75 years ago
June 7, 1943
• Five Fort Lewis soldiers drowned about 7 o’clock last night in waters of South Bay after their army truck, traveling to Westport in a convoy, crashed through the guardrail and plunged into deep water just west of the draw span.
Army authorities with the aid of a civilian barge and derrick, were attempting to raise the truck and the victims in it this afternoon.
• Rev. T.T. Ove, dean of Aberdeen’s pastors, resigned Our Saviour’s Lutheran church pulpit yesterday, just as he was completing his 23rd year as head of the church.
Rev. Ove explained that his action came on his physician’s orders. He was stricken with a severe illness last January, and while he has partially recovered, he has been able to preach at only one service since that time.
Tears dimmed the eyes of many of his congregation as he read his letter of resignation. He came here in 1920 from Spokane and four of his five children were educated in Aberdeen schools.
June 8, 1943
Commercialized vice presents no serious problem on Grays Harbor at the moment, but Aberdeen and Hoquiam nevertheless have a vice problem that has drawn a black mark from army authorities.
The problem is the so-called “pick-up” or “victory” girl.
It is these girls, not professional prostitutes who have infected an “unsatisfactory” number of service men stationed in Harbor areas, army investigators said. Conditions here have not been as serious as in Seattle, but a ‘large number of man days’ have been lost by the army as a result of venereal diseases contracted on the Harbor.
“Venereal disease causes more loss of army man hours than any other malady,” said the field representative of the federal security agency. “It is a problem that the entire community must face.”
50 years ago
June 7, 1968
Harbor Democrats paid their last formal respects to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy last night.
“We are meeting this evening in grief … ” said Dr. Richard Kegel of Aberdeen at a meeting in Westport of the Grays Harbor County Democratic Central Committee. “We meet in grief for a personal loss, for a loss to the Democratic Party, for a loss to our nation, and, indeed, to the whole world.”
June 8, 1968
Grapple yarding, Weyerhaeuser’s new method to haul logs out of the brush without the muscle of choker-setters, has passed its test at a site about five miles southeast of Cosmopolis.
The toothed, 800-pound grapple, suspended from an attachment which swings along cables, plucks logs as big as five feet in diameter in jaws, each J-shaped hook as tall as a man, and drags them to the landing point.
The operation requires two men, one in a cab mounted on a tank-treaded vehicle to pull the levers which actuate the grapple and the other, equipped with a two-way radio, in the woods to direct the grapple’s hunt.
25 years ago
June 7, 1993
She’s bright, articulate and sometimes brutally honest. She’s also the first-ever Aberdeen High School junior to graduate.
Noelle Brecek, 17, the daughter of Barbara and Anton Brecek of Grayland, says high school hasn’t been a lot of fun for her. So when she figured out she was just one credit shy of graduating after only three years, she made the decision to finish up fast and go to college early.
Noelle will be heading to The Masters College in the fall. The small Baptist, liberal arts school is in Santa Clara, Calif.
June 8, 1993
Don Schlegel used anger and a cane to pull himself from his wheelchair.
He walked across the foyer of Oakhurst Convalescent Center Monday afternoon, and spoke for many of the 108 infirm residents whose lives are being uprooted.
“We ought to thank the scavenger politicians who were involved in all of this,” Schlegel, 75, told a reporter.
Oakhurst, one of the county’s largest employers — 155 workers — closed today.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom
