(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – Jan. 17, 1998

BANGOR – Utility and tree crews worked in bitter cold and snow, continuing their efforts to restore power to nearly 60,000 Maine households still without electricity [as a result of the ice storm].

About 16 line crews, 300 tree crews and several support vehicles from North Carolina arrived in Maine along with crews from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The Southern power workers who arrived in the morning were met by near-blinding snow as they prepared to work with crews from Central Maine Power. Those who arrived in Bangor drove to Augusta to be briefed and clothed by CMP officials.

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BANGOR – A canoe sits in the middle of the gym floor at Eastern Maine Technical College, catching water from the leaking roof.

In a computer circuitry laboratory, books are spread out on the floor to dry, their pages warped from dirty water that poured from a nearby radiator. More than a week after a massive ice storm plunged much of the state into darkness, the region’s technical colleges and university campuses are still struggling to recover.

While power was out at the Bangor technical college, several radiator pipes burst in unheated Maine Hall, flooding first- and second-floor classrooms and the library, damaging computers and laboratory equipment. Backed up ice on the roof of the campus gym damaged roof vents which resulted in leaks.

25 years ago – Jan. 17, 1983

ORONO – College student Larry Rogers hit the books during semester break.

He was studying cookbooks and planning menus for the Fernald Hall Soup Kitchen, formerly the Ram’s Horn Soup Kitchen at the University of Maine.

Rogers, 22, a mathematics major from Waterville, is the arbiter of tastes for the soup kitchen, started in 1976 to provide a vegetarian alternative not available in UM cafeterias.

Some of the ideas Rogers has cooked up for this semester’s menus are tortilla chip soup, almond spinach roulade and teriyaki soup with egg rolls.

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HAMPDEN – The sound of hammers hitting nails rang out across the fields in the cold morning air, joined by the high-pitched whine of circular saws.

The driveway was filled with pickup trucks.

Something clearly was happening at the Perry farm on the Old County Road. Jack Perry was getting his barn rebuilt.

On Dec. 28, Perry’s barn caught fire when an exposed light bulb heated chaff in the hay-filled structure, sending sparks into the hayloft. The fire spread quickly through the 6,000 bales of hay stored in the loft. The barn was destroyed.

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ORONO – Members of the Mary Sturgeon Circle of United Methodist Women met on Jan. 11. Guest speaker Dorothy Clarke Wilson, author of biographies and religious novels and plays, spoke on her research for her next book on the life of Martha Washington, to be published in 1984, the year the author turns 80.

Wilson told the church women she had read 69 books and 36 periodicals in preparation for writing the Washington biography, which will be published by Doubleday.

Wilson told the group that Mrs. Washington was a devoted president’s wife and a meticulous housekeeper.

The author displayed proofs which she has received of a children’s book, “I Will Be a Doctor,” to be published in the spring of 1983. The book is based on another of Wilson’s biographies, “Lone Woman,” the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor in America.

50 years ago – Jan. 17, 1958

BREWER – The four children of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Mooreside of Spring Street, Brewer, underwent tonsillectomies all on the same day at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor. Tommy, 3, Kathy, 8, Linda, 10, and Jimmy, 9, were feeling fine the next day, and nurse Mrs. Ruby Ellis and Sister Mary Pudenciana of the hospital staff were making plans for the children to go home.

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BANGOR – Mrs. Nelle Penley of the Bangor Daily News spoke to the Dow NCO Wives Club at the Mad Hatter luncheon and contest.

Speaking on “The Operation of a Newspaper,” Mrs. Penley told the group of some experiences in newspaper work and the various stages of the newspaper story from the time it breaks until it comes off the press.

Each NCO wife wore a “mad hat” that she made for the contest. The buffet table was centered with a large cake in the shape of a picture hat trimmed with flowers.

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The annual cookie sale of the Bangor-Brewer Girl Scout Council Inc. will start officially this morning. The goal in the Bangor, Brewer and Hampden area is to sell 25,000 boxes by the end of the day on Jan. 27. Eleven hundred fifty registered Girl Scouts are going to be taking orders.

A cookie sale display window has been set up at Eastern Trust and Banking Co.

Five kinds of cookies will be offered for sale: vanilla cookies, cookie-mints, assorted sandwich cookies, plantation cookies and double-dip fudge cookies.

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BANGOR – John F. Magee of Cambridge, Mass., son of Mr. and Mrs. John H. Magee of Cedar Street, is the author of the recently published book, “Production Planning and Inventory Control.”

Magee is research director of the Operations Research Group of Arthur D. Little Inc., oldest and largest industrial operations research group in the country. His father is state director of the Federal Housing Administration.

100 years ago – Jan. 17, 1908

The public is invited to see an X-ray view of a living hand at Professor Caldwell’s free exhibition. Caldwell is one of the most successful specialists in chronic and longstanding diseases. A few applications of electro-magnetic polarization will remove difficulties of years’ standing, he says. It can do no harm and may save years of suffering.

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ORONO – Miss Jennie Hamlin Waite has opened an office in the Merrill Trust Co. building, where she will do public stenography.

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ORONO – There was a large crowd in front of the Nichols drug store to watch the hypnotic influence of professor Frederick Ralton as he put a man to sleep in the window.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin