YESTERDAY …

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(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – April 4, 1996

BANGOR – Twelve hundred youths from around the country, their coaches and chaperones now know where Bangor, Maine, is, thanks to the presence of the John Bapst Memorial High School chess team at the U.S. Chess Federation Scholastic Chess Tournament in Somerset, N.J.

The 25 John Bapst students who participated made up the largest group taking part in the national tournament.

Coach Mike Schaab, a science teacher at John Bapst, got used to the questions: Are you from that school in Bangor? How did you get so many students to play?

The students recruit other players, he explained, “and the school itself has a real positive outlook on it.” In fact, when the team first attended the nationals last year in Chicago, Principal Joe Sekera went with the group.

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ORONO – Orono United Methodist Church may be one out of 10. While a new national study suggests nine in 10 congregations have trouble keeping high school students involved, the youth room at the 400-member Orono church is open – and occupied – practically every day.

Amid canoe trips, AIDS discussions and support work at a local hospital, the youth of Orono Methodist Church appear to be developing what may be most elusive for countless religious institutions with young people – a sense of community.

It helps to have leadership, and the church’s pastor as well as parents, are quick to cite the church’s half-time “program coordinator,” Chuck Langbein, 37, as a big reason the congregation has a youth program that works.

Langbein himself points in another direction. Since Langbein’s hiring in December 1994, adults in the congregation have been willing to let the youth have their own kind of program.

25 years ago – April 4, 1981

BANGOR – A former Bangor pastor who spent 30 years of his life collecting manuscripts and memorabilia of poet John Greenleaf Whittier did not live long enough to see his collection sold by his widow to a namesake college in California for $100,000.

Whittier College acquired Dr. Frederick Meek’s collection last December, a year after he died. It will be housed, along with the memorabilia of Richard Nixon and author Jessamyn West, in a new library wing planned at the college.

Meek was pastor of All Souls Congregational Church at Bangor from 1936 to 1943. He had tried to sell the package to the school in 1968, but the school wasn’t interested in buying the collection of manuscripts, personal belongings from Whittier’s study and his stuffed pet squirrel named Friday.

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HERMON – When the Hermon Rescue Squad dedicated its new two-bay facility at an open house, many original members could be heard to say, “Boy, have we come along way.” Squad president Harriet Rietschel said about 300 people visited the building during the open house.

Squad member Anne Sleeper dressed up as a clown and passed out balloons to children. Sleeper also is a first-grade teacher at the Hermon Elementary School.

Life members Doris Witham and Guy Brown cut the ribbon and the Rev. Clyde Park, pastor of Hermon Baptist Church, led the prayer of blessing.

Rietschel said the new facility reflects a true community effort. For years, the townspeople have dug deep into their pockets at fundraising time. For the past four years the community has never given less than $5,000 and usually more.

50 years ago – April 4, 1956

NEWBURGH – Under normal circumstances an emergency appendectomy is a fairly routine operation, but for Frank R. Chapman, 28, of Bangor and Newburgh, it brought the distinction of being the first man to have his appendix removed on a Navy ship in the South Pole area.

But it also cost him a year’s voluntary service with Adm. Richard E. Byrd’s Operation Deep Freeze.

The operation was not performed without incident, for as Chapman said, just as the doctor was about to start the operation, the ice broke where the ship was moored to an ice floe in McMurdo Sound. It was necessary to move the ship to calmer water under the shadow of a live volcano, Mount Erebus.

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BANGOR – A dream and 16 years of service to the public will come to an end May 22 when Pilot’s Grill closes to make way for the expansion of Dow Air Force Base.

“There will always be a Pilot’s Grill,” according to Paul Zoidis, treasurer of the firm. Although as yet, details of the new Pilot’s Grill have not been firmed up, the Zoidis brothers will erect a larger and more modern restaurant on the so-called Bulge, the new part of Hammond Street which has been built to circle the expansion of the base.

Operated by Paul, Ernest and Peter Zoidis, Pilot’s Grill will have a seating capacity of more than 500, with banquet rooms to take care of private parties.

When the Zoidis brothers purchased land on Outer Hammond Street, on which to move their restaurant from downtown, it was a veritable “boondocks.”

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ORONO – Mrs. Harold Brennan, retiring in June after 35 years of teaching, was honored at a reception attended by more than 150 parents, teachers and friends after the final spring meeting of the Webster School Parent Teacher Club.

Mrs. Brennan, formerly of Brownville Junction, began her teaching career there, but has taught 32 years at Orono, 30 years as principal.

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BANGOR – Robert E. Walsh, telegraph editor of the Bangor Daily News, will attend the American Press Institute’s first seminar on newspaper design, makeup and typography at Columbia University. This is the first seminar which has been devoted entirely to methods of improving newspaper design and was scheduled in response to an unusual number of requests from publishers. [Editor’s note: The list of several dozen API members slated to attend the seminar were all men.]

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BANGOR – The city engineering department is working on plans for parking in the Abbott Square Extension, engineer James L. MacLeod said.

According to plans, the lower part of the square will take care of 308 cars, meter-free. The upper level will hold 208 metered spaces with 21 others meter-free. MacLeod explained that these 21, in the rear of the lot near the embankment, will be kept clear for the Public Works department to dump snow into Kenduskeag Stream.

No date had been set for the completion of work in the extension. The Public Works department cannot begin filling in the lower level until demolition work on the houses there has been completed.

100 years ago – April 4, 1906

ORONO – Another rainy day for the University of Maine track team. A few dodged the drops and got in a little work, but the track was heavy and slow and the jumping runs almost useless.

This is no doubt the worst spring for athletics in the history of Maine. The men finished the improvements on the track yesterday and everything is ready for Tufts on Saturday. The meet will be run off in quick time and manager Williams has made arrangements for electrics [trolley cars] to run specials enough to handle the crowd.

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BUCKSPORT – Mrs. M.A. Deveraux of Prospect Ferry has a sister, Mrs. Nancy D. Harriman, who lived in San Francisco at the time of the April 27th earthquake. She is safe and now living in Oakland. Her experience was the same as others – that the earthquake was bad enough, but the fire that followed was worse. Everyone, she said, was kind and good to the homeless.

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HAMPDEN – Albert Fogg, George Emery and Charles Carle left Monday night for the Pacific coast. Messrs. Emery and Carle will stop in Seattle, and Mr. Fogg will go off to the Klondike where he has mining interests.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin