Yesterday …

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(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – April 20, 1996

BANGOR – Members of the Bangor Fire Department worked for more than two hours Friday morning to rescue an inexperienced canoeist from Kenduskeag Stream.

A report came to the fire department that a canoe carrying two teenagers capsized in Kenduskeag Stream at the end of Greeley Street, said Assistant Fire Chief Jeffrey Cammack.

“It was just a couple of amateur canoeists going down the stream. They didn’t know what they were doing and got caught on a piece of ledge,” Cammack said.

The ledge is in the middle of the stream and is submerged this time of year, and the canoeists were not aware that it was there, he said.

25 years ago – April 20, 1981

ORONO – When Israeli artist Esther Lurie steps off the plane in Bangor, it won’t be just to fulfill a speaking engagement for the Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Maine. The visit will mean a reunion with a nephew who lives in Orono and the opportunity to take part in Holocaust observances in the United States.

Lurie was visiting her sister in Lithuania in 1941 when the Germans invaded the country, trapping her and the other Jews of the town in a ghetto at Kovno. She lived there until 1944 when she was moved to a labor camp in East Prussia.

Unbeknown to the Germans, the woman drew what she saw: The barbed wire fence surrounding the ghetto, the temporary housing, people’s possessions piled high, the wooden bridge, the communal kitchen and other scenes from that horrifying period.

The artist, then in her late 20s, managed to hide her work. The drawings were later recovered and published in an album called “A Living Witness.”

Now 67 years old, the Holocaust survivor will describe her experiences as a professional woman in Palestine in the 1930s. She was already an experienced painter when the walls of the Kovno ghetto closed around her. Her observations of death, degradation and suffering in the ghetto became an important part of all Israeli exhibitions dealing with the destruction of European Jewry.

Today, Lurie spends much of her time painting scenes of Jerusalem, a city that has been the center of her attention since 1967.

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BANGOR – The Bass Park Corp., which operates the Bangor Auditorium, Civic Center, fairgrounds and racetrack, made money in February, according to the most recent financial report, and this profit helped offset the deficit of January.

Profits for February were $5,594, according to a report given by Leo Loiselle, treasurer. But the bottom line for the first two months shows an $8,000 deficit.

It cost $2,386 to heat the auditorium, for example, compared to more than $3,000 in January.

The basketball tournaments were held at the auditorium during the last weeks of February, continuing into March, resulting in some rental income and considerable revenues from concessions.

50 years ago – April 20, 1956

BANGOR – A pilgrimage from Bangor to the Frankfort marshes was made by the Bangor Bird Conservation Club. Birds reported included phoebes, Canada geese, golden-eye ducks, black ducks, crows, robins, black-backed gulls, herring gulls, meadow larks, American mergansers, bluebirds, vesper sparrows, sparrow hawks, great blue herons, starlings, grackles, juncos, flickers, evening grosbeaks, chickadees, cowbirds, cormorants, red-winged blackbirds and the rare indigo buntings and yellow chats.

Highlights of the trip were an osprey and nest, the water birds eating eels and eagles chasing water birds.

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BANGOR – Covers were laid for more than 40 at a luncheon and crazy hat party held by the Dow NCO Wives Club at the NCO Club.

Mrs. Orie O. Schurter, wife of Col. Schurter, commander of the 4060th Air Refueling Wing, and Mrs. Robert Bennett, wife of Col. Bennett. commander of the 341st ARS, were honor guests and acted as judges for the hat contest.

Mrs. Agnes Zagar took honors for the most original hat. Mrs. Myrth Walton took the prize for the funniest hat with a fish net arrangement topped by a baby’s rattle. Mrs. Catherine Sigle took honors for the prettiest hat with an arrangement of pink tulle and flowers.

100 years ago – April 20, 1906

BUCKSPORT – Miss Amanda Wilson of Bangor will give a talk on poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar in the Franklin Street Methodist Episcopal Church vestry. Besides the lecture, there will be music and recitations somewhat appropriate to the subject talk of the evening.

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BANGOR – The liquor deputies seized a big lot of liquor of all kinds, probably worth $750, wholesale price. It was in one of the storerooms of the Eastern Steamship Co. and arrived in the last boat, although not unloaded with the rest of the freight.

In the lot were five cases in which were five dozen bottles of whiskey. There were also several barrels containing beer, ale and whiskey. The entire load was taken to the storeroom of the courthouse.

The tags had been torn from most of the packages. Some had shipping marks and two or three of the barrels were marked Searsport.

This was the largest single seizure ever made in Bangor.

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BUCKSPORT – The first baseball game of the season will be played here on Saturday afternoon between the EMC Seminary nine and the nine from George Stevens Academy of Blue Hill. The game promises to be a good one – not only by the baseball cranks, but also by those interested in the seminary.

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BUCKSPORT – Chandler M. Wilson, manager of the creamery, is doing a rushing business these days. He shipped on Tuesday and Wednesday 16 six-gallon cans each day, filled with cream. The price for butter fat still holds up. He has been paying 28 cents per pound, but the price dropped on Wednesday to 27 cents per pound.

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BUCKSPORT – Capt. Charles Trask of the four-masted schooner Horace Stone was in town on Thursday. His vessel is at Stockton discharging a cargo of coal.

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ORONO – Engel’s mill commenced operations for the season April 9 and has been running with a full crew night and day ever since.

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ORONO – The farmers’ special train on which several professors from the University of Maine are to tour Aroostook County, is sidetracked at the Orono station.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin