June 15, 1983
A typical papermaker at the S.D. Warren mill in Westbrook will get $8.83 an hour under the contract that settled the strike Saturday. The company declined to say how much the new contract would cost it. However, taking $8.83 as the average wage, pay increases to the papermakers alone will be about $1,143,000 the first year and $1 million more the second year. Fringe benefits, and also raises and benefits for other workers, will raise the costs. A typical worker gains 50 cents an hour this year and 44 cents more next year.
Westbrook police notes: At the request Portland police, the Rescue Unit went to 142 Wayside Drive, Portland, for a man with a severed tongue. A 14-year-old boy, suspended from high school, told his dad he wasn’t coming home. Someone dropped a stink bomb in a Westbrook High School hallway at 1 p.m. Principal Richard Getchell asked for police and firemen. Mrs. Weymouth, 98 Hamlet Coach Park, said her son found a large, brown, tame chicken on Saco Street. No one recognized it. She said she’d take it to the Animal Refuge League if it were still there in the morning. Bradlees’ security officer arrested a man for shoplifting a $40 camera. He noticed the man was working with a lookout, and arrested the lookout on an outstanding Portland warrant charging indecent exposure. At 11 a.m., a mother said her daughter had skipped school and now wouldn’t let her into her own apartment.
Only one citizen, Judy Francoeur, was in the room when the Westbrook School Committee held its public hearing Monday on its 1983-84 budget. The committee adopted the budget with no change, on a 6-0 vote, and said it would present it to the City Council Monday.
Of the 915,000 men who have been members of Rotary International around the world since it started in 1905, just 113 have gone to a Rotary meeting every week for 50 years. Last week, the 114th joined their ranks. He is John W. Hay of Westbrook. Hay, a funeral director and subject to call any minute, joined the Rotary Club on June 6, 1933. Fifty years later, on June 7, 1983, he was honored at a special meeting of the Westbrook Rotary Club in Verrillo’s Restaurant, held in recognition of the fact he never has missed a week of Rotary.
June 16, 1993
Principal William Michaud wants beepers, or pagers, banned from Westbrook High School, and warns that they “can be used for criminal activity.” Michaud didn’t spell out what kind of criminal activity he meant. Michael Belanger, manager of the Radio Shack store at Pine Tree Shopping Center, who sells the devices at about $50, said the criminal activity almost certainly would be the sale of narcotics. A person at a New England Telephone dials the number of the beeper, then typically records a message in 10 seconds. Some beepers display the caller’s number. The beeper owner pushes a button at his or her convenience to retrieve the message.
Little League baseball is booming in Westbrook, and urgently needs the third Bridge Street field the Planning Board OK’d last year, said George Apt, president. All three of the Joseph A. Warren Fields still are in use at the same time five nights a week, Apt said, and at the same time there could be games at four other Little League fields in other parts of the city. Parking and traffic were principal concerns as the planners looked at the Little League plans. In the end they called for a fence along the Bridge Street line, and also for fences to keep kids from crossing through the property of people on Graham Road, who have the Little League over their back fence.
“Our newspaper press was years in arriving,” said Raymond Foote. “What had been long a dream recently became a reality, and this new era of American journalism feels great to all of us,” he said. Getting the paper a press was an early goal of publisher Harry T. Foote, who came to the paper in 1965. Most of the years since then have included work, thought and planning toward its attainment. Back then, a press looked almost impossible because of the small budget of the paper and the enormity of the undertaking – not to mention the need for a large plant. Even today, he said, with a much larger American Journal than in 1965, setting up such a printing plant was nearly un-doable. “But the May 5 issue was printed by us right here at 4 Dana St., Westbrook, as every issue since has been,” he said.
A Gorham man who lives at 173 Main St., the house where two
people were arrested recently for selling drugs and giving liquor to minors, claims police are harassing tenants there. Police deny the charge and cite the number of complaints they get as reasons for going to the village apartment house, owned by Peter and Roberta Erskine of Portland. Troy Nason, a resident, said he believes the police pick on the house because it is conveniently located on Main Street. Robert Keene Anson said he has only lived in the house a couple of months, and police are harassing him and other tenants because of what previous occupants have done. “It makes it sound like a drug house and we are child molesters,” he said, referring to a statement police Chief Ed Tolan made in last week’s American Journal about a 15-year-old runaway girl staying at the house. Tolan’s response was, “We wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t take an active role in trying to reduce the amount of problems and stop the illegal activities at this apartment house.”
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