100 Years Ago: 1924

An article for September 28, 1924 is unavailable, an article from September 28, 1923 is  offered instead. 

Turner has been famous for its Solon Chase, the great Greenbacker of Maine and candidate for President; for its Turner Center Creamery which has grown and spread itself all over New England; and for its present new plan for a centennial fund that will multiply, through compounded interest until it is a small fortune in 2023.

Turner, in this endeavor, is great because of its willingness to forgo for itself the dollars in hand today for the benefits to be derived by its progeny in a distant tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it is inviting its friends to send with their contributions – some message of reminiscence or forecast which will be sealed in an iron box not to be opened and read until fifty years hence and again in an hundred years.

50 Years Ago: 1974

A new meeting season opened this week for members of Junior Girl Scout Troop 301 at the home of Mrs. Normand Lecomte, Beckett Street, Lewiston.

Highlighting the session was the naming of patrols and the selection of leaders:
Patrol One, Sigie and the Greenie Weeds, will be led by Anne Ouellette with Diane Sirois as assistant leader.
Patrol Two, The Ice Cream Cones, Celine Bouchard, leader, and Elaine Landry, assistant. Patrol Three, Chubby Checkers, Lisa Rioux, leader, Sandy Beaudoin, assistant. Patrol Four, Fried Chickens, Cheryl Labbe, leader, and Rita Mathieu, assistant.
Anne Ouellette was named treasurer and Diane Sirois, scribe.
Mrs. Norman Couture is the troop leader and Mrs. George Bouchard, the assistant leader.

Plans were discussed for a trip to the Boothbay Harbor region in the near future.

25 Years Ago: 1999

Residents of the area near Mere Point in Brunswick remember the exciting day 75 years ago when the first planes to fly around the world came swooping out of the sky for an unexpected pitstop on their way to Boston.

“It was just terribly exciting,” said Jack Riley, who was a 16-year-old boy on his way home from a fishing trip with his dad when he saw the planes.

It was a surprise, unexpected role for Maine in the historic flight, made in the days before routine air flights by aircraft that had to refuel more than 50 times in the 176-day trip.

Historians note that the flight, made just 21 years after the Wright brothers first flew 120 feet, stretched the imagination in the same way as the first manned moon landing 45 years later.

“For the people of the day it probably had just as big an impact,” said Daren Banfield, aircraft curator at the Owls Head Transportation Museum.

It was such a source of pride for Mainers that Gov. Percival P. Baxter ordered that the landing be commemorated by a bronze plaque that is still affixed to a granite boulder about 200 yards from where the plane landed.

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