YESTERDAY …
10 years ago — April 2, 2005
(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)
FRANKFORT — If you ask Melissa Brassbridge about the house at the bend of Route 1A and Frankfort, she can rattle off the owner’s name, address and phone number from from memory even though he lives in Kentucky. The town clerk knows it by heart because every summer, dozens of tourists and locals stop by the town office wondering about the mansion.
Some ask her if it’s haunted. That’s the rumor, but her answer is always “no.”
Others want to buy it and turn it into a bed-and-breakfast or vacation home.
Still others want to know what happened to the most asked about house in this neck of the woods.
It’s a long story. And a short one.
Architecturally, it’s a stunner, even if it’s beauty is fading. Built in the Second Empire or “wedding cake” style, the home features curved windows with eyebrows, dental molding, and arched porch and a granite stairs leading to double double doors with etched glass windows.
Though much of the site has fallen prey to vandals and pigeons, not all is lost. At least one of the Italian marble fireplaces has been cracked, a flying staircase with a maple banister, wide wooden trim and intricate plaster molding hint at the home’s original grandeur.
CASTINE — Funding for two big-ticket infrastructure projects and the fate of the town’s historic preservation commission and a World War II monument will be among the issues facing voters at the annual town meeting.
Voters will be asked to authorize the town to borrow $1.2 million to replace the municipal reservoir and $2.75 million to upgrade the town wastewater treatment plant.
Parts of the town sewer system are more than 100 years old, and storm drains weren’t separated when they were built. During periods of heavy rain there is more flow into the plant than it can handle.
Residents also will decide where a granite World War II monument should be located.
The monument, which contains the names of town residents who served during the war, was moved from its location at Emerson Hall during a construction project last year.
25 years ago — April 2, 1990
BANGOR — Seventeen-year-old Jamie Monberg has had a glimpse of the politics of today and tomorrow, a glimpse that the average person may not have seen.
In February, the senior from John Baptist Memorial High School was one of two Maine students to participate in the U.S. Senate Youth Program. One month later he was again down in the Washington, D.C., area as one of two students from the state attending the Shell Century III Leaders conference.
What came from the program, Monberg said, was a better understanding of how the Senate and senators operate as well as some long-lasting impressions.
BREWER — Brewer put its only red street sign in place last week, after action the City Council took to honor Lawrence Kiley Sr., a retired firefighter who died Jan. 19.
Kiley was a member of the fire department for 31 years during which he was a fire captain. He retired in 1973 as assistant fire chief.
The sign designating Kiley Lane was placed at the corner of the lane and Oak Street, near where Kiley lived.
The street sign was made red, rather than a less noticeable color by request of Councilor Larry Doughty. Doughty sponsored the Council order honoring Kiley.
50 years ago — April 2, 1965
BANGOR — Popular music of the 15th century was brought into Bangor High School Wednesday afternoon. The featured attraction was the recorders, borrowed from parents, which had been in their families for years, giving a Baroque nostalgic atmosphere.
The fine arts survey class of Bangor High School has been covering each period in history from five different angles — history, literature, art, dramatics and music. When the students studied the Renaissance, the recorders were a must as far as music was concerned.
BANGOR — Two hundred and twenty-one patients have been treated at the St. Joseph Hospital emergency room since its opening this year.
The emergency area, a seven-room complex, is in the charge of Sister Mary Norberta, C.S.S.F., a graduate of Our Lady of Elms College, Chicopee, Massachusetts, and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital School of Nursing, Brighton, Massachusetts. Sister Norberta has been a nun for eight years and before that had become a registered nurse.
The emergency room is staffed by three full-time registered nurses, an orderly and a medical corpsman. Students from the school of practical nursing also work in the emergency room.
Facilities include a room for minor surgery, treatment and observation room, waiting room, office, utility room, sterilizer room, scrub room and an emergency elevator to the delivery and surgery rooms.
Providing 24 hour coverage, the emergency room is equipped with oxygen, anesthesia and suction machines, an Emerson resuscitater, a Bird positive pressure machine, tracheotomy equipment and cast cart. Also included is 24-hour coverage in laboratory and x-ray.
BANGOR — It was a day to rekindle old memories as the fishing season opened in Maine. The Penobscot salmon club at the Bangor pool saw old-timers on hand for the traditional opening day breakfast, including veteran anglers Harry Colburn, Edwin Colburn, Guy Carroll, Arthur Farrow and Horace Chapman, all of Bangor.
100 years ago — April 2, 1915
BANGOR — An interesting series of articles is announced by Harper’s Weekly on an important topic. Miss Mary Alden Hopkins of Bangor being selected to open the discussion with papers which are the result of much study and close contact with the various phases of life in New York City. The articles will be on the subject of the control of birth and will be discussed from various viewpoints by the able writer, the topic being one which now concerns every big city in the entire country.
Miss Hopkins has had an extended and illuminating experience in New York in a practical way of social and labor conditions among the working girls and women, she having gone into laundries and other establishments as a worker like the rest to get first-hand knowledge of the life led by the employees and the conditions under which labor is employed. Her articles in the magazines and periodicals have attracted much attention all over the country, and have been extensively copied and preached upon and quoted on the lecture platform.
BREWER — A petition by the Texas Oil Company for permission to install tanks for the storage of petroleum products on a plot of land in Wilson Street, directly east of the Bar Harbor tracks, caused a lively debate at the meeting of the Brewer City Council. Big delegations of citizens were in evidence, long petitions were introduced and there were floods of oratory, much of it contributed by Lawyer Murray of Bangor, before the petition was tabled, pending further investigation.
BANGOR — President Woodrow Wilson won’t have to go marketing for his Sunday dinner, for it was sent to him on Thursday by five enthusiastic Democrats of Bangor, who got it at Gallagher’s market and paid quite price for it. It is some dinner — the first Penobscot salmon of the season, a 16-pounder, taken at the Bangor pool below the waterworks dam by John L. Thomas of Rockland and sold by him to Gallagher’s for $2 a pound or just $32. This is the highest price ever paid for salmon in the city, so all the fishermen declared, and there was, also, general agreement that no handsomer fish ever swam.
Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin