Yesterday …

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(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – Jan. 12, 1996

BANGOR – More than $100,000 was pumped into the local economy earlier this week when five flights were diverted from other East Coast airports to Bangor International Airport because of the Blizzard of ’96.

And while many states continued to dig out from under as much as four feet of snow, meteorologists at the National Weather Service were watching another storm moving east and expected to hit Maine late today.

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ORONO – Allen and Tammy Moses have dreams of being in the movies. But their plans don’t include acting on the big screen.

Instead, the Bangor couple, with friend and partner Richard Phillips, hope to make their mark by opening a second-run discount movie theater in the Bangor area. The six-screen theater, to be located in Orono, will charge the customers about half to two-thirds the ticket price of the cinema in Bangor.

That may change when the Spotlight Cinema opens in late February. Ticket prices are expected to be less than $2.25 compared to the $4.75 to $6.75 charged at Hoyt’s Bangor Cinemas. The Spotlight also may offer art films that don’t normally reach the area.

A former Doug’s Shop ‘n Save, long since moved, will house the cinema’s six screens and provide nearly 1,000 seats.

25 years ago – Jan. 12, 1981

HERMON – The sweet smell of newly cut hay drifted through the air on the heels of a soft August breeze. It was a little after midnight as the teenager downshifted a 1957 Plymouth and motored through Hermon. Most everyone was asleep.

It was 1964, and from the Snow’s Corner Road, the boy could see the lights of a Dow Air Force Base runway. He stopped the car and waited a few minutes to see if a B-52 bomber would glide down. It didn’t.

It was now 12:30 a.m. and the youth had turned the corner. He drove up Union Street toward Bangor. An hour later, he would be moving containers of milk onto the trucks at Grant’s Dairy. He would work until 5 a.m., then return home to take care of chores.

At 21, the youth stopped loading milk trucks and became Hermon’s town constable. Now 33, he still resides in Hermon, but he oversees law enforcement operations from Patten to East Dixmont. As the newly elected sheriff of Penobscot County, Tim Richardson knows the grass roots well.

He joined the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office in March of 1970. Sheriff Otis Napoleon LaBree had taken office three months earlier, and he hired Richardson as a part-time deputy.

50 years ago – Jan. 12, 1956

OLD TOWN – Old Town artist Bernard Langlais, son of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Langlais, 33 Front St., has returned from Oslo, Norway, where he spent the past academic year as the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship. He is having his work displayed in the RoKo Gallery, New York City.

Art critics have said that his smaller gouaches and crayon studies are “extremely sensitive and moving interpretations of the obliquely illumined landscape of Norway.” Also on view at the gallery are a large group of his oils done while he was in Norway, where he was associated with the University of Oslo.

Langlais has studied at Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., Skowhegan School of Painting, Brooklyn Municipal Art School, Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Grande Chaumiere in Paris. The Old Town man was the first American painter to be awarded a Fulbright grant to Norway.

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BANGOR – More than 100 Bangor women applauded the book review presentation of Mrs. Lillian Ostrow of Boston at the Jewish Community Center under the sponsorship of the Pine Tree Chapter, B’nai B’rith. Mrs. Ostrow, reviewing Joseph Viertel’s “The Last Temptation,” demonstrated once again her unusual talent as a storyteller. With a dynamic envisioning she unfolded the powerful story of a young Jewish girl caught in the spreading plague of the Hitler scourge.

The hostesses at the event included Mrs. Solomon Goos, Mrs. Nathan Smith, Mrs. Maurice Cohen, Mrs. George Cohen, Mrs. Robert Cohen, Mrs. Barney Cooper, Mrs. Irving Dorfman, Mrs. David Dorsky, Mrs. Henry Miller and Miss Isabelle Davidson.

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BANGOR – Leon P. Gorman, general manager of WABI radio and television, told the Bangor Kiwanis Club that 1956 may see a sixth television station in Maine.

Outlining the future of television as he saw it, Gorman predicted that, unless “someone finds a way to make color television sets that will sell for $200 or $300, color TV will be only for the rich and the curious” for some years to come.

He also remarked that subscription television “has seen its heyday,” that educational television still has many headaches that may result in commercial stations taking over its function, and that 1956 will see “newer and better” programs.

Gorman credited the realization by Hollywood that television does not mean its doom, and the “engagement, if not marriage,” between New York and movieland, for the prospect of improved programs.

The local television executive said that there is a possibility that theaters, with closed TV circuits, may outbid the commercial stations for the 1956 World Series. This would mean that people would go to a theater to see a special event, rather than watch it at home.

100 years ago – Jan. 12, 1906

BUCKSPORT – The ice boating still remains high in favor, although the week has not been a very favorable one for the fascinating sport. The ice is in perfect condition, but the wind has been a minus quantity the greater part of the week so far, and this is quite a necessary article for the full enjoyment of the sport.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin