100 Years Ago: 1922

Stores report unusually good business for last week, especially for the Saturday preceding Easter Sunday. Threatening skies Saturday declined to have deterred many people from purchasers, and buying after Easter Sunday is brisker than the same time last year.

50 Years Ago: 1972

Normand Blais, proprietor of Blais’ Flower Shop, will present a talk and  demonstration on floral arranging before members of the JC Wives when they meet Wednesday evening at 7:30 at the Samson School of Majorettes on Main Street, Auburn. Mrs. Roland Champagne will be hostess and following the business session and program, refreshments will be served.

25 Years Ago: 1997

It’s over. The fight for ownership of the late Bernard McLaughlin’s Garden and estate in Paris is expected to end Friday when an order of eviction is served on his son, Richard Tribou McLaughlin, who says he won’t be there to accept it. McLaughlin, 60  said he was going to finish packing his personal possessions Thursday night and leave the 3.5-acre property, which includes a two story Colonial house and a barn. He will live at his home in Greenwood, where he has transplanted some of the hundreds of species of perennials his father left him in a verbal agreement before his death in 1995. The house and land were to be sold and the proceeds divided among his son, three sisters and three Maine charities. The spry man with shaggy hair said he would miss the garden his father cultivated from a hayfield over 60 years into one of the largest private Perennial collections on the East Coast. But he won’t miss the fight over the estate, he said. I’ve gone through three divorces McLaughlin said Thursday, “and this is the fourth, I guess. And it’s been the hardest.” Bernard McLaughlin’s only son is a member of the Mclaughlin Garden Preservation Committee, which faced off against The McLaughlin Foundation to buy the estate and establish an educational foundation. The McLaughlin Foundation submitted a $200,000 bid to buy the land last year and last Thursday, the estate’s personal representative, John Jennes, successfully argued in 11th District Court for a writ of possession to force McLaughlin off the land. Last month McLaughlin said he was fully prepared to fight to maintain his claim on the garden, but after the court hearing, is resigned that he won’t win. “I’m trying to throw a stone at city hall,” McLaughlin said, and is now ready to give up. I’m just going to live off the land and watch the world go by” from Greenwood, McLaughlin said.

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

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