10 years ago this week — 2014

Raylene McGire, of Westport, 28, and 8.5 months pregnant with her second child, gave the student marshal’s address at Clatsop Community College’s graduation Friday.

Her co-marshal Juanita “JD” Spencer, a 59-year-old on disability with a service dog permanently at her side, would become one of the most award-winning students in Clatsop’s history.

The two, part of a Class of 2014 earning 146 two-year academic degrees and 45 one-year certificates Friday, exemplified the college’s mission to provide open access to postsecondary educational opportunities.

“Personally, I did terribly in high school academically,” said Lawrence Galizio, the college president, in his address to students. “You ever seen ‘Animal House’? Think of John Belushi’s character. He had a 0.2 (GPA) or something — I was right around there.”

Fortunately, he said, he was advised to attend a community college, which rekindled his passion for education and started him on the track to now, when he has earned his associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D., serving as an Oregon state representative and now president of a college.

Casey Smith, his three children and his dad thought they were just taking a stroll to Fred Lindstrom Park on Father’s Day to play. But when they arrived, they discovered a group of nearly 30 busy bees pulling weeds, shoveling new bark chips and picking up trash on the warm, although cloudy, afternoon.

So the Smith family jumped in to help, as part of the Citizens Helping Improve Parks program, started in March and led by Janice O’Malley-Galizio.

“We’re really excited to have so many volunteers here on Father’s Day to help us clean this park up,” O’Malley-Galizio said. “It obviously needed some major work, so this is fantastic.”

A portion of Irving Avenue near 19th Street will be closed for more than a year, starting in late July or early August, as the city begins the bridge replacement project.

The project could last as long as 16 months and will serve to replace the bridge.

The 68-year-old bridge, which serves as part of an alternate route for U.S. Highway 30, is deteriorating. According to the city, it has required emergency repairs to keep it functional for heavy loads such as school buses, garbage trucks and fire trucks.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will hold public meetings on its plan to kill 16,000 cormorants on East Sand Island.

Though the Corps, which manages East Sand Island, explored other, nonlethal alternatives in its proposed management plan for the cormorants, officials say killing the birds is the best way to keep the colony’s population at a manageable level and protect endangered or threatened salmon and steelhead at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Since 2011, East Sand Island’s double-crested cormorants have consumed an average of 18.5 million juvenile salmonids a year.

50 years ago — 1974

A new meaning for the title Bar Pilot was coined Saturday at the fifth annual Not Quite White Water River Run on the Grays River at Naselle, Washington.

Most of the larger craft were equipped with a well-stocked ice chest, and fuel consumption could have been measured in miles per keg. Colorful entries in the race included rafts, canoes, kayaks and rowboats.

SEASIDE — “There will be a petition to put diapers on seagulls next,” a woman told the Seaside City Council Monday.

“The dogs are taking over the Prom and the beach. Pass a more stringent dog control law,” read a postcard sent to city officials.

“I feel if dogs are lucky enough to live on the beach, then let them have their freedom.” Dorothy Lutz, of Beach Drive, said. “I walk my dog on the beach two or three times a day and never have to clean it off. There is more of a problem with cans, glass and oil.”

“It is no longer a pleasure to walk on the beach. The stench is terrible on a bright sunny day,” another letter writer complained.

“We enjoy our pet on the beach. He is like a member of the family,” a Portland summer resident wrote. “If the dog leash law is enacted for the beach, we’ll move somewhere else.”

And so it went as the Seaside City Council opened the question of dog control in a public hearing.

SEASIDE — Large gasoline tanker trucks will be able to deliver unleaded gasoline to gas stations on U.S. Highway 101 in Seaside following action by the Seaside City Council Monday.

The larger deliveries were allowed in a new ordinance requested by Union Oil Co., of California, which claims that without the change it would be in violation of federal regulations after July 1.

City fire officials, however, have opposed the change, citing safety risks.

On the Oregon side of the choppy Columbia River, midway between Longview, Washington, and Astoria and not far from the stacks of Wauna’s paperworks, the Westport trailer courts or pastoral Puget Island, a couple of cars sit amid decaying docks belonging to a long-gone mill. They await the Wahkiakum.

A car-carrying river ferry, it’s one of the last of its breed.

OCEAN PARK, Wash. — The remains of a village where Chinook Indians lived and worked in the northern part of the Long Beach Peninsula could turn out to be very important.

At least that’s what a current archaeological study at the campsite will seek to find out.

The study is an archaeological dig, or excavation, of an old Indian village and is being conducted through a summer archaeology class offered by Washington State University. Richard Daugherty, noted archaeologist, is heading the eight-week class.

The class began by surveying, mapping and clearing the area of underbrush Tuesday.

New York steak at $1.29 per pound? That’s what a new Clatsop Plains meat market is advertising.

The catch is, you have to like living high on the horse. The market only deals in horse meat. Called J&H, the market is located on U.S. Highway 101 where a fish market used to be.

Ed Carroll, of Portland, owner of a chain of horse meat markets under the J&H name, owns this one in partnership with local people, Raymond and Carolyn Cook.

The Cooks say the meat is as tasty as beef. They are offering samples to prove it. Most people like to start on something like Polish sausage or prepared lunch meat, they say.

75 years ago — 1949

CORVALLIS — Nineteen representatives of Clatsop County were among the nearly 200 persons attending the soil conservation field tour of the Oregon State College experiment station at Corvallis Friday.

Fifteen Oregon counties were represented on the tour.

SEASIDE — A $10,000 fire swept through the oceanfront Fraley house in Gearhart early today while occupants of the two-story home fled from the second floor via bed sheets tied into ropes.

There were 10 persons in the 10-room house at the time of the fire. They included the William W. Furnish family of Portland and their house guests. All, including children, made an escape without injury. Names of the guests were not learned.

Revival of the Scotch Broom festival at Columbia Beach Sunday was quite successful with more than 1,000 attending, according to Walter Johnson, general chairman.

Johnson said that Sunday’s celebration, sponsored by the Warrenton Lions Club, was the first since 1927. He said that plans are to once again make the festival a regular annual affair.

The employment picture for this area is bad for this season of the year, figures released today by Guy Barker, manager of the Astoria state unemployment office, indicate.

Barker said that during the week ending on June 9, 1949, 470 men and 172 women were filing for unemployment.

Barker said very few job openings exist at this time and more layoffs are in prospect for the logging industry.

A new theory was advanced today for why nobody lives on the moon. A young research worker believes people there fought a giant atomic war thousands of years ago and wiped themselves out.

“Some astronomers believe life exists throughout the solar system,” he said. “The moon, being smaller than the earth, cooled off faster, and they got a head start on atomic research.”

SEAVIEW, Wash. — Curtis Walker was rescued by Cape Disappointment Coast Guardsmen late Wednesday night after his light plane was forced down by engine trouble on the narrow south beach of Sand Island.

Walker was flying from Seaside to his home airport at Ocean Park, Washington, leaving at 3 p.m. in the afternoon. He was flying above clouds when his motor quit over the Columbia River.

Clouds obscured the Ilwaco airport, which he could otherwise have easily reached, so he tried for Sand Island and barely made it.

Astoria kids had a game of “tarring” each other in addition to swimming yesterday when Tapiola Pool opened for the season.

Complaints of some mothers that were received stated that their children came home “coated with tar.” Just prior to being reopened, the cracks in the pool caused by the earthquake were patched with tar.

Jack DeNyse, chief clerk of the Astoria city public works office, stated that reports coming to that office probably held the answer to the problem.

He said that it was reported that the youngsters were diving underwater, pulling the tar out of the cracks and then smearing it on each other.