75 years ago

October 15, 1944

Sunday, no newspaper published

October 16, 1944

Deer of unusual size and appearance were bagged over the weekend by Grays Harbor hunters.

Ed Lesman, proprietor of Lesman’s Auto Safety firm, Saturday bagged an albino deer which has attracted considerable attention. The hide is spotted with brown. It was a two-point, 150-pounder taken from the Vesta creek district. It was displayed today at a local sporting goods store.

Honors today for the biggest deer go to Matt Karamatic who brought one out of Black creek in the Wynooche district weighing 190 pounds dressed. Karamatic estimated the five-pointer weighed 225 before it was dressed out. It took Karamatic and Martin Bebich seven hours to pack the meat out.

50 years ago

October 15, 1969

“The only action on a slowdown in the Vietnam War has been because of dissent,” said Maury Ferrel, Grays Harbor College student.

“The cut-down in the draft call resulted from your dissent,” he said this morning to a group of over 200 students, college administrators and others. “It was not from their good wishes.”

Ferrel’s remarks were the strongest presented at the opening of the GHC version of Vietnam Moratorium Day. He was an unscheduled speaker who was allowed to present his thoughts following a dialogue between Richard Lane and Eugene Stensager, both college instructors.

October 16, 1969

Huddled under umbrella, six female members of the clerical unit of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW) this morning picketed the ITT Rayonier and Grays Harbor Paper Co. plants here. The plants were to close down at 6 o’clock tonight, according to Lowell McGinnis, resident manager at ITT Rayonier.

He said a total of about 900 “on-site” employees are affected by the closures — 500 for ITT Rayonier, 350 for Grays Harbor Paper.

McGinnis estimated a local payroll loss of $20,000 daily from the closures, and company officials predicted the strike “will be a long one.”

25 years ago

October 15, 1994

A group of seventh-graders labored through rainstorms and chilly weather Friday to lure vehicles off the street to their fund-raising car wash.

Their discomfort was nothing compared to the suffering of the strangers they are trying to help — people afflicted with leprosy in a poor hospital in Peru.

The students in Betsy Seidel’s Skills for Adolescents class at Hoquiam Middle School have spent the past few weeks gathering medical supplies and other items to send to a hospital in San Pablo, Peru.

So far, their efforts have been rewarded with donations worth more than $10,000. Now they have to raise hundreds of dollars to ship the much-needed items. Friday’s car wash was just the beginning.

October 16, 1994

Randy Jones is a long way from the icy ocean surrounding Alaska, where he spent most of his 49 years dragging anchors and nets into bouncing, wind-whipped fishing boats.

Jones now tends to a 12-acre Asian pear farm on a hill overlooking the Satsop River. He planted his first tree in the 15-foot-thick topsoil only four years ago, but he’s become one of the area’s most successful farmers of unique fruits.

Jones harvested his crop about two weeks ago. He grows such varieties as Chojurro, 20th Century, Hosui and New Century. “I never remember the names myself,” he says, chuckling. “They’re all interesting tastes. I’ll tell you, you can’t get a finer, tastier fruit anywhere else.”

Jones figures he’ll harvest about 5,000 pounds of Asian pears this year, compared to only 400 pounds last year.

Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom