75 years ago
April 18, 1942
• More than 100 Aberdeen junior high students, members of the Rotary club junior high garden club, this week hauled out their shovels and rakes and went to work on their “Victory Gardens.”
All through Aberdeen, Wishkah, Central Park and Cosmopolis the students have been organized to plant gardens in every available parcel of ground space.
Much of the land scheduled for planting has been loaned by residents who originally had planned to let the ground lie idle.
• The Aberdeen Bobcats inaugurated the 1942 Southwest Washington baseball season yesterday with a 5-2 victory over the defending champion Shelton Highclimbers on the Mason county diamond.
The Cats earned praise from Coach Gib Mills for their hustle and spirit. The outstanding fielding play of the game occurred in the fourth inning when Roy Percini raced deep back of second to spear a hard hit ground ball. He flipped it underhanded to Hank Sliva who relayed it to first base in time to catch the runner.
April 19, 1942
Sunday, no newspaper published
50 years ago
April 18, 1967
Lowell M. McGinnis, resident manager of Rayonier’s Grays Harbor Division, announced today the construction of a $1,000,000 addition to the silvichemical plant at the Grays Harbor Division in Hoquiam.
The new plant will be built to meet the growing market for Rayplex, an organic-metal complex, used in agriculture to supplement the lack of basic trace metals in soil, and for Terranier, a chemical grouting agent, widely applicable for soil stabilization.
At present, the principal products of the plant are Rayflo and Raykrome, which are dispersants for oil well drilling muds and Raymix, which is used for controlling properties of concrete mixes.
With the addition of the two new chemicals, the Hoquiam plant will be capable of production of a full line of bark and lignin chemicals.
April 19, 1967
An oil tanker, the Texaco Louisiana, ran aground in the Grays Harbor channel about a half mile west of Moon Island this morning, and efforts were to be made to pull it off at high tide tonight, probably at about 10 p.m.
Four tugs from the Allman-Hubble Tug Boat Co. at Hoquiam attempted to dislodge the tanker this morning after it ran aground on its way to unload fuel oil at the Rayonier dock. However, a spokesman said that the tugs arrived after high tide had passed and their efforts were unsuccessful.
25 years ago
April 18, 1992
The Grays Harbor Drug Task Force hauled in a record 105 grams of tar heroin this week during a series of connected drug busts in East County that led to three people being booked into the Grays Harbor County Jail.
The biggest chunk — 85 grams (just over 3 ounces — has a street value of up to $40,000. Officers say it had been transported in the heel of the suspect’s shoe.
April 19, 1992
When Claude Dailey began working at the White Star Lumber Co. in 1926, he earned $2 a day.
Thanks to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act, that increased to $3.40 a day.
But Dailey credits the union with really turning things around for him and other workers at White Star and then the Simpson plant at McCleary.
“The union gave us better wages, time and a half for overtime and a 40-hour work week,” the 86-year-old Dailey recalled last week.
The Elma man has been a union member for 56 years — longer than any of the other approximately 315 active and 100 retired members of Local 2761 of the Western Council of Industrial Workers.
Dailey and 19 other people who have maintained at least 50 years of union membership were honored at a party last Thursday during the monthly meeting at the union hall.
Old-timers and younger members swapped stories during the party.
Ivan Bussard, a 48-year union member, recalled how he made 97 1/2 cents an hour when he started at Simpson in 1945. When he retired two years ago, he was making $10.90.
He recounted how the union went on strike against Simpson during the summer of 1954. After 3 1/2 months out, the union got its membership 2 1/2 cents an hour more.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom
