YESTERDAY …
10 years ago — Dec. 25, 2004
(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)
BANGOR — The Penobscot Job Corps Center’s Recreation Center was the site of a holiday celebration on Dec. 14 that nearly 70 youths from Parks Woods enjoyed.
Gifts for the children from the low income housing neighborhood were provided by Bangor International Airport, the Bangor Police Department, KeyBank and city of Bangor employees.
Children were greeted by students from Penobscot Job Corps’ leadership program, students who recently had been ordained as Santa’s helpers. A Christmas tree surrounded with gifts, plates piled with cookies and cakes, countless balloon animals, and gallons of hot chocolate awaited the children and their families in the recreation center’s gymnasium. Many children also took the opportunity to play tag, ping-pong and Frisbee.
CASTINE — Growing up on the shores of Penobscot Bay, it seems almost preordained that Bret Leach and James Lawsing would be drawn to the sea.
That attraction has grown over the years and the two young men, classmates and friends since they met in the seventh grade, have just completed their first semester at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, two of the five appointees from Maine to enter the academy this year.
The two plebes, both 18 years old, still get a chance to spend time on the water. Avid sailors, both are members of the academy’s varsity sailing team and look forward to a transatlantic sail at the end of the spring semester.
The two classmates have yet to declare a major — Lawsing is looking at international relations, Leach, systems engineering, although there has been discussion of signing up for submarine cruises, and the topic of flying comes up regularly in conversations.
25 years ago —Dec. 25, 1989
BREWER — Air Force Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Deering and his family who had been stranded in Panama while fighting continued in the streets last week, had reached Charleston, South Carolina, on the way to Deering’s parents home in Brewer.
Deering would be home in time to celebrate Christmas with relatives if commercial flights are able to leave Charleston.
Deering had been transferred from Panama to a new assignment, and had been due to fly from Howard Air Force Base, when defense officials closed the airport to civilian traffic.
Deering, his wife, Sarah, and their children, Jason, 3, and Cory, 1½, had been at a friend’s home in Panama. They were surrounded by U.S. tanks and mortar, which had come as close as the front lawn. For two days, the Deering family stayed in seclusion, until they were ferried across the Bridge of the Americas in buses.
BANGOR — Residents of Holland Street in Bangor took to the streets Christmas Eve to sing carols to their neighbors.
50 years ago —Dec. 25, 1964
BANGOR — “I was so surprised in the audience kept applauding when we did our high kick numbers,” said Jane Simpson about her first appearance as a member of the most celebrated dancing troupe of modern times, the Rockettes of Radio City Hall in New York City.
Jane, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Manley Simpson of 212 Fifteenth St., is home for the Christmas holidays and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.
The 18-year-old, bright eyed beauty didn’t become a precision dancer overnight. It took 13 years of lessons and hard work. During those years her eyes were trained on the Rockettes. Her dream came true last August when she passed the exciting audition.
BANGOR — A 5-year-old boy is enjoying Christmas this morning amid the warm circle of his family, lucky to be alive after he was pulled from sure drowning Dec. 8 at Green Lake by a passing rural mail carrier.
Postman John a Chambers of 22 Ohio St., Bangor, was honored by the post office department for his heroic feat.
Chambers, who is being transferred to West Palm Beach, Florida, and leaves tomorrow, was presented a departmental Superior Accomplishment pin and a $100 award check.
The boy, Harry McLeod Jr. of Dedham, had fallen off the edge of an ice cap on the lake in his plight was spotted by Chambers who braved the freezing water in subzero temperatures to retrieve the youngster, floating in 60 feet of water.
100 years ago — Dec. 25, 1914
BANGOR — The opening exercises at Bangor’s first municipal Christmas tree were held when a gathering of schoolchildren, led by Hicks’ Band, sang a number of ballads very prettily. Several hundred persons stood in Post Office Square and the scene was an attractive one — the happy children and the tree in its glitter of electric lights.
Tonight there will be singing by the Bangor Festival Chorus, all of whose members are urged to be present. Undoubtedly they will be heard by a very large gathering.
BREWER — A Christmas observance never before tried in the city was started this week by the young people of the First Congregational Church. These young people numbering about 20, all singers with trained voices, formed themselves into two bands of “waits” and revived the old custom of waiting upon the shut-ins of the parish and singing Christmas carols to them. One band of carolers visited the people in the upper section of the city and the other band those in the lower section of the city.
The group of singers who visited the upper section of the city were under the direction of Miss Mildred Hall and included Miss Jeanette Croxford, Miss Olive Dole, Miss Irene Cousins, Miss Martha Brown, Miss Vera Farrington, Miss Estelle Way, Miss Arline Wray, Miss Doris Crook, Miss Marjorie Rowe, Sewall Brown and Ernest Turner.
The other group was directed by Miss Irma Thomas and included Miss Bernice Smith, Miss Eva Smith, Miss Geneva Croxford, Miss Mary Cousins, Miss H. Josephine Burr and Miss Julia Littlefield.
This beautiful service was most heartily appreciated by the persons visited and another year the work may be enlarged upon and bring glad tidings to a greater number than was possible to visit this year.
BANGOR — Bangor manufacturers of heavy and fancy moccasins report another advance in hides recently of 3 cents a foot, which added to a previous rise makes a difference of 7 cents a foot since the commencement of the European war. This is a matter of considerable importance to the manufacturers, as hides were considered high before the increases were noted.
It will no doubt be of interest to Bangor people to know that the city manufactures more fancy moccasins than all other places in the country. There are numerous cities turning out modern popular slippers of the moccasin variety, but Bangor leads them all, not only in volume of production but in point of quality.
The great department stores of New York, Chicago and Boston feature Bangor made moccasins in their advertisements and by using whole windows for displays of the goods, adding a dash of realism by the use of evergreen trees and wigwams, and often by employing Indians to make the real article in the window which attracts thousands of people passing by.
Bangor has four large concerns manufacturing a high grade of fancy moccasins — the Sawyer Boot and Shoe Co., but J. L. Coombs Co., the E.A. Buck Co. and the Algonquin Slipper Co. Bangor moccasins are shipped to England, Russia, Australia, China, South America, Mexico, Honolulu, the Canadian Northwest and large quantities go to the Pacific coast, to the middle West in what is called the Northwest, Minnesota, etc.
A large number of hands are employed in this industry which is one of several about which Bangor people know very little. There are various other industries right in the city employing quite a respectable force which makes so little stir that very few outside those immediately connected with the business realize that there is a business amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year going on reliably and regularly.
Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin