B1
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2020
THE ASTORIAN
• TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2020
•
B1
WATER UNDER
THE BRIDGE
COMPILED BY BOB DUKE
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2010
L
isten to Warrenton High School senior Joanna
Dodson talk about fi sh and you’ll learn a bit
about what it takes to look after a slew of them
for a whole year. She and her classmates have spent the
year scrubbing, feeding and working seven days a week
— nurturing their own share of tiny salmon babies until
they’re ready to survive on their own.
Though the salmon’s spring departure marks the
end of Dodson’s work with fi sh for now, she’s learned
to love coming to the concrete building perched on the
Skipanon River right next to the high school.
“I took a lot of pride in my coho,” she said last
week, looking over the tubs that spring with brackish
water piped in from the river.
The school’s fi sheries class is a hands-on proj-
ect that allows students to raise fi sh from eggs, learn
about their migration patterns and understand what it
might take to get them to return to the Skipanon.
You can’t miss the deep rose-colored house
at 1064 Harrison Ave. Actually, the paint
color is Old Claret, Roger Johnson explained
Friday, as the house fairly glowed in the sun-
light. Johnson and his partner, Bob Girrard,
took the local landmark from shabby to gor-
geous after purchasing it in 2001. Their hand-
iwork was recognized Monday with the 2010
Dr. Edward Harvey Historic Preservation
Award in the r esidential d ivision.
In the c ommercial d ivision, the 2010 Har-
vey a ward went to Mitch Mitchum and Rose-
marie Paavola, of Luottamus Partners, for
restoring the Sanborn Building at 951-957
Commercial St. The downtown building was
severely damaged in the 2008 Thanksgiving
fi re.
Warrenton High School student Joanna Dodson, left, gets a laugh as classmate Tyler Porter scoops out dead coho and fall
Chinook in order to reclaim tiny passive integrated transponders, or pit tags, before releasing the fi sh into the Skipanon
River in 2010.
So few people are traveling by air from Astoria to
Portland and back that SeaPort Airlines is cutting back
the number of daily fl ights.
Effective June 1, the airline will offer two fl ights a
day instead of three. An additional fl ight will be added
to the daily Portland to Newport route.
John Lansing, representing the airline, gave details
to the Port of Astoria Commission Tuesday night. He
also said the company is switching planes from the
Pilatus PC-12 to a Cessna Caravan as a cost-saving
measure. The new plane is also a nine-seater, but the
passenger cabin is not pressurized during fl ights.
50 years ago — 1970
Two ships were idle at the Port of Astoria this morn-
ing, another left over the weekend, and still another
remained anchored in the Columbia River, awaiting
berthage, as longshoremen here and in other Colum-
bia River and Oregon coastal ports continued indefi -
nitely stop-work meetings stemming from a jurisdic-
tional dispute in Portland.
Approximately 4,000 longshoremen from North-
west and California ports met in Longview, Washing-
ton Saturday and voted b y unanimous action to invoke
a grieved port procedure for every port in the area.
A leader of Friday night’s “Peace in Cam-
bodia” rally in Astoria said today he was
“gratifi ed by the large attendance” — some
350 persons who gathered at Gyro Field.
Gene McIntyre said he thought “This large
group expressed considerable interest in
the Clatsop area regarding immediate pull-
out from Cambodia.” He said the response
to remarks about the scheduled shipment
of nerve gas to Eastern Oregon was “grave
interest.”
LEFT: Roger Johnson and Bob Girrard’s house at 1064 Harrison Ave. early in their restoration eff ort in 2002. RIGHT: Roger
Johnson and Bob Girrard received the Dr. Edward Harvey Historic Preservation Award in the residential division in 2010
for restoring their home built around 1880.
Construction West works on construction of a new road from Battery Russell to the South Jetty at the Columbia River
entrance in 1970.
For theatergoers enjoying lighthearted farce, “Arse-
nic and Old Lace,” performed last weekend and sched-
uled for this weekend at the Lewis and Clark Civic
Theater, is a success.
Audience response was enthusiastic Saturday eve-
ning when more than 80 persons viewed the merry
farce about murder and mercy-killing.
The director is Bunny Doar, of Seaside.
What creates an entertaining dramatic experience
out of a superfi cial, dated and meaningless plot are the
funny lines, a series of artifi cial surprises (experienced
by the actors, not the audience) and the relatively fi ne
acting of the 14 persons who devoted two months of
rehearsal to the production.
has the material for an interesting story.
Immediately after the F irst World W ar,
Sherid came to Astoria and purchased a por-
tion of the old Grimes place in the Youngs
River district. He lived on the place but six
months and then started out on his long trek
that has since carried him all over the world.
The Red Cross here called today for more volun-
teers in the surgical dressings department, saying that
about twice as many workers are needed as have been
helping this work in past weeks.
Mrs. Ward Quarles, chairman of volunteer ser-
vices, said that the supply of materials on hand and
the demand for dressings necessitates production of
1,000 dressings daily here. The Clatsop chapter makes
dressings for the local N avy hospital as well as for the
regional Red Cross, which fi lls A rmy needs elsewhere.
An infl ux of job seekers, lured by an oil
boom, has created an unemployment crisis in
Alaska, says U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.
Unemployed residents of the lower 48
states are rushing to Alaska to fi nd no jobs
and add to existing employment problems,
Stevens said in an interview.
Now Alaska, which traditionally has wel-
comed newcomers, i s urging job seekers to
stay away until they have nailed down work
in the n orthern state.
75 years ago — 1945
The N avy’s motor minesweeper YMS-103,
reported sunk off Okinawa and described in the Wash-
ington release Monday as a “Tacoma-built craft,” was
actually built by the Astoria Marine Construction Co.
here, and was the fourth in the local yard’s fi rst series
of four minesweepers, President Joseph M. Dyer said
today.
The ship was launched on Aug. 29, 1942 into the
Lewis and Clark River after having been christened by
Mrs. Clair Mansker, wife of the yard superintendent.
The ship was placed in commission Sept. 19, 1942 and
under command of Lt. James Wilson, of Seattle, now
a lieutenant-commander in command of a destroyer
A labor dispute idled ships at the Port of Astoria in 1970.
escort.
The YMS-103’s sister ship YMS-100, has returned
to Astoria, to be repaired and overhauled by the
AMCCO yard which built her.
Hermie William Sherid, self-styled explorer
and naturalist and incidentally a resident of
Clatsop County 25 years ago, arrived here
this week in quest of a quiet spot in which to
settle down and write a book on his travels.
Sherid said that he had spent about half
of the past 20 years in South American coun-
tries, most of the time far from civilization in
the mountains and jungles, and is sure that he
A N avy fi ghter plane from the Astoria
n aval a ir s tation airport made a forced land-
ing about 10:20 a.m. today on the beach
between Camp Clatsop and Sunset Beach. Its
pilot, Lt. (jg) Yates Hickey, escaped without
injury, naval offi cials announced this after-
noon. The aircraft suffered minor damage
and will be recovered by N avy crews, accord-
ing to the announcement.
NAVAL AIR STATION, Astoria — High over the
tennis-court size doors of hangars No. 2 and 3 at the
T ongue Point Naval Air Station hang white signs
whose black lettering proclaim: “Naval Technical
Training School” (line maintenance – PBM).
This jawful of a title labels the new school that is
aiding the N avy’s fl eet of m ariner bombers patroling
the sink or swim approaches of Tokyo.
Three letters — PBM — designate a Martin-built
patrol bomber, successor to the famed PBY Catalina.
The Tongue Point school further represents the
N avy’s guarantee that only the best technicians will be
patching shrapnel holes and checking the gull-winged
boat’s physique.