75 years ago

May 25, 1942

Movie celebrities are “regular folks” and no one can tell Howard Ranum, Aberdeen army man, otherwise.

In a letter to his mother, he wrote about being in a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard recently, when movie star Chester Morris and his wife came and sat down beside him. “I was pretty lonesome but they certainly were swell to me,” he wrote.

After paying for his dinner they took him to their home for the weekend, then to a night club where he was introduced to Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Betty Grable, Carol Landis and others.

Besides treating Ranum to the weekend, Morris paid for his train fare back to camp near San Diego. The entire weekend cost Ranum only $2.12, he told his mother.

May 26, 1942

Grays Harbor residents will gather at Olympia Stadium Saturday morning for this country’s first wartime Memorial Day observance in nearly a quarter of a century.

Sponsored this year by James J. Sexton post, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the observance will feature one of the largest parades in history and will have added tributes for service men who have died in the present war.

50 years ago

May 25, 1967

Governor Dan Evans was asked today to declare the ocean erosion of Cape Shoalwater to be an emergency situation in which immediate Federal Government aid could be requested and to issue orders to the State Highways Department that it not move Highway 105 to a higher location but instead protect its present right of way against erosion.

Action by the Army Corps of Engineers to construct breakwaters which would correct the erosion is at least six years away because of governmental regulations and red tape, but “the red tape can be removed by the President taking emergency measures,” says a letter from Ira Mitchell, president of the Cape Shoalwater-Toke Point Anti-Erosion Project.

May 26, 1967

• Cadet Charles G. Sutten Jr., whose parents live on Route 2, Elma, will graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Wednesday, June 7. The 1963 graduate of Elma High School, who will receive a bachelor of science degree, was appointed to the Military Academy by Representative Julia Butler Hansen.

• An estimated 750 youngsters enjoyed foot and sack racing, baseball games, hot dogs, ice cream and orange drinks at Olympic Stadium yesterday at the annual schoolboy patrol picnic.

Brad Peterson, a seventh grader at Wishkah School and Bonny Hayes, a Pacific Beach sixth grader, were each awarded a transistor radio as they tied for first place in the pie eating contest.

25 years ago

May 25, 1992

Robert Powell says the movie “Top Gun” has set an image for all prospective pilots to live up to.

The 1989 North Beach High School graduate, now a cadet at the Air Force Academy in Colorado City, Colo., says the popular movie, starring Tom Cruise, gives him an excuse to be courageous, charismatic and even downright cocky.

With a shrug, he says, “People expect it.”

But Powell might have reason to believe he’s a bit apart from the pack.

He is one of 12 cadets majoring in political science who have been assigned to a research program in Washington, D.C. this summer, working at the Pentagon.

May 26, 1992

A horse drowned and eight people had a very close call Monday after a human chain was formed to reach an 11-year-old girl struggling in the surf at Ocean Shores.

The young girl from Pacific was playing in the water about 3 p.m. when a wave crashed over her head and she ended up about 150 yard offshore. About a dozen people, including a man on horseback and the girl’s teenage sister, attempted to pull the girl to safety but found themselves in equal danger. It remained for Ocean Shores police to rescue the lot of them.

“The surf was not terribly heavy, but (they) got caught in a rip current,” said Ocean Shores paramedic Lee Fundenberger.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom