a marked degree. But in the interpretation of Wagner roles, in which Nordica has achieved her greatest success, it is absolutely essential that the artist possess, first, a voice of almost phenomenal power, combined with purity and certainty of tone, a very powerful physique and graceful carriage, temperament to marked degree, a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the German language, great ability as an actress, and above all an abnormal capacity for work. All these qualifications Lillian Nordica possesses to the degree that when her role of achievements is summed up, she will go down to fame as the greatest Brunnhilde who ever lived. What an opportunity to hear this wonderful woman at the Opera House, who has been recognized the world over as one of the great names of the 19th century.

Her name has been a household one for at least the last 10 years and the interest now aroused to see and hear her, has never been surpassed by any similar event in Bangor.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin

Neither rain, nor snow nor mud kept 8,000 people away from the open house at the Bangor Gardens homes, across from what is now the Broadway Shopping Center, on March 21, 1954. A line started forming outside the model home on Broadway at 7:30 a.m. and they kept right on coming until 9 p.m. (Bangor Daily News File Photo by Paul Marcoux)