Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

August 4, 2011

Former Waitsburg resident Adam Hermanns, who pleaded guilty earlier this week to armed robbery and residential burglary, was sentenced to 13 ½ years in prison, the maximum term possible under state sentencing guidelines.

Jillian Beaudry, an editor and reporter for the Daily World in Aberdeen, Wash, will become the new managing editor for the Times based in Waitsburg, the newspaper’s publisher announced Monday. She will replace Dian McClurg, the previous managing editor who left the paper in May.

Celebrate the grand opening of the Coppei Coffee Co. shop at 137 Main, Waitsburg. The gourmet coffee shop will offer its ice cream and door prizes 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

[Photo caption] Waitsburg car enthusiast Herb Meddler with his 1952 Ford Pickup. Meddler organizes the swap meet with the town’s Classic Auto Show.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

July 20, 1995

Waitsburg High School has a new football coach. The hiring of Bob Bandy, a spring graduate of Eastern Washington University, is expected to be approved by the school board in Waitsburg next week.

Volunteers, once again, saved the Waitsburg School District money. This time the green was saved after about 45 people last weekend helped dig trenches and install lawn sprinklers at the elementary school and junior high school.

Nighttime driving on Highway 12 between Waitsburg and Walla Walla, especially at the curves, has been made a whole lot safer with the installation of reflectors on the road surface. At midnight, it’s like following an illuminated line, which clearly divides the road into your side and theirs. Thank you Department of Transportation.

Where’s Waldo? We asked in a headline in last week’s paper. Well, if you read the story on Page 1 and then flipped to Page 8 to read the “jump” or conclusion of the story, Waldo wasn’t on Page 8. We left it out of the paper.

Fifty Years Ago

July 30, 1970

Waitsburg received $5,778 in grants from the U.S. Office of Education it was announced by Sen. Henry M. Jackson this week. The grants made to federally affected areas of the State of Washington, totalled $1,272,670.

The Waitsburg firemen answered a call at 3 o’clock Thursday afternoon to a wheat fire on the John Speer Anderson ranch on Lower Waitsburg Road. Assistance also came from trucks stationed at Dixie as well as the Huntington-Cummings water truck. The fire burned into the Klassen land on the Middle Waitsburg road destroying an undetermined amount of wheat.

Max W. Peterson, 54, Prescott farmer, who disappeared May 31 in the Riggins, Idaho area near where he had been developing a gold mine for several years, apparently was killed by a bear. He was found in a wooded area 70 miles east of Riggins.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

August 3, 1945

The hot, dry weather of the past two weeks has been ideal for harvest operations. Farmers report a below average crop due to hot north winds in June.

Progress is being rapidly made on the new bus depot, comfort station, and lunch room in the K. P. Building on Preston Avenue.

Reductions of one to two red points of beef, lamb and veal during the rationing period beginning July 29 were announced by the Office Price Administration.

One Hundred Years Ago

August 6, 1920

The Waitsburg Republican Club was organized in this city Thursday evening pursuant to a call for public meeting by the temporary committee appointed some days ago.

Twenty-six different wars are going on in four of the six continents of the world today, more than a year after the peace treaty, which was to end all war, was signed.

Mrs. Oscar Abbey entertained at her country home in honor of Idell Purvis, whose marriage to Lewis Atkinson will take place soon. The party was in the nature of a miscellaneous shower and some 18 of her young lady friends were present.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

August 9, 1895

Mrs. P. M. Tucker and daughter Theresa spent Monday with Mrs. H. L. Hines in her palace hotel on the summit between Coppei and Dry Creek.

Miss Lora Mills will teach a four-month term of school in the Long District commencing the first Monday in September.

Many farmers in this part of the country will be finished with their harvest and threshing by the end of the present week.

The Inland Telephone Co. this week had a force of men at work putting in an exchange in this city. Connections were made with Washington Mills, The Times, Rose Glen Farm, C. W. Wheeler’s residence, the depots, Dr. Butler’s residence, the J. H. Mercantile Co., and the Hamilton & Rourke Co.