(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – April 8, 1994

BANGOR – It may well be that a rose is a rose is a rose, but this time of year in Maine, a real, live rose on a bush is like a gift from heaven. You stuff your nose into the pink of it, luxuriate in the feel of the velvety petals, and pull in a scent that just last month was merely the stuff of warm summer dreams. This is what the Bangor Beautiful organizers of this weekend’s Bangor Garden Show know.

They know those store-bought daffodils won’t do anymore. They know that right about now you want a winding garden path with green, green grass and magenta azaleas and peach geraniums and baby strawberries and, oh yes, the roses.

That’s why there’s all this and much more at the garden show, the city’s most popular annual event, which last year attracted more than 16,000 people – half the population of Bangor.

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BANGOR – Your preschool daughter won’t eat her vegetables or go to bed at a decent hour. Your adolescent son won’t do his homework or go to bed, period.

Day after day, the struggle goes on with no answers – or relief – in sight. Harried parents may find solace in Jack Agati, a specialist in human relationships who is coming to Bangor with a light touch and new approach to bothersome, yet normal, power battles that can erupt between mom, dad and children.

25 years ago – April 1, 1979

BANGOR – The commencement speaker for the Bangor Adult Education Diploma Program graduation ceremony will be Dr. P. David Searles, deputy chairman for policy and planning of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Seventy-five adults, ranging in age from 17 to 51, will receive diplomas. It is one of the program’s largest graduating classes.

Searles, a Bangor High School graduate, has been deputy chairman since January 1978, having served previously as assistant chairman for two years. He came to the endowment from the Peace Corps, where he served as deputy director. Prior to government work, he was director and vice president of Glendenning Co.

Searles received a bachelor’s degree in 1955 and a master’s degree in 1970 from Yale University. He holds an honorary law degree from New Haven University. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Paul J. Searles of Bangor.

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BANGOR – Young and old had a chance to celebrate the optimism of looking forward to warmer months and the more immediate Eastertide coming this weekend.

At the Bangor Mall there was an Easter hat parade for children led by Mr. Easter Bunny himself, and a fashion show for all ages. Among some of the fashions shown were the polka-dotted, comfortably tailored dress worn by Sarah Look of Bangor, and the three-piece vested suit worn by Cal Buxton of the University of Maine.

50 years ago – April 1, 1954

BANGOR – Thousands of fascinated householders left the Bangor Auditorium with a new purpose in life after viewing the scores of exhibits featured at the opening of the 6th annual Bangor Daily News Better Homes Show.

Their purpose was backed by concrete advice, for the show is geared to the “do-it-yourself” theme, and exhibitors were kept busy answering hundreds of questions on the use and adaptability of the interesting equipment and materials displayed.

From the large display of tiny model houses to the unbelievable “homes on wheels” exhibited by a trailer company, the show was packed with suggestions and ideas both for the experienced homemaker and the couple planning their first apartment.

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ORONO – Potato growers spend the greater part of their energy trying to take a portion of the market away from other potato growing areas, losing sight of the fact that declining consumption of potatoes is creating a real problem, W.N. Case, executive secretary of the National Potato Council, told his audience at the annual banquet of potato growers at Farm and Home Week on Wednesday evening.

“It would appear sensible to study present production trends and probable results based on a free operation of the law of supply and demand,” Case said. Potato men, he said, must make the decision whether they prefer to work together to improve their lot or to let nature take its course in a boom and bust economy.

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V-Day in Bangor will be May 3, when the initial injections of the Salk vaccine in the field trial of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis will be given. Plans for the field trials to be held in Bangor, Brewer, Veazie, Orono and Old Town were made recently at a meeting held at the Eastern Maine General Hospital.

It is estimated that the 1,900 second-graders of the five communities are eligible to participate in this nationwide program in the fight against polio.

Dr. Dean Fisher of Augusta, commissioner of the health and welfare department, explained plans for the field trials. Bangor and Portland have been selected as the two places in Maine to participate in the program.

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ORONO – Maine farmers and homemakers thronged the University of Maine campus for the second day of the 47th annual Farm and Home Week to set a near record attendance figure for the four-day program.

In spite of clear skies and the first warm day of spring that prompted many expressions of “too good a day to work,” work was nevertheless the order of the day. And from early morning until late afternoon the lecture halls were filled to capacity and sidewalks about the campus crowded with men and women hurrying to the next meeting or exhibit.

Several sessions originally scheduled for lecture rooms with normal seating capacity had to be suspended while speakers and audiences alike moved to larger quarters.

100 years ago – April 1, 1904

BANGOR – Millinery openings were held yesterday in several big Bangor millinery stores. The rainbow visions that were lavishly displayed were enough to take the breath. There were hats of all sorts, shapes and sizes, trimmed in all manner of form. They were all attractive and without doubt will cause Bangor women to be more distracting than usual the coming season.

Many of the milliners have just returned from New York where they attended the spring openings, and for that reason Bangor shops were more resplendent than usual.

A millinery opening is ABC to a woman reporter, but a man reporter in the millinery shops on opening day – My! the blushes. It’s just a blur of chiffon and fake flowers and wire forms and charming sales ladies.

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BANGOR – Nestor Matson, for the past two years physical director of the YMCA, has resigned and will leave Bangor next week for Portland, where he will study during the summer. Next fall he will go to New York, where he will enter the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

He came here and took hold of things in the YMCA gymnasium with a grip that sent class attendance up double and treble what it had been. He organized basketball teams and stirred things up generally so that a very keen interest was taken in this important department. He also organized the city basketball league and took the Bangor team to Massachusetts.

Mrs. Matson will be missed, too. She is a most charming little woman, and has organized several classes for girls in the gymnasium. An exhibition of these classes was held last night and it was most successful.

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BANGOR – City Hall will undoubtedly be a sight worth seeing at the opening of a fair where the attraction will be a baby show at which it is expected there will be a large number of pretty children, large and small.

In the competition for the prize, the judges will have their hands full, but the management of the fair will select a committee to pass judgment on the many beautiful specimens of infant humanity, and award a prize to the one which is entitled to it. Its decision, however, probably will not affect the silent opinion of a large majority of fine mothers in regard to their own.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin