100 Years Ago: 1918

Labor Day proved the most profitable day of the year for a Rumford man who found a freshwater pearl somewhere in Oxford, which is now on display in that town, valued at $150.

50 Years Ago: 1968

Gov. Curtis announced the formation of a Maine Rural Youth Corps, the first of its kind in the nation, and appointed George R. Ezzy, a 30-year-old Van Buren native, as director. The program is funded for one year by the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Labor Department, and the OEO director, Herbert S. Sperry, estimated the cost at about $125,000. Curtis told a regular news conference that Maine young people, chiefly but not necessarily, exclusively from poor families, will be asked and encouraged to identify their own problems and work out ways to solve them. This may lead to all kinds of activities, some of which could come under existing programs in education, health, job training and other fields. “We hope it will be a model enterprise is the beginning of what will be a model in the development of young people from rural who are being committed to a half-life by poverty,” the governor said. He predicted that by hiring more than 1,000 young people they will be involved in community service projects they themselves will have generated “The Rural Youth Corps will be dedicated to the proposition that young people can contribute, can respond to real problems and can work toward their successful solutions,” Curtis said.

25 Years Ago: 1993

The fall season, as it was a hundred years ago, will be celebrated Saturday and Sunday as Autumn Festival is held at the Norlands Living History Center. Hours will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Attractions will include watching the two-horse treadmill provide power to the thresher, tossing in apples to make cider, taking hayrides and tours and enjoying fine food. In the mansion, tourists will find that the ceiling in the main hall has been completed and artist Tony Castro is now working on one of the upstairs bedrooms. Presiding over the “Historical Kitchen-Alive” will be Willi Irish. Here activities of a typical farmer’s kitchen of the l870s will be in full swing. Visitors are encouraged to stay as long as they wish but shouldn’t be surprised if they are put to work by the busy housewife. Animals will be available in and around the barn, the treadmill will be set up in the church parking lot, separating the grain from the stalks, and tours of the school, mansion, library, and church are available. A noon meal is available by reservation at 897-4366 and other foods will be for sale in the food booth.

The material in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared in the Sun Journal, except for any errors or corrections made at that time.