YESTERDAY …

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(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – March 23, 1996

BANGOR – If the measure of a great elementary school teacher could be gauged solely by her popularity in the community, Maria Brountas would be in a class by herself. For years, parents on the West Side of Bangor have been hearing her name from knowledgeable friends long before their children reach school age. When it’s time for first grade, say the school cognoscenti, make sure to get your child in Mrs. Brountas’ class.

School officials call Brountas a treasure. They are more than eager to praise her as a master teacher whose exceptional gifts are widely recognized among the region’s educators. They call her a consummate professional, a woman with a tireless dedication to early childhood education that goes beyond the norm.

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ORONO – Controversial, sarcastic and irreverent – but never boring, Orono High School’s school newspaper took top honors in this year’s statewide contest for student journalists, wresting the coveted trophy away from Bucksport High School, which held it for the past two years.

“This paper should be required reading for all educators who lecture ponderously on the need for ‘responsible’ student journalism, by which they mean ‘lifeless’ and ‘offending nobody,'” wrote Biddeford Journal Tribune managing editor Robert Saunders, the only judge on the six-member panel who put his name on his score sheet.

Another judge wrote, “This is indeed a unique high school newspaper, with its irreverent style and funny, self-mocking articles. It takes a well-read, broadly educated and incredibly SMART group of writers to pull it off as well as they do.”

The school newspaper, which has been published under the Inside banner for 17 years, evolved into its current form under the watch of published author and OHS English teacher Sanford Phippen, adviser for the first 16 years.

Student journalism, still in its fledgling phase in much of Maine, has been a strong tradition at OHS for more than half a century.

According to Phippen, student newspapers have existed at OHS since at least 1938. Before the Inside, there were the Populace, the Rioteer and the Riot Post.

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BANGOR – Thirteen of the 14 buildings scheduled for demolition along Patten and Main streets to make way for the new Shaw’s supermarket have been razed, with just one remaining. When that building is gone, Patten Street, from Main to Hellier streets, will be abandoned by the city and turned over to Shaw’s.

Work on the new supermarket has begun, with contractors relocating storm and sewer drains.

25 years ago – March 23, 1981

ORONO – Mrs. Richard J. Martin of Winterport, president of District 2, Maine Federation of Women’s Clubs, was the guest of honor at a salad luncheon of the Woman’s Club of Orono on the Keith Anderson Community building.

At the meeting, Miss Vera Hill introduced Miss Jessie Fraser of Veazie, who gave a delightful and humorous account of her trip in 1979 to Russia. She said the group stayed a week in Finland before flying on to Moscow.

Her slides included churches which are no longer used as places of worship, bazaars, markets, Red Square and Lenin’s Tomb. One slide showed what is known as the world’s largest bell, too heavy to be put in a belfry. One slide showed a large church which had been built into a hollowed-out ledge.

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HAMPDEN – With $300 up for grabs, pupils at the Earl C. McGraw School will join thousands of other elementary schools pupils around the country in a spring celebration contest, The Weekly Readers Balloon Contest.

The first prize is $300 for the longest-known distance traveled by a balloon.

Pupils at the Hampden school have been printing messages on cards, waterproofing them in plastic and attaching strings in preparation for inflating the balloons on Monday.

50 years ago – March 23, 1956

BANGOR – Young Steve Connors, apprentice printer, was promised a 50-cent raise every six months if he made good. He was only 14, but he was making a dollar a week and learning the trade, and he liked the work. Eight men and girls were hand-setting the small weekly paper and the job work in the shop on Prince Edward Island, and they set a good pace for a young fellow.

But Steve was an apt pupil and he stayed six years. He was a journeyman printer in his own right when he went back to Bangor in 1901. He went to work for the Glass Printing Co., located near the old Post Office, which burned in the fire of 1911. There he met Miss Alberta Morrill and in 1909 the couple were married.

In 1918, Connors started his own business at its present Exchange Street location, with every bit of equipment “right from the foundry.”

Fifty type faces were in the cases in the new shop, and Mrs. Connors soon learned to set type and feed the presses. His wife was good help and the shop did well.

Stephen E. Connors isn’t “young Steve” today, but his 73 years lie lightly on his shoulders. He says he’s retiring April 1, after 60 years as a printer.

Printing is one of the graphic arts, and Stephen Connors is a creative artist. No two jobs are alike, he says, and each takes the printer’s individual touch. Each day and each job brings its own challenge, and if a man likes his work he’s content with each day as it comes.

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BANGOR – The largest skating production in the world today, Ice Capades, rolls into Bangor Sunday morning preparatory to Tuesday’s big “Rotary Night” opening at the new Auditorium. It is a true Easter Parade on ice.

Already the advance ticket reservations show hundreds of reservations from Portland to Quebec City.

Ice Capades has 10 complete production numbers with the Ice Capets (ballet line girls) and the Ice Cadets (ballet line boys) all requiring complete wardrobe changes. Star Margaret Field’s schedule calls for eight complete wardrobe changes. Miss Field will don the garb of a chic Parisienne in the first ice presentation ever of George Gershwin’s classic, “American in Paris.”

100 years ago – March 23, 1906

BRADLEY – The heaviest storm of the season reached here Friday night. Saturday morning about seven miles of telephone wire lay on the snow and as a result, only one Farmers line is in working order.

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BREWER – Mrs. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, the Rev. G.M. Bailey and Mrs. M.M. Curtis served as judges of the essays submitted as graduation themes by the seniors of the high school and have given their decisions: “The World’s Greatest Queen,” Christine Floyd; “Immigrant Types,” Harriette Currier; “Unique Places in America,” Miss Iza Hardy; “The Rise of Japan,” Norman Herrick; “Beginning of the California Missons,” Joseph Pooler; “Social Settlement Work,” Miss Helen Burr; “Alsace-Lorraine,” Clifford Grant; and “The Song of Doland,” Hazel Ray.

As a whole the essays are this year among the finest ever submitted, Mrs. Eckstorm said.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin