Oct. 19, 1983
At least 28 boys and girls were suspended in four (or more) sports at Westbrook High School last week for drinking beer at a party at a Constitution Drive home Oct. 7 that attracted an estimated 200. They were suspended only from playing in one game each in football, soccer and field hockey, and one meet in cross-country. Superintendent Edward F. Connolly will talk with the School Committee and the public at a meeting to be called in November about the schools, drinking and sports. He appeared this week to be most disturbed about the apathetic reaction of the public to last week’s suspensions. “I got a letter from a parent who said we were tougher last year. As far as public response is concerned, that was it. I get the feeling that people are saying, ‘So what?’ And yet it’s against the law for kids to drink,” he said. Half of the high school football squad of 28 were suspended for the Portland game Saturday and the game was canceled. The whole season of the junior varsity football already had been canceled due to the small size of the squad. Eight players were suspended from the soccer team’s game. In that
game, heavily favored Westbrook was held to a 3-3 tie by South
Portland, which has won only one game all season.
Reasonably Yours, clothing and furniture store at 826 Main St. in
downtown Westbrook, was purchased Wednesday by Marion Grant, North Windham. Mrs. Grant has just returned to Maine after living in California and Florida. She has been a legal secretary and has business experience in automobile appraisals. She plans to continue the business as it has been conducted, offering both new and used clothing and new furniture. She is a cousin of Alberta Austin Westbrook, who founded Reasonably
Yours in October 1981, and who sold the business to Mrs. Grant.
The fun of mud running is that it tests your mechanical skills.
Take it from Gorham friends James Warren and Andrew Faulkner, who have been doing it for years. “We’ve finally got something that don’t break,” said Warren, as the two proudly pointed out the heavy under-parts of Warren’s ’75 Blazer. They’re from a 1945, ton-and-a-half Army truck. Faulkner also runs mud holes in a Chevy Blazer, but the under-parts are Chevy’s 3/4-ton construction and “it’s real easy to break an axle” with such lighter stuff. Both have lifted the bodies high off the wheels, installed oversize springs, “jazzed up” the Chevy engines and laid out $300 a tire for their fat, 40-inch “Monster mudders.”
Oct. 20, 1993
Fred Porell called on the Westbrook City Council Monday to delay
action on the pay of Jeffrey Grossman, the new administrative
assistant to the mayor, until after the Nov. 2 election, saying the
outcome of the mayor’s race is “not a foregone conclusion.” He said that if he is elected mayor, he wants to “determine what the
needs are for my office.” Aldermen voted 6-0, however, to confirm
Grossman’s pay at $1,000 a week with benefits running to about $23,000 a year. It was a final second-reading vote. Grossman is to start work Nov. 8, the Monday after the election, in a six-month probationary
period.
Mayor Fred C. Wescott read this statement to the Westbrook City
Council Monday evening: “This evening my message to you will be
solely on my health. I want to try and squelch some of the rumors that you may have heard and be up front with you as to what happened to me and what the prognosis is. First of all, what at first was diagnosed as a slight stroke was not. After further testing it was discovered that I have a small, slow-growing tumor on the outside of my right lung. This in turn has spawned three small tumors clustered together on the surface of my
brain. The prognosis is that according to my doctors, all of these tumors can be controlled or eradicated with radiology which I am scheduled to start shortly. There is nothing so wrong that I will not be able to function as Mayor so I have made the decision to remain a candidate for that position.”
The Westbrook School Committee took the advice of Hugh MacMahon, its lawyer, and began Wednesday to vote twice on purchases over $1,000. Lionel Dumond, Westbrook alderman who pressed for the change to two votes, was present for the meeting, and said it was “the most enjoyable I’ve been to in several months.”
Westbrook’s School Committee voted 6-0 to add three pages of
clarification and procedure to its policy on handling of controversial issues in school classes. When parents complain about what their children are taught, they are to talk first to “selected staff,” then to the principal, then to the
superintendent, and finally to the School Committee.If they object to “an entire curriculum area,” they are to submit a
plan for a home or other outside instruction. Superintendent Edward Connolly said he recalls only one such complaint in the
last two for three years. “When it does come it’s very emotional,
he said. If the student is under 18, we acquiesce,” he said. “If the material is objectionable to the parents we just say OK. Students who are 18 make their own decisions.”
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