May 24, 1995

Students at Gorham High School recently got together and raised $684 for the Oklahoma City relief fund and are challenging other area high schools to match their total. On April 19, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed by a bomb and 168 people died and more than 600 people were injured. Shawna Linscott, a freshman, had the idea to help victims of the tragedy.

Philip LaViolet has been a helping hand and then a guiding hand in the Westbrook Veterans Memorial Association for 30 years. This is his last year. He’s retiring from the association. Appropriately, he is grand marshal of Monday’s parade and ceremony this year, for the first time.

Alison Martin is the top scholar of this year’s Westbrook High School graduating class. Others, in order of the scores, are Kery Payeur, Sarah Grover, Eric Gray, Carisa Peters, Jason Carey, Brian Gorham, Justin Lampron, Kelly Smith, Jennifer Wilmer, Matthew Welch and Christopher Buzzell.

Hans Hansen, the owner of Hansen’s Well Drilling, said he plans on applying for a zoning contract that would allow an 8-acre business park in South Gorham. He said he would want to bring in light industrial activity. Possible tenants he has talked with so far include a bank, doctors office and a small food shop and a drug store-type operation. He said the site already has gone through Planning Board review for residential use, but the lots are not selling as well as anticipated.

May 25, 2005

Zyacorp received the approval it needed from the Westbrook City Council on Monday for its plans to build a new 16-screen stadium-seating movie theater on 36 acres off County Road. The company needed an amendment to the industrial zoning district to build the complex. Now it goes to the Planning Board for site plan approval. The Cinemagic theater would be state of the art, say officials of the Manchester, New Hampshire-based company.

A wood stove caused a three-alarm fire that destroyed a home on Spiller Street in Gorham Saturday morning. Gorham Fire Chief Robert Lefebvre said the fire was accidental. Homeowner Albert Proctor, 64, was the only occupant when the fire broke out at about 8:50 a.m. Lefebvre said there was significant delay before the department was called because Proctor had no phone. Proctor alerted contractors who were working on a neighbor’s house.

Ken and Alice Mains of Gorham took a month-long trip through the United States last month, traveling 8,025 miles – 880 of them crossing Texas. Among the highlights: climbing the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, a ride on the Grand Canyon Railroad in Arizona, a visit with Ken’s former Gorham Post Office colleague Bobby Kimball in Phoenix, Arizona, seeing the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, a Mississippi River paddlewheel boat ride in New Orleans, Louisiana, and seeing Dolly Parton and others perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

Plans to build a solid waste transfer and processing station on County Road in Westbrook are on hold until at least early next year. A spokeswoman for Casella Waste Systems, the company that owns Pine Tree Waste, did not say why the company has delayed its plans.