(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – March 16, 1996

BANGOR – Last Christmas, 22-year-old Kate Biche of Waterville wanted a hammer, and not just any hammer, but a 16-ounce Stanley steel hammer that offered a grip and swing she liked.

She got it. And on Friday, Biche put her Christmas present to good use in a statewide skills championship sponsored by the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America. She was among more than 600 high school and post-secondary students in Bangor vying for a chance to go to the national VICA competitions.

At the carpentry shop at Eastern Maine Technical College, Biche, a Penobscot Job Corps student, carefully eyed the wooden wall shelf she was making, while around her could be heard the sound of hammers hitting chisels, saws buzzing and the rasp of sandpaper.

In a field dominated by men, Biche said she thinks she has found her niche, something she said she couldn’t find at a number of universities she attended. She spent her school life working with her head, she explained, while woodworking offers her a chance to use her hands as well.

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BANGOR – Edward McSweeney didn’t grow up in Ireland. The truth is that he was but an infant when he left the Emerald Isle with his parents in the late 1830s and settled in New Hampshire.

But when he died in 1908 as the Right Rev. Monsignor Edward McSweeney, after 34 years as pastor of St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, there was no doubt that he cherished his Irish heritage.

To be sure, the tall, beautifully engraved monument standing sentinel a short walk from Mount Pleasant Cemetery’s gate off Seventeenth Street displays Catholic symbols, such as the priest’s chalice.

Even more obvious, however, is the shape of the granite stone – the Celtic cross with its wheel-like circle around the intersection of bars.

“Born at Castletown, Berehaven, Ireland” are the first words on the stone.

McSweeney was not alone. In among the markers for the Nelligans and Dowds, Murrays and O’Learys, Sheehans and Feeneys and Flanagans are a number of stones where the deceased or their families chose to devote some of their limited gravestone space to reminding future generations that their birthplace was Ireland.

25 years ago – March 16, 1981

ORONO – With a full house audience of friends and family in attendance, 1,500 Boy Scouts and Explorers participated in an exhibition at the University of Maine Field House. They demonstrated a wide range of skills learned in Scouting programs.

The occasion was the annual Katahdin Area Council Scouting Skills show. Young people and their adult leaders from 70 packs, troops and posts from points as distant as Machiasport, Greenville, Millinocket and Belfast participated.

A highlight of the show was the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby races. Pinewood Derby cars are miniature, hand-carved racers made by the Cub Scouts. The race drew 108 entrants from 35 packs.

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ORLAND – Voters at the annual town meeting in Orland were asked their preference for a date for the town’s annual field day, most choosing July 4.

Fire Chief John Barlow called for more town participation in the event.

“We would like this to be a town function, not just a fire department function,” he said.

The Orland Field Day includes a parade down Main Street, games and food booths, and features the Orland Raft Race on the Orland River.

The town approved $300 in town funds to support the occasion.

50 years ago – March 16, 1956

BANGOR – City Manager Joseph R. Coupal urged expansion of Bangor schools and additions to Bangor High School and the library at a dinner of Altrusa International at the Bangor House.

Discussing some of the problems facing the city, Coupal spoke particularly of parking and said that the city needed at least 1,000 more spaces. He said that there were ideas which might be developed on this subject: The covering of the Kenduskeag Stream which has long been advocated, and the erection of a five-level parking building in the area of Middle, Columbia and High streets. Coupal also thought that if people had accepted the plan presented previously and left their cars at the old auditorium area and taken a bus to their places of business, a great deal of the problem would have been eliminated.

During the course of his talk, Coupal said that the city would be glad to give away the old covered bridge at Morse’s Mill if anyone would take it away.

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BANGOR – A newspaperman who has traveled widely in Russia, Harrison Salisbury, Moscow correspondent of the New York Times for the last five years, will speak at the University of Maine.

The newsman is the only American correspondent to have twice penetrated deeply the legendary area which even in the days of the Czars was sealed off from prying foreign eyes.

His first visit was during World War II when he accompanied Eric Johnson, then head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, on a 6,000-mile journey through the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia. He visited huge Russian steel armaments and aircraft factories, and such fabled cities as Samarkand and Tashkent.

Three years ago he revisited the same area and became the first American journalist to view the development of the little-known modern cities created on the northern borders of Afghanistan and Iran.

A newspaperman since his graduate days at the University of Minnesota, Salisbury covered the last of the Prohibition gang wars in Chicago, and during World War II was assigned to London.

100 years ago – March 16, 1906

BUCKSPORT – The schooner Lizzie Lane, Capt. Closson, finished loading ice Wednesday evening and sailed Thursday morning in tow with a cargo of 335 tons of ice for Onset, Buzzards Bay. This is the first cargo [of ice] to be shipped from here and is part of the Finson & Brown contract for immediate shipment.

Capt. T.M. Nicholson is still hauling all the ice he can get. The amount put in his storehouses each day is only limited by the number of teams that he can secure.

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BANGOR – Eleven colts in a horse palace car were brought to Bangor bay Harold Graham from his Nebraska ranch for his father, John R. Graham. Six of them are work horses and the others are thoroughbreds. They are now at the stable of Ralph W. Burrill at Maplewood Park. The thoroughbred colts are some of the likeliest-looking youngsters that have come into town for a long time. One is by J. McGregor, another by the famous Constantine, another by Orion and another by Wilton, inbred with George Wilkes.

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BUCKSPORT – Fred Forsythe commenced his duties as driver on the new rural free delivery route No. 4, which was opened for the first time Thursday morning. The route is up the River Road returning by the Back Road, a distance of 19 miles.

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WINTERPORT – The condition of the telephone lines is a subject of much conversation around town. But the New England linemen will undoubtedly repair them as soon as possible. So in the meantime, the easiest plan is to say “Hello” to your neighbor from your back door, and if your lungs are good enough, you can be heard by almost as many as if you were speaking through your phone. And you can’t scold them for listening.

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WINTERPORT – The recent snow has brought considerable wood into the village. Many of the residents were beginning to think that they would not get any this winter. The price remains high, but the quantity will be large if the snow should stay on very long.

– Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin