July 11, 1990

After two stormy meetings on lunch wagon licenses, Westbrook is ready to let two out-of-town companies keep using more than one truck each. Aldermen agreed in committee Monday to let them have extra licenses. The companies had been told by the city in the past that they didn’t need more than one license. The Golden Eagle Co., Saco, sends three lunch wagons into Westbrook each weekday. The Patty Wagon, South Portland, sends two. They sell prepared sandwiches, cakes, coffee and soda to workers at factories, service stations, warehouses and buildings under construction, stopping at each only briefly. One operator gave his annual sales in Westbrook as $60,000. A store owner said several stores each are losing $15,000-$20,000 a year to the lunch wagon competition. With business down this year, store owners felt that the lunch-truck ordinance requires a separate license and $25 fee for each wagon.

Residents of Gorham and other nearby towns did not have to go beyond their bedroom windows for a spectacular light show the night of July 4, as thunderstorms swept through the area. Trees were leveled, power lines downed and property damaged or destroyed. The brunt of the storm struck just after midnight on what was an uncomfortably humid night. Diana Allen, of South Street in Gorham, had cleaned her swimming pool that day for a party that ended just hours before the storm, when lightning struck a tree and sent it through the fence and across her pool.

The Gorham Arts Council will present its eighth annual Celebrate Gorham day Saturday on the grounds at Robie Field, Shaw Junior High School and the high school. This year the Arts Council is joining forces with Gorham Community Services and Maine Street ’90 to offer activities ranging from a parade featuring Gov. John McKernan to a day’s-end concert by the folk group Devonsquare.

Ten Westbrook Junior High School Grade 8 students who will be high school freshmen in the fall have been selected to participate in a special Outward Bound program this summer. The program, funded with a $25,000 grant from the S.D. Warren Co., includes instruction in reading in addition to outdoors activities. Students selected are Jennifer Emmons, Cori Roberts, Melissa Germani, Kevin Temm, Ed Meserve, Theresa King, Melissa Hair, Mike Merrill, Cindy Green and Ron Guevin.

Jan Wescott, who graduated from Westbrook High School on June 17, was honored at a party June 10 at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Stan Warren, 51 Waterhouse Road, Gorham. Among those present were Jan’s parents, Cliff and Dolly Wescott, The Hamlet; brother Scott Wescott and Scott’s friend Monica Graffam, Biddeford; grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Leonard May, Westbrook Gardens, and Mrs. Ruth Wescott, East Bridge Street, Westbrook.

July 12, 2000

“I’ve never once bought a used car off a customer to sell. I’ve never once sold any parts off a car. These are all customers’ cars,” Bub Merchant, operator with his son BJ of Bub Merchant and Son auto repair business at 474 Main St. in Westbrook, said Friday. Police Sgt. Michael Sanphy visited the business the Friday before Fourth of July weekend and served him with a citation for operating a junkyard without a license, he said. Sanphy himself was nice, he said, but Merchant made it plain he thinks he’s right and the city’s wrong and he doesn’t like the city’s tactics. Merchant’s is the business referred to at a June City Council meeting as the city’s worst illegal junkyard. It is the first the city has tackled of what is said to be some 10 to 15 properties that will get warning letters.

Gorham will have natural gas service to much of the town by fall. Maine Natural Gas, formerly CMP Natural Gas, has signed a long-term contract with the University of Maine System to provide gas service to the USM campus in Gorham, and will have a network of gas lines starting at its new facility on the New Portland Road. The company is now soliciting business from homeowners and commercial businesses. Gas will come from the new transmission pipeline that crosses the south end of town.

The Gorham Bypass Advisory Committee meets tonight to hear public comment and questions and to review new information for possible bypass corridors to reduce congestion in Gorham. There has been concern that the public has not been kept abreast of bypass committee decisions, especially why some corridor options have already been rejected while others remain. According to minutes of a June 1 committee meeting, several residents of Meadow Crossing Drive were on hand to express concern. Ray Wingert said there was a lot of frustration because people who live in potentially affected areas are just now becoming aware of the study.

Rumors that Sebago Inc.’s Bridge Street, Westbrook, shoe shop has been sold “are premature,” company president Dan Wellehan said Monday. “I’ve talked to nobody,” he said. “But with all the development going on over there by the river, there is apparently some interest. We’re looking, that’s a fact,” he said. Sebago was founded in 1946 by Wellehan’s father, the late Dan Wellehan Sr., and other partners, in part of the Dana Warp Mill building at 40 Bridge St. Its operations expanded into the building it is considering selling. Wellehan said 150 to 200 people work at Bridge Street and about the same number at the Mechanic Street shop, also in Westbrook. The company moved its offices, plus receiving, warehousing and shipping operations, to the former Reece Corp. building in the Gorham Industrial Park in 1995.

About 400 parishioners of St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church, Gorham, and Our Lady of Sebago Roman Catholic Church, and guests attending a retirement party in St. Anne’s parish hall June 25 for the Rev. Ernest L’Heureux that he called “elegant.” In a message to parishioners he wrote that the party was “an event that I shall remember for the rest of my life. It was a time of mixed emotions for me, sadness at leaving friends I’ve made and loved for 12 years I’ve had the privilege to serve at St. Anne’s and Our Lady of Sebago. But it was a real fellowship, honoring not only one of the ordained, but also the priesthood itself.”

The Westbrook Telephone Exchange was located on the second floor of the Edwards Building on Main Street at Bridge Street. The telephone operators worked there from 1907 to 1917, when they moved to the second floor of the Peterson Block at 820 Main St. The Edwards Building was later occupied for many years by Warren Furniture Co. It went out of business several years ago and the building was sold and    extensively renovated. Portland Pie and Black Dinah Chocolatiers presently occupy the first floor. To see more historical photos and artifacts, visit the Westbrook Historical Society at the Fred C. Wescott Building, 426 Bridge St. It is open Tuesdays and Saturdays, 9 a.m.-noon, and the first Wednesday of each month at 1:30 p.m., September-June. Inquiries can be emailed to westhistorical@myfairpoint.net. The website is www.westbrookhistoricalsociety.org.Photo and research courtesy of Mike Sanphy