100 Years Ago: 1918

Vernon Stiles will conduct the first rehearsal of the Lewiston-Auburn Community Chorus in Lewiston City Hall Thursday evening at 7:30. The Orpheon Society will be present in a body to lead the men’s section, and every man in Lewiston-Auburn is cordially invited to sing. “Never mind whether you think you can sing or not,” says Mr. Stiles. “Come and I’ll make you sing.” The chorus will make its first appearance at the State Fair on War Day and the State Fair Management is looking forward to introducing to Central Maine the largest community chorus in the state. A thousand voices! That means that there will have to be 500 basses and tenors to balance the women’s voices already entered in the chorus.

50 Years Ago: 1968

Members of the Women’s Fellowship of the East Auburn Baptist Church were entertained Monday evening at the summer cottage of Mrs. Roger Marshall at Bear Pond. During the evening the group traveled to North Turner where they attended a service at Camp Berea, at which Rev. Mr. Roberts of Canada was the featured speaker. This was the group’s final meeting for the summer.

25 Years Ago: 1993

The newsroom was a noisier, smokier, low-tech environment years ago. The stories contained more flowery prose. But the basic process of covering the news — interviewing, writing and editing — hasn’t changed much in the Sun’s 100-year history. “The way we produce the news is the same now; the technology has changed,” acknowledged A. Kent Foster, former Sun city editor, and Sun-Journal executive editor. A big thing that has changed over the years is the reporter’s perspective. In the Sun’s early history, reporters weren’t subtle about commenting on the news of the day. Their opinions were also anonymous, as bylines were rare until the last few decades. A front page story in the Sun’s first year, 1847, began with “The game of ball between the Bates and State college team was not baseball at all, but simply a travesty upon the national game.”

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