Pages of the Past: Monte fire company gets waterproof coats, 125 years ago this week

Pages of the Past for Feb. 20, 2020

125 years ago

Feb. 22, 1895

The family of C.H. Fenner will go to Aberdeen next week, where they will remain while Mr. Fenner is employed on the tide land survey.

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Tom is walking with his head thrown back these days (Tom Morgan we mean) since the arrival of that little daughter in his home, Wednesday.

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The fire company have received their new water-proof coats, and now they can work in case of fire without undergoing the exposure they have endured in the past.

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If ever there was a poverty-stricken looking crowd in Montesano it was to be seen at the “poverty social” given by the ladies of the Presbyterian church, Tuesday evening, in the Byles store room. The distress of the beggar Arabs, in the streets of Cairo, would not call for more sympathy than the tattered garments and woe-begone appearance of some of the guests. The room was too small to accommodate the crowd, and considerable confusion resulted, but this did not prevent the social being a financial success, the ladies announcing their total receipts to be $29.97.

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Mrs. L.Z. Carney, of Elma, has been in town a couple of days attending to some business matters and visiting friends.

100 years ago

Feb. 20, 1920

A shower for Mrs. C.E. Fosnot was held at the Presbyterian church Wednesday night. There was a large attendance and many beautiful and useful gifts were brought.

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Tonight — Moving pictures of the I.W.W. trial at Gem theater. Regular prices.

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Attorney O.M. Nelson lost a few papers and checks when his books and office equipment were removed during the fire Friday night.

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Miss Edna Brown was the guest of Miss Mary Cooper of Aberdeen over the weekend.

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The city schools are open again following a nearly two weeks’ shut down as a result of the influenza epidemic, and the business of making Americans is again under way.

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J.A. Edison, foreman of the Schafer Brothers Shingle Company, has been staying at the Crist hotel since the fire at the Fosnot home Friday night. Mr. Edison, in addition to his clothing, lost considerable money in the fire.

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Many cases of influenza are reported at Brady.

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Burton G. Scott, principal of the high school, spent most of the vacation in Cle Elum.

75 years ago

Feb. 22, 1945

Mr. and Mrs. Edward Clark of Tacoma, was notified by the war department that their son, Charles Clark, had been killed in action in Germany, January 29.

Mrs. Clark, mother of the boy, is the former Ada Holbourne, who lived here in Montesano. Mr. and Mrs. L.N. Holbourne, Tacoma, and former Montesano residents, are grandparents of the boy.

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Lt. Jess Wisner, son of Mr. and Mrs. I.H. Wisner, Raymond, and nephew of Sheriff and Mrs. Mike Kilgore, Montesano, has been reported as missing in action February 6, while acting as a co-pilot of a B-17 Flying Fortress of the 95th Bombardment group, while on a mission over Germany.

Wisner was awarded his second Oak Leaf cluster in January, for “meritorious achievement” while participating in bombing attacks on vital German industrial targets and on Nazi Airfields, supply dumps and gun enplacements, supporting Allied ground forces on the continent.

Lt. Wisner’s Bombardment group was on of the first to lead the attack on targets in Germany.

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Based on September’s fire power in France, United States ground troops fire in 43 combat days enough ammunition to equal the entire amount Americans fired in all the battles of 1918, Ninth Service Command ordnance officer revealed today.

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No one around Olympia apparently has ever considered one answer to the juvenile delinquency. In 1917 the state had a similar problem. Governor Lister with a Republican legislature didn’t become alarmed. They studied the problem and the creating of the State Nautical school was the answer. It filled the bill and had just become fairly started when war interfered and it was forced out of existence. This is the best and cheapest way to handle the ’teen age boys — cooperate with Uncle Sam and establish a nautical school for them. It paid in the past and should pay in the future.

50 years ago

Feb. 19, 1970

“The current 30-foot deep main channel in Grays Harbor may be in jeopardy if a battle in regard to dredging and the disposal of spoils develops later this year,” were the words of Port Commission Manager E.W. Clocksin, as he sounded the warning before the commission last Friday afternoon. The confrontation, if it comes, will in all probability pit the Port and the Department of Engineers on one hand, while the Department of Sports Fisheries will be at the other end of the dispute.

Clocksin, in divulging the warning had reference to the recent edict by sports fisheries officials in the disposal of spoils in Willapa Bay, where such disposal may be made only in a deep water site, and then only during an ebb tide. James Bean, the Willapa Port manager, has made an official protest to Congresswoman Julia Butler Hansen, and Clocksin asked the Port of Grays Harbor to support the protest.

According to Clocksin, if the Corps of Engineers, the agency doing the dredging, misses a year of activity in the channel, the navigable depth will be reduced to approximately 22 feet, which means that vessels would have to depart with only partial loads.

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Letter to the Editor: Now is the time for the loyal, hardworking, tax-paying self-sacrificing Majority Americans to Speak Out loudly and clearly on the most important issue of the day, the war in Vietnam.

For too long, most Americans have sat back as spectators at the drama that has been and is being enacted in the streets of our major cities and even in our small towns.

They have watched mutely as student radicals have been busily subverting America’s will to win in Vietnam and perhaps ultimately to speed the day when Red-rule will be achieved even in the United States.

For Lenin, whose centennial many of these same radicals will be celebrating next year, predicted “America will fall into our lap like a ripe plum.”

Probably the vast majority of those who participate in the Vietnam Moratorium have no idea, nor do they care, what they are doing in this country, to its men in Vietnam who are fighting the war or to the American image abroad where American resolve and determination are vital to freedom’s survival.

By conducting these demonstrations, aided and abetted by almost total television coverage and supported by some of the biggest names in the entertainment field, these radicals are actually prolonging the war. …

— Raymond A. Gallagher, Commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars