Oct. 19, 1988

Aldermen held up Monday on moving some Westbrook City Hall offices into the old high school manual training building. One reason given was that they may want to move them instead into Walker Memorial Library if they run into any more unexpected bills for the library addition now being built. This year’s city budget has $150,000 for converting part of the first floor and all of the second floor of the manual training building for city offices. Alderman Alexander Juniewicz said the City Council may want to use that money instead at the library.

Ralph Cartonio and his two sons stood near the blackened rubble of their South Street Auto Body in Gorham Monday morning and surveyed the charred ruins of five irreplaceable antique cars that were destroyed by fire two days before. The cars, all classics, had been moved from where they had burned inside the building and were lined up in a sad row outside. Among the cars that were destroyed was a partially restored 1908 Buick with a wooden body that Ralph Cartonio’s son Neal says was the only one of its kind in the nation. Cartonio’s son Mark estimated the loss, both in the building and cars, to be around $1 million, and said their insurance on the antique cars was “sketchy.”

Alumni, parents, students, businesspeople and other are being recruited for a many-faceted campaign for a yes vote on the November referendum on borrowing $5.6 million to expand and remodel Westbrook High School. In addition, the school department is investing $2,000 in the first of a Westbrook newspaper, The Westbrook Experience, 24 tabloid pages. The school department will mail it to every Westbrook address in the week before the vote. The paper’s owner EMC Marketing, 771 Cumberland St., Westbrook, has been selling advertising in it.

The continuing battle over the Shaw Brothers’ Gambo Road gravel pit finally reached a decisive round Thursday as the Gorham Zoning Board of Appeals agreed with one of the pit’s neighbors that part of it was illegally expanded. However, the board also upheld the right of Shaw Brothers to bring road-building materials into the main pit for processing, thereby rejecting the other argument made against the operation by abuttor Lester Armstrong.

The Claude Daigle family of Gorham has been named as one of 10 national finalists in the 1988 Soil and Water Conservation Awards Program, sponsored by the National Endowment for Soil and Water Conservation that honors farmers who use innovative and effective soil and water conservation techniques. The Daigles began implementing the first conservation farm plan in the county in 1940.

Westbrook’s First Baptist Church, 733 Main St., will celebrate its 100th anniversary Oct. 22 and 23. Saturday events include a performance by His Design, a ladies singing duet, and a catered banquet. Sunday events will include a program with city officials, former pastors and those who have gone into the ministry from the First Baptist Church. Three in One, a ladies trio, will provide the music. The church, dedicated in 1888, remains in its original location.

Oct. 21, 1998

Fleet Bank laid off all 25 people in its “proof center” on the second floor of its downtown Westbrook branch Friday and moved the work to its proof center in Malden. Mass. When the change was announced to employees a year ago, 36 were employed in the Westbrook center, the only one Fleet has in Maine. Fleet may use the vacated second-floor space for a sales training center, bringing employees from a wide area to Westbrook for lessons. Or it may find another Fleet use for the space, or lease it to someone else.

A potential hurdle to plans for a bypass of Route 25 in Gorham Village was removed last week. The Maine Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration said they have decided that the project will no longer be linked to the potentially controversial proposals to connect Route 114 in Scarborough to the Maine Turnpike and build a bypass off Route 114 where it connects with Route 22 in Scarborough and Gorham. “The purpose (of the Route 25 bypass) is being reoriented from a project that addresses regional traffic issues to one that focuses on provided relief to traffic congestion in Gorham Village,” said John Melrose, commissioner of the Department of Transportation, in a letter to Gorham Town Manager David Cole.

Guns, drugs, armed robbery, house burglaries and as many as 100 break-ins. According to Westbrook police, nine boys ages 16 and 17 were responsible for these acts and possibly more in the past two months alone. Their teamwork crime spree, which targeted particular Westbrook neighborhoods, including the Longfellow, Longley and Wood roads areas, ended with the arrest of five of the boys this week. Four are from Westbrook. One is from Windham.

The Windham-Gorham Rod and Gun Club will be presented with a plaque for 50 years of service at an anniversary dinner Oct. 28. The award will be presented by state Rep. Ron Usher, recognizing the club’s half-century of promoting wildlife and the environment. The club has 110 members, three of whom helped create the club in 1948.

Heidi H. Remy, 13 Solomon Drive, Gorham, has been elected president of the Gorham Woman’s Club for a two-year term. She and her husband George have a child in the Gorham school system. She holds a master’s degree in secondary counselor education from the University of Southern Maine. She joined the club in 1993 and has been corresponding secretary and vice president. Her hobbies include travel, exercise and reading.

More than 25 downtown businesses will participate in Westbrook’s annual “Halloween on Main Street” trick-or-treat hours Friday, Oct. 30, from 4-6 p.m. Cider, refreshments and music will be offered at Westbrook Common, and crossing guards will guide trick-or-treaters on Main Street from the Walker Library to Saco Street.

50 YEARS AGO

The Westbrook American reported on Oct. 14, 1963, that Esther Felch of Gorham was the new leader of the Victory 4 H Club.

Mr. and Mrs. Philip Bean of Bar Mills motored to Milton, N.H., for a day trip.

This coin-operated laundry was located for many years at 672 Main St., across from Riverbank Park. Philip Lourie was the proprietor. The business closed in 1973 and the building was later demolished. The site is presently a parking lot for a building that was later erected at the rear of the lot. To see more historical photos and artifacts, visit the Westbrook Historical Society at the Fred C. Wescott Building, 426 Bridge St. Inquiries can be emailed to westhistorical@myfairpoint.net. The website is www.westbrookhistoricalsociety.org.