Looking Back on April 11

100 Years Ago: 1920

Will dancing at Bates College be permitted in the near future? This is a question that for some little time has been the foundation of much speculation and discussion within the academic halls, under the shadow of Mt. David. Many a time during the winter students have gathered in different rooms and offered their pros and cons on the question, and both in the classroom and in some of the many societies it has been a tradition as old as the college itself, has been due to many different reasons. In the first place, Bates was for a long time a Baptist institution, and altho it has been non-sectarian for a number of years, still many of the old Baptist principles remain.

50 Years Ago: 1970

This year the ELHS Junior Class, advised by Mrs. Trudy Hodgdon of the EL. faculty, is selling sesquicentennial cookbooks as a class project. The money raised by this project will be used toward the Senior Banquet. Kirk Rogers, Vice-President of the Junior class, with Sheila Gurney assisting, are in charge of the project. Three hundred books were circulated among Junior class members with about one half of them sold at present.

25 Years Ago: 1995

Read, read, read! That was the message Mary Herman gave youngsters morning at Harrison Elementary School when she read two children’s books to 20 attentive 5-,6-,and 7-year-olds. Herman, wife of Gov. Angus King, is one of 36 to 40 business leaders, SAD 17 Board of Education members, and Maine writers and performers who are trying to instill a love of reading in children during the school’s first Spring into Reading and Writing Week. “You guys really sat still and listened so carefully,” Herman told the youngsters as she read “Rabbits New Rug. “The most important thing is to keep coming to school and reading and writing,” she said following the presentation. Herman said she often reads to her own children, Benjamin, age 5, and Molly, age 1 1/2. “I feel very, very strongly about reading to children.

The material used in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors may be corrected.