YESTERDAY …
10 years ago — April 23, 2005
(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)
ORONO — Exchanging her white cane for Chica the guide dog has given University of Maine student Hope Paulos a newfound sense of freedom.
“With Chica by my side I can fly,” said Paulos, a 22-year-old junior and the University’s only blind student.
Thanks to her guide dog, Paulos has been able to navigate the Orono campus more quickly. Always following close behind is her father T.J. Paulos, also working toward his bachelor’s degree. He takes some classes with his daughter.
The two drive to Orono from their home in Seal Cove, often relaxing before class with a coffee or soda at the Memorial Union.
25 years ago — April 23, 1990
ORONO — Bruce Balboni is a cooking kind of guy. He’s kneaded bread in Boston, stacked sandwiches in Los Angeles and chopped vegetables in New York City. He now wraps burritos, crimps calzone, fries piroshki, and rolls chapati in Orono.
Balboni is the manager of the Fernald Hall Soup Kitchen, a small vegetarian restaurant sponsored by Residential Life at the University of Maine. The Soup Kitchen is a mealtime delight for campus and community natural food eaters, and has been since 1976. But Balboni has only been there for a year.
His tenure at the Soup Kitchen, however, has been most satisfying. He credits this to the hard-working staff, and the goals of the kitchen to serve quality food, serve lots of it, and serve it on time.
BREWER — City Manager Harold Parks said that a search to replace Police Chief David Koman would begin soon but that the earliest he could discuss the matter with the full City Council might be on May 8.
Koman last week announced his resignation, effective June 1, surprising Parks and other city officials.
Koman said that he had no regrets about his law enforcement career in Maine but that it was time for change after many years in the profession. He said that he looked forward to going home without taking his job with him or having to answer the phone at any time of day or night.
He began his service in Brewer April 4, 1973, when the department had 14 men and he described the Brewer Police Department as one of the best in the state.
He recounted his 30-year law enforcement career, which began when he was a military police officer in a paratrooper unit.
50 years ago — April 23, 1965
BREWER — Lawrence T. Doughty Jr. has more irons in the fire than the village blacksmith. Besides being the conscientious dispatcher for the Brewer police and fire departments, he has other outside interests that include coin and stamp collecting, photography, collecting autographs and letters of political figures, amateur radio fan, and animal trainer. He also keeps up-to-date with the national scene by daily reading of the Congressional Record and he has a home study course in criminal investigation and detection. Just recently he took on duties as a justice of the peace and notary public.
As if this was not enough, Doughty, who will be 26 this summer, spends a great deal of his time chasing motor vehicle accidents within a 50-mile radius of Brewer, where he lives with his parents at 15 Goupee St.
One thing we failed to mention, but not the least of Doughty’s hobbies, is his exceptional collection of political buttons, one dating back to the middle 1800s. This button collection numbers close to 1,000. He started this while in Brewer High School.
BANGOR — Concern for infants, orphans, schoolchildren, the aged, sick people and the spiritually poor have marked the history of the Sisters of Mercy in the Diocese of Portland. As the Sisters celebrate their 100th anniversary this year, the various events planned throughout 1965 they can look back on a record of devotion to the service of religion and to the needs of humanity.
Bangor was the first city in Maine where the Sisters of Mercy were established. Mother Mary Gonzaga O’Brien, superior, founded the new community Aug. 4, 1865, with six sisters. Located on Newbury Street near the Penobscot River, the new convent was a large brick structure.
An urgent request in 1878 for missionary and educational work among the Indians of the Old Town Mission caused for sisters to be sent to the reservation. The sisters learned the language of the tribe and translated the catechism into the Indian tongue.
In 1885, St. Joseph’s School and convent were opened in Old Town. St. Mary’s Parochial School in Bangor opened in 1896, the convent opened two years later. In 1911 St. Michael’s home, an orphanage for girls, was opened in Bangor.
Between 1916 and 1922 institutions opened by the sisters included St. Mary’s School and convent, and a Catholic high school, Orono, 1916; St. Teresa’s school and convent, Brewer; and St. Benedict’s School and convent, Benedicta, 1922. They also began teaching in the girl’s department of John Bapst High School in Bangor when it opened in the fall of 1928.
100 years ago — April 23, 1915
BANGOR — In the Bijou Theater, the Kirk Brown Company will present “The Lure,” a play that startled New York and was denied a hearing in Boston. This is a drama in which a strong and searching light is cast into the slums of the swarming East Side of New York and the palaces of sin in the Tenderloin. A “white” slave play, with real dramatic merit and genuine moral value, is a warning against dangers that beset the innocent and unsophisticated in every city great and small.
BUCKSPORT — The big Cumberland arrived in port Thursday morning with barge No. 1 of the Rockport-Rockland Lime Co., loaded with 1,760 tons of phosphate. The phosphate is being unloaded and shipped to northern Maine as rapidly as possible.
The schooner Elizabeth N. of the Nicholson fleet, Capt. Haskell, arrived in port Thursday from Turks Island, loaded with salt.
BREWER — Many of the popular books of fiction which people are talking about can be procured from the public library, where at all times it is the desire of the library to get what the people asked for so far as finances will permit. “The Rose Garden Husband,” “Angela’s Business” and “Bealby” have been added recently to the other good books.
Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin