YESTERDAY …
10 years ago — June 4, 2005
(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)
BANGOR — With her long, blonde curls, her petite stature and her dazzling smile, it would be easy to mistake Kimberly Pinnette, 19, for a TV model hired to promote new cars at Darling’s Ford in Bangor. That is, if she weren’t standing behind the service counter.
Most people are surprised to find out that Pinette knows quite a bit about automobiles and already has several accomplishments under her belt. And even though she’s still a teenager, her earnings outpace the majority of her age group and even exceed that of her mother, who works as a biologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
While attending Old Town High School, where she graduated with honors in 2004, Pinnette took automotive diagnostic classes at United Technology Center in Bangor, which led to her job at Darling’s.
As a UTC student last year, she, along with partner Brandon Brewer of Brewer High School, took first place in the state’s Ford-AAA Student On Skills Troubleshooting Contest and 16th at the national finals held June 29, 2004, in Dearborn, Michigan.
Pinette was the only female competitor at the finals.
BANGOR — It was another rainy weekday morning, and the only sound to be heard outside Columbia Street Baptist Church in downtown Bangor was the drumming of raindrops on buildings and blacktop.
Inside the yellow brick church, up a flight of stairs, the rhythm of the weather was gradually overwhelmed by the smooth harmony of piano chords accompanied by a tenor’s vocals.
The dimly lit sanctuary was empty, except for Clayton Rogers, 77, who was sitting on a piano bench, practicing in the same place he has practiced and performed for almost half a century.
25 years ago — June 4, 1990
BANGOR — Bangor fifth-grader Lisa Sutcliffe explained her project on life during the Depression to her brother, James Sutcliffe, 5, and mother, Nina Sutcliffe, during a visit to the school. The project was part of the end of the year “Look What I Did” program at the Mary Snow School. Projects from the fourth- and fifth-graders included music, reading poems and stories they wrote, science projects and in-depth studies of Maine industries and wildlife.
ORONO — Creative Playground designer Robert Leathers will be the subject of a feature story by the New York Times Magazine. Reporter Linda Bernstein of the Times and a photographer will follow Leathers to Orono during the construction of One to Grow On, the Orono Creative Playground.
The Bangor-born Leathers, an architect based in Ithaca, New York, has built 500 creative playgrounds nationwide. In addition to the playgrounds, Leathers has built community theaters, farmers’ markets and children’s museums all intended to bring the community together during the planning stages and during construction.
Leathers was selected as one of “The Design 100,” a list fashioned by Metropolitan Home magazine last March designating the best people, products, ideas and trends in the world of design today.
BANGOR — Starting a local branch of a franchised operation can be a good way to go into business on your own. Jane Winship can attest to that fact.
With her children grown and independent, Winship wanted to do something on her own. Jobs at a dental office and in the office of the lumberyard didn’t prove to be what she wanted.
But going into business on her own seemed risky. A couple of years ago, Winship and her husband, Richard, who manages Brake Service and Parts Inc. in Bangor, attended a franchise show in Boston. It was there that the Winships were introduced to Molly Maid.
In April 1989, Bangor’s version of Molly Maid started with a two-person cleaning crew and Winship. It now includes three two-person crews, a spare worker and Winship. The Molly Maid people can be seen scurrying around town in their small dark blue cars the pink lettered advertising on the sides.
50 years ago — June 4, 1965
ORONO — George E. Pretto, an Orono garage man who campaigned for seven years to get the state to issue its driver licenses on the motorist’s birthday, has come up with some new ideas on how Maine should inspect its 500,000 private motor vehicles.
Briefly outlined, here is how his system works:
The car owner is required to pay excise tax and registration fees anytime during the month of his birthday, not before March 1 as under the present system. If it does nothing else, according to Pretto, the idea will eliminate long lines that invariably form late in April in front of the Automobile Registration Bureau.
BANGOR — Words could not express how thrilled two sisters were to see each other here for the first time in 52 years. It has been a grand reunion for Mrs. Rose Karam of 67 Palm St., Bangor, and Mrs. Thomas Sleiman of Beirut, Lebanon, this week.
Mrs. Karam left her younger sister for Maine to live with another sister, Mrs. George Mitchell, in Waterville in 1913, when she was 16 years old. In 1916 she married Elias Karam and she has lived in Bangor ever since.
Mrs. Sleiman, who owns a large vineyard in Beirut, and is a prominent woman in her native land, arrived in the United States during the first week of May. Her first stop was at Jacksonville, Florida, to visit her two sons. Last week she continued her tour to Maine and visited Mrs. Mitchell in Waterville. Now she is visiting with Mrs. Karam and Mrs. Karam’s daughter, Mrs. Robert Baldacci of 82 Palm St.
The touring lady, who speaks Arabic and French, has a variety of places to travel for she has four sons and two daughters and they are scattered: two boys in the United States, one in Africa, and the other son in Paris, France; one of her daughters lives in England, while the other still resides in Lebanon.
100 years ago — June 4, 1915
CORINTH — Mr. and Mrs. Amos G. Fitz, who live on the Black Road in Corinth and who had feared that their son, George, serving with the Canadian contingent in France had been killed, were greatly relieved to receive from him a letter stating that he had been captured. This was written from a German military prison but there was no mistaking the fact that it was in his handwriting.
Mr. and Mrs. Fitz recently received a telegram from the Canadian adjutant general’s office in Ottawa, stating that their son was reported among the missing. The news disturbed them greatly, as they feared there was little chance of his being alive. Tuesday, however, the letter written from Germany was brought to their door. Their son said that he was being treated well but the letter went through the hands of the German military censors and Mr. and Mrs. Fitz figure that he would have felt obliged to make this statement anyway.
Young Fitz, who is 25 years old, went from here to British Columbia four years ago last September, and enlisted in the Canadian forces at the outbreak of the war and has seen much hard fighting in France. His sister is the wife of George Orr and lives on Broadway near Six Miles Falls in Bangor.
BREWER — Capt. Oliver E. Kendall is at his home here in Brewer from Franklin. His vessel is being loaded with paving stones.
Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin