June 8, 1983
The newspaper business is a strong, profitable and growing, Walter Mattson, president of the New York Times Corp., told a Westbrook College audience Saturday. Mattson was a guest at the 30th class reunion of his wife, the former Geraldine Horsman, Presumpscot Cove, North Windham. They became engaged 30 years ago Saturday. Matson himself graduated from Portland Junior College that same year, 1953. Any popular impression that newspapers are losing ground in the United States is based on the disappearance of many metropolitan newspapers, he said. “What’s happening is that people started moving out to the suburbs after World War II,” Mattson said. “Pretty soon business moved out, too, and newspapers moved to the suburbs along with them. Some of the largest newspapers in the United States surround New York City. So they’ve gone out of business in the city but they’re growing in the suburbs.”
Westbrook may go back next year to “flunking” children, says new Superintendent Edward F. Connolly. Connolly was discussing the job ahead of him after his election Wednesday by the School Committee. “We went through an era in the public education in which we said, ‘Kids don’t, fail, schools do,”‘ he said. “But there are kids who just do not work. They tend to think it’s their right to come and not to do anything. Some of those kids are in for an awful surprise. That freeride is over.” Report cards that gave grades 1, 2 and 3 are going out, and last year Westbrook returned to A, B, C, D, F grades, Connolly said. “Beginning next year, we may hold back students if they can’t pass their reading and other subject courses,” he said. This is in compliance with a new state policy, which also requires competency testing at Grades 4,8 and 11.
Valerie C. Brinkman, 50 Flag Road, Gorham, has won the 1983 Alice Merrill Mitchell Prize, awarded to the Bowdoin College senior who shows the “most skill in the art of acting.” Miss Brinkman, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Carl Brinkman, majored in English and was on the dean’s list. She graduated Waynflete. The prize, which carries a small cash award, was established in 1951 by Professor Wilmot Brookings Mitchell of the class of 1890 in memory of his wife.
June 9, 1993
Peter Deckle, 37, of Walton Street, Westbrook, administrative assistant to Westbrook’s mayors since October 1989, has resigned and will become New England regional sales manager for the cellular telephone company Cellular One in Westbrook, working under Kenneth Lefebvre, vice president and general manager. Lefebvre is president of the Westbrook City Council and was acting administrative assistant for the months when Deckle was being recruited and hired by the city to succeed Marti Blair. (Blair also stayed in the job four years.) “It’s kind of unusual to hire the same man twice for two different jobs,” said Lefebvre. Deckel is making $52,416 a year plus fringe benefits of several thousand dollars. He did not get a city raise last year, but might this year if he were staying.
The new principal of Gorham High School doesn’t have to move far for the job – Steve Rogers is already assistant principal there. Rogers, 32, accepted that job in November and now he will replace Gunnar Hagstrom as principal as of July 1. He will be paid $50,655. Rogers came to Gorham from Portland High School, where he was assistant principal from 1988 to 1992. He said the past month has been amazing. He got the new job, his second daughter was born, and he found out that Portland High School students dedicated the 1993 yearbook to him.
Westbrook Police should have stayed out of any investigation of the erasing of the tape of a March 29 City Council committee meeting, Alderman Don Richards wrote last week to Police Chief Ronald Allanache. State police or the district attorney’s office could have been called in, “if the department had any concerns” about the tape, he wrote. Action of the Finance Committee, which he heads, on the police budget is completely unrelated to the tape, he wrote.
D&G Marine Products Inc., formerly at 179 Front St., South Portland, is a new business in Westbrook. It moved a few weeks ago to Eisenhower Drive in Five Star Industrial Park, Mayor Fred Wescott told the City Council Monday. D & G employs about 60 in machine shop and welding fabrication, working with paper mills and high tech industries, said Beverly Gushee. The company had been in South Portland since its founding 25 years ago. It’s plant there is under lease now and for sale.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
