75 years ago

Feb. 11, 1942

Emulating the legendary hero who stood on the deck of his burning ship, Lauren Fay Bruner, McCleary youth, wounded and burned, remained at his post on the U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor on that fateful morning on December 7 as flames licked about him high up in the crow’s nest and Japanese planes machine gunned him and his companions.

Home for a brief visit before returning to a naval hospital in California, where efforts are to be made to restore his wounded leg to normal length, the Elma high school graduate is receiving a hero’s welcome from his friends.

In the midst of the battle Japanese planes strafing the ship peppered the crow’s nest with 45 caliber bullets. One cut through the fleshy part of young Bruner’s leg — the same leg that was so badly burned.

When the ship was abandoned, Bruner was one of six who escaped from their high perch by moving hand over hand along a hawser to another ship.

Feb. 12, 1942

Seeking to conserve rubber and aid the nation’s war efforts, nine major Grays Harbor furniture and appliance stores today announced they will deliver only three times weekly henceforth in Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Cosmopolis.

The nine firms reducing deliveries are Casey Hardware and Electric company, Brennan’s, Goldberg Furniture, Kaufman-Scroggs, Sears Roebuck and company, Trinneer’s Appliance, and Wise and Hepner, all of Aberdeen, and the F.G. Foster company and Quimby and Wilson of Hoquiam.

50 years ago

Feb. 11, 1967

Television and motion picture star Pat Boone will be hustled from Hollywood to Bowerman Field in a Lear Jet Sunday afternoon and then, aboard a light plane, to Ocean Shores for a luncheon with some 250 Wendell West Co. public relations representatives to formally kickoff Ocean Shores’ 1967 sales campaign.

Boone’s plane is expected to set down at Hoquiam’s airport at 1 p.m. and take off again for Hollywood sometime shortly after 3.

The Pat Boone Celebrity Golf Classic is to be held June 23 through 25 in Ocean Shores.

Feb. 12, 1967

Sunday, no newspaper published

25 years ago

Feb. 11, 1992

• After 14 years as a sales clerk in a clothing store, Loanne Travess, 34, began looking last spring for a job that would offer more challenge.

“I wanted something that would stretch my mind,” says the Aberdeen woman.

She knew she had found the perfect job the day she noticed the newspaper ad for E-911 dispatchers at the new GH Communication Center.

In January she became one of 16 “telecommunications personnel” who will staff the new dispatch center at the East Campus of Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen.

Now, Travess says with a laugh, “boredom will not be a problem.

• While many businesses are feeling the pinch of recession, tightening their belts and trimming operations, Channel Point Village in Hoquiam has launched a major expansion.

The building will have 61 units when the $600,000 addition is completed this fall.

“The existing building has been full for the last two years,” says Greg Marcoulier, vice president of Village Concepts, the company that owns the complex. He’s confident the new units will rent quickly because there’s been a consistent waiting list of 8 to 10 people.

Feb. 12, 1992

Unless some checks really are in the mail, the tall ships project is again on the verge of sinking.

With just $4,612.29 on hand to pay $15,000 worth of bills, not including next week’s $11,000 payroll, the Historical Seaport is in dire straits.

The Seaport is expecting a payment of $24,800 from the Firemen’s Fund insurance company in Seattle to pay for expenses stemming from the Lady Washington’s accident on the Columbia River last October. But there is no word yet on whether that money will come in soon enough to keep the door open.

Executive Director Les Bolton, fully aware that “we are in a wicked situation,” agreed last week to forgo his own paycheck (he grosses $1,200 every two weeks) until funds are available, according to Chairman Tori Kovach.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom