June 29, 1994
It won’t take long for Gorham’s new town planner, Debbie Fossum, to get a feel for the lay of the land. Up until last year, she was Gorham’s assistant town planner. After a year as planner for Old Orchard Beach, she has returned to Gorham and is replacing Jay Grande, who left in April to become city planner for Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Kenneth Lefebvre took office as Westbrook’s mayor Monday night, and then the drama began. It ended with Arnold Gaudet Jr. winning Lefebvre’s alderman-at-large seat, 4-2, and James Garland winning Lefebvre’s City Council president seat, 4-2-1.
Fred Stuart of Westbrook learned how to swim at age 5 after his grandmother bought the family a pool. Twelve years later, Stuart is a state swimming champion for Westbrook High School, on his way to Drexel University in the fall on a full swimming scholarship. He first swam competitively at age 13 on Westbrook Junior High School’s swim team. Stuart said he’s looking forward to attending Drexel, where he’ll study architectural engineering.
Another national TV show is interested in the story of Nicole Waterhouse, 6, of Westbrook and her encounter with Faces International, talent boosters. Nicole went to New York Monday at the request of and expense of the Sally Jessy Raphael show. The segment was taped for broadcast the first week of August. Nicole’s previous national exposure came on “Hard Copy,” on CBS. That show helped push Faces into bankruptcy court, according to Nicole’s mother, Carol Waterhouse. She said Faces took $4,150 of her money to promote Nicole as a photographer’s model but never put out the book that was suppose to carry her picture and story. Nicole’s modeling career is temporarily on hold while she recovers from treatment of two tumors on her arm, her mother said.
From the Gorham Police Log: Someone changed the letters around on the Community Service bulletin board in front of Robie Gym. The new words were expletives.
June 30, 2004
A foreign correspondent for The Times of London is writing a story about Westbrook that will focus on how people in small-town America are responding to the war in Iraq. Janine Di Giovanni was in Westbrook a couple weeks ago for several days for the piece, which will appear in the newspaper’s magazine. The story of Larry Roukey, an Army reservist killed in Iraq in April, drew her to Westbrook. “He just seemed like a regular guy, a guy everyone knew,” she said. While she was in the city, she spoke with Roukey’s friends, family and coworkers, as well as other families with members serving in Iraq. She also spoke with residents who were out walking or eating at Olivia’s Restaurant on Brown Street, and attended a Flag Day ceremony in Riverbank Park. She said she was emotional watching the veterans of each of the U.S. wars and was moved to tears at the singing of “God Bless America.”
The Westbrook City Council overrode a veto from Mayor Bruce Chuluda Monday, who was attempting to salvage the pay-per-bag trash program as part of the budget. The mayoral veto, which hadn’t been used in years, came as a surprise to councilors and led to some heated exchanges. But the veto was quickly overridden by a 5-2 vote, preserving the $45.9 million budget approved last week.
Plans for an $8 million sports complex in Gorham got a cool reception from the Town Council during a workshop earlier this month, as they questioned the need for the facility. The proposal would put athletic fields at the Chick property near the Narragansett School, and would upgrade the fields at the middle and high schools. “I am struggling to reconcile it with our capital improvement plan. I can’t think of how Gorham would fund such a proposition,” said Councilor Burleigh Loveitt. School Committee members said this week they expect the plan will be modified.
Gorham police have joined fire officials in their investigation of a fire that destroyed the barn at the historic Mosher farm earlier this month. Sgt. Ken Grimes, an investigator with the Maine Fire Marshal’s Office, declined to comment on the cause of the fire while the investigation was still going on. Gorham detectives Dana Thompson and Mike Coffin are assisting with the probe. Property ower Albert Erlon Mosher said he plans to build a 40-by-70-foot dome structure as a barn replacement, serving as hay storage.
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