100 years ago, 1916
Though the city of Auburn voted to construct permanent paving from Vernon and Turner streets to Dennison street bridge, thus completing the Auburn loop of the Figure Eight, it said that the work will not be done this year because of the railroad’s inability to get the new girder rails. A petition, signed by F. E. Tainter and others, asking for a sidewalk on the west side of Turner street is now in circulation.

50 years ago, 1966
(Photo Caption) Shown is an aerial view of the former Western Maine Sanitorium in Hebron now managed as a State forest by the Maine Forest Service. Formal dedication and tours will be held at the eighth annual forestry field day to be held here sponsored by the Maine Forest Products Council on August 20.

25 years ago, 1991
Laurent Rivard, 70, was at 130 Oxford St., Lewiston, by 9 a.m. Friday — a whole hour before the open house began — taking pictures of the house his father built and he himself was born in and lived in for 65 years. By 10 a.m. the street and sidewalk in front of the Little Canada house in were crowded with the state, city and social-agency officials who made the house what it is today — a spacious, shining collection of eight apartments for low-income families. Rivard gave them a one-sentence speech. “I want to thank you for saving my father’s building,” he said. The four-story structure was renovated by Community Concepts, a community-action agency, using some of its own money and even more from the Maine State Housing Authority. “I was born in that room there,” Rivard said, pointing to a first-floor window. “When I saw it boarded up (some time back) I thought it would be like this one,” he said, pointing this time to the empty lot behind him, a parking lot today.

The material in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors made at that time may be edited.