10 years ago – March 30, 1996

(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

BUCKSPORT – George MacLeod scrambles up a ledge high over the massive granite fort, then stops a minute to catch his breath and free his imagination.

As he and hundreds of thousands of other visitors have found out over the years, Fort Knox is an ideal place for daydreams. With a broad sweep of his arm, MacLeod traces the dark, wind-ruffled Penobscot River as it flows between Verona Island and Prospect, and past Bucksport on the opposite shore. He imagines the creaking of wooden hulls, the drone of sawmills, the smell of gunpowder and the shouts of soldiers who once filled the damp, blustery outpost in preparation for a British naval invasion that never happened.

He talks excitedly of the vast compound becoming a living history museum someday, where the 19th century could come alive again with volunteers in period costumes mingling with military re-enactors, regional promotion campaigns to lure tourists, and an information center that tells of the people who once lived and worked along the busy stretch of river from Castine north to Bangor.

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BANGOR – The next time Louise Small tells you how good the mathematics teams are in this part of the state, believe her. Four of the teams from the Eastern Maine Math League made the top seven statewide this season, with Bangor High School in first place.

Only three times in the 21-year history of the Maine Association of Math Leagues has a school other than Oxford Hills or Brunswick come in first. One of those years the top school was Mattanawcook in Lincoln.

Let’s put it in terms of math statistics. The league’s 19 teams account for 24 percent of the schools participating, yet garnered 57 percent of the top seven places.

25 years ago – March 30, 1981

ORONO – Professor of music at the University of Maine at Orono and principal cellist of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, Robert Collins has a tripartite thrust: He is also a composer. The evidence of this third facet of his musical being will be brought out in an evening of his works.

A painstaking worker, Collins may be deeply immersed in a composition only to defer its final draft to months or even years late. With his “Canons for Three Flutes,” to be played by Susan Heath, Dawn Schrock and Patricia Vielleux, for instance, he envisioned the possibilities inherent in a piece for three instruments. After writing them out, he quit for a while and went back, finishing it during the Christmas break of last year.

Baycka Voronietzky, who will perform his “Four Fireflies for Piano Solo,” is frankly delighted by their musicality, exoticism and flavor.

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BANGOR – For the last two years, a number of organizations and agencies in Maine have been working to make the public aware of the high incidence of teenage pregnancy and the issues surrounding it. Teenage pregnancy is a major problem in the state; there are 5,000 pregnancies to teenage mothers in a recent year.

The causes and effects of teenage pregnancy will be the focus of a special week of awareness in April.

According to two of the organizers, Cathryn Knox, coordinator of community education for Penquis CAP, and Janet Danforth, volunteer adviser for the Northern Maine Chapter of the March of Dimes and a health educator for Perinatal Education Associates, this year’s conference is a more thorough examination of the problem of teenage pregnancy.

50 years ago – March 30, 1956

BANGOR – Francis R. Bogan, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. James Bogan of Fifth Street, pronounced the vows of the Crosier Lay Brotherhood in the Crosier Monastery Chapel at Hastings, Neb. He will be known as Brother Pius.

Brother Pius promised to observe his religious vows for a period of three years, during which time he will be assigned to various kinds of manual labor as the need arises.

Brother Pius attended John Bapst High School and the Crosier Brothers Seminary. He interrupted his studies at the seminary for a three-year tour of duty in the U.S. Navy.

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BANGOR – Paul E. Cutler of 44 Lincoln St. had plenty of reason for celebration Tuesday. On that day he gained a daughter and a new brother. Mrs. Cutler gave birth to a daughter, Barbara Ann, Tuesday morning at the Osteopathic Hospital. Tuesday evening Mr. Cutler’s stepmother, Mrs. Paul C. Cutler of Glenburn, had a baby boy, James Gordon, at Eastern Maine General Hospital.

Most fellows have reached their majority before becoming proud uncles, but little James Gordon Cutler was one at birth.

100 years ago – March 30, 1906

BANGOR – The salmon season on the Penobscot River will open the first day of April and it is probable that boats will be out in the quick water below the dam. Anxious anglers will be casting with all their skill, hoping to lure the first $1.25-a-pound silver-sided beauty.

There is considerable ice around the salmon pool just now, but indications are that by Sunday, it will be possible to launch a boat there without much trouble.

The “regulars” at the pool have their boats and gear ready, for rarely can business and pleasure be more happily combined than in striking a fierce, fighting, buck salmon worth $25. This “first salmon caught in the Penobscot” is a remarkable fish.

He is served in every hotel in Bangor, in several hotels in Portland, Boston and New York and scores of clubs make the culling of this fish a season of festivity.

Then he is shipped to President [Theodore] Roosevelt, William J. Bryan, Admiral Dewey, Senator Hale, Booker T. Washington and Champ Clark.

Until the newspapers say something about “best cuts [of salmon], 25 cents,” the common people grit their teeth and stick to codfish and clams.

While the anglers are whipping the pool, the down-river fishermen are acquiring big piles of poles and tough alder brush, buying wire netting and making plans to build weirs – always pronounced “wares.”

Twenty years ago, the salmon, king of the fishes, swarmed in the Penobscot River, and a man could go up to the pools below Treat’s Falls dam and hook a fine, big fish before breakfast. Hundreds of salmon in those days were taken with the fly from these pools, and thousands taken in the weirs along the river below Bangor. Now the salmon is so rare in these waters that the taking of a single fish is an event of such interest as to call for mention in the newspapers.

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BUCKSPORT – The last few days have been too much for the ice business. The rainstorm the first of the week flooded the ice in the lakes so as to make it difficult to house it. Capt. T.M. Nicholson stopped work and hauled all his tools, engine, etc. to the village. He has one stack at the lake containing 5,000 tons, and on his wharves some 1,500 tons.

The Finson & Brown Co. completed its No. 2 stack Thursday noon. This gives them two stacks at the lake containing 4,000 tons. This closes the business with them unless another vessel should arrive by Friday night, when they would commence cutting again and haul it to tidewater.

There has been some talk of Bangor parties coming here and putting up a stack, which if the weather holds cold they could do as well as not, for the ice in Silver Lake is not hurt yet, as the snow acts as a blanket on it. There is just as good ice now in the lake as there has been anytime this winter, and plenty of it.

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ORONO – The many friends of Mrs. Alice J. Cowan of Bangor, formerly of Orono, will be interested to learn that she has been engaged to teach shorthand and typing in Foxcroft Academy beginning April 2. Miss Cowan is a graduate of Orono High School and of the private school of Miss Beal in Bangor. She has had several years experience in one of the best business offices in Bangor.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin