July 1982
Leonard, a young man who uses the last name Christ “because we’re all the spiritual brothers of Christ,” passed through Westbrook on his way West. Leonard says he has been a “traveling Christian” for the past two years, roaming the country barefoot, “living in the image and likeness of Christ, as a representation of the spiritual armor of Christ.” He says he belongs to the “Christ Family,” or the Brothers and Sisters of Christ,” a group of Christians on the road year round in faith.
Margery Charleston and Jane Hawkes made their plans to retire from Westbrook High School with several assurances that if they waited until June 1982, they would get a retirement stipend. They waited, but they didn’t get it. With 31 years of service between them, it meant filing an application by Dec. 31, 1980, which they did. But the
superintendent’s office and school committee politely informed them that since they hadn’t worked all the way to retirement age and had retired early, they were not eligible.
A sharp split in thinking over whether recall must be included in, or merely considered, for a new Gorham town charter emerged in the first charter hearing. Jerry J. Larrabee, a resident of Sebago Lake Road, proposed that the charter commission give the Gorham Town Council authority over a 27-line-item school department budget. Additionally,
he recommended that a form of district representation be written into the charter.
At least one dealer apiece has dropped the price of fuel oil and gasoline. Paul’s Oil cut fuel oil from $1.089 to $1.069. Oasis cut regular gas to $1.159.
Someone is ready to buy two acres in the path of the Larrabee Road extension and three additional acres are up for sale, but the city can buy it first if it acts fast, Mayor William O’Gara told the Westbrook City Council. He has been urging the council to buy the land for a future highway before it gets built on and too expensive. Aldermen had refused to borrow $655,000 including $100,000 for the Larrabee Road land.
More than 150 persons want to be Westbrook’s next police chief. Their applications are being reviewed and the number narrowed down, Mayor William O’Gara has reported to the city council. “I’ll be asking the council president to eventually decide how to make the selection,” O’Gara said.
As a result of requests by the Gorham Town Council and Zoning Appeals Board, the Gorham Planning Board has had the town planner draw up an amendment to allow mobile vending units as a special exception in the Roadside Commercial District. Mark Eyerman, the planner, said the number of mobile vendors in own has been growing but there aren’t clear-cut rules for them.
August 1992
A fed-up Mayor Fred Wescott announced that he is ordering
a foot-beat police patrolman in downtown Westbrook. Destruction of the ornamental gazebo on the city lot next to he John Hay funeral home apparently triggered the order, but Wescott said he had been thinking and talking about it earlier. Several aldermen praised the mayor’s announcement.
The Gorham School Building Committee wants Gorham voters to decide whether the town should add nearly $2 million of its own money to the nearly $10 million promised by the state to rebuild and expand Gorham High School. The town’s extra $1,957,700 would provide more auditorium seats, an all-weather track, regulation soccer and field hockey fields, a third and fourth tennis court, a cable TV studio and a new heating system to replace the failing one now in place.
A 90-year-old AJ reader recently observed to us, looking forward to the year 2000, “I’d like to reach out into that new century and touch it. It’s going to be very exciting, you wait and see. Every century begins that way – much different. The end of an old century is always tired and decadent.”
Westbrook’s Cornerstone Restaurant specials this week are roast turkey dinner with all the fixn’s; roast pork, apple sauce, mashed potato, vegetable; or chicken supreme, all white meat in a nice supreme sauce with veggies over a biscuit, rice, at $4.95. Their famous fish fry – all you can eat – $4.50. Fishermen’s Net is selling half-pound lobsters for $3.59 a pound.
Bob Frazier asked the town clerk, superintendent and school business manager who was responsible for the Robie Park. He was told that there used to be a Robie Park Commission, but that it was defunct. With no one in town government able to tell him who was in charge of it, Frazier, Gorham Land Trust member, took charge of it himself -removing several dead and dangerous trees there.
After years if planning and debate the Gorham Town Council has decided to follow the Little Falls sewer problem to its source. The council decided to allocate $25,000 to do the preliminary work needed to rejuvenate the system.
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