14 years ago this week — 2010

Job Corps, established 50 years ago Aug. 12, has been many things to many people, training hundreds of thousands of youths for free and preparing them to be responsible, successful adults.

Tongue Point Job Corps Center, a former U.S. Navy base just east of Astoria that accepted its first students Feb. 2, 1965, and has since trained more than 40,000, celebrated its 50th anniversary early by opening up to those former students.

When the center first opened, it was operated by the University of Oregon and was men-only for 16- to 21-year-olds until 1968. It flipped that year, becoming women-only in 1972.

While the University of Oregon provided the equivalent of a high school education with electives, the Philco Corp., a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Co., was in charge of vocational programs, including trades, appliance repair and electronics. The program was overseen by the Office of Economic Development, which administered many programs such as Job Corps in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society legislative agenda.

LONG BEACH, Wash. — The 2014 Washington State International Kite Festival runs through Sunday. Spanning every category of invention, design and color, kites inhabit the skies over the beach. The festival has themed days ranging from Terrific Tuesday, Red, White and Blue Day, handcrafted kite day, as well as demonstrations, mass ascensions, lighted night flying, fireworks and more.

The 2014 poster was done by artist and kite flyer Deon Matzen. Matzen is primarily an oil painter, painting scenes from vanishing rural America — old, unrestored trucks, garage sale detritus, dilapidated barns — recording the old sites and nostalgic bygone eras that are being overrun with urban sprawl.

SEASIDE — People voiced their opinions at a public hearing on the state proposal to ban tobacco products on beaches. The Wednesday hearing at the Seaside Public Library was the first of four put on by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.

The proposed state regulation would disallow the smoking of tobacco products “on the ocean shore state recreation area.” E-cigarettes, chewing tobacco and medical marijuana will not fall under the rule.

Of the approximately 300 comments received statewide for those rules, 24% asked the department to consider a similar rulemaking effort for the ocean shore, and the commission instructed staff to look at smoking restrictions on beaches.

A majority agreed litter from cigarette butts is a problem, and that was a main reason behind many people’s support for the rule.

“Our shores are a treasure,” said James Becraft, of Oceanside.

Improving public health and limiting secondhand smoke was the second-most popular reason given for support.

50 years ago — 1974

Once the specific information about the site of the newly-proposed hospital near Walluski has been completed and submitted to the State Health Commission, it will take between two and three months for a certificate of need to be processed, state health planner Chris Stevenson said Friday.

CAMP RILEA — The governor, the cameramen and the kids were in another part of the camp, but some Oregon Air National Guardsmen and women were in a dimly-lit room plotting a simulated air battle to defend southern Italy.

“It’s pretty easy to forget it’s not for real,” quipped an officer of the 153rd Tactical Control unit, which is headquartered at the Portland Air National Guard Base.

After two years in Astoria, Lt. Cmdr. Martin Danko said goodbye to his friends and crew in a U.S. Coast Guard change of command ceremony near the Coast Guard cutter Iris on Monday.

Danko handed over the command of the Iris to Lt. Cmdr. Ernst Cummings. Cummings comes to Astoria from the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

WARRENTON — Time ran out on the Port of Astoria on Monday in its bid for a delay of Warrenton’s comprehensive land use plan. Warrenton city commissioners voted to approve the plan with Tansy Point zoned for residential use.

The decision is a major setback in the Port’s plans to put a steel unloading facility and grain elevator at Tansy Point.

Log exports are becoming the central local issue in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District race and Don Bonker says he is moving out front because he favors export restrictions.

Bonker, who was on the peninsula campaigning Monday, said he favors banning log exports from all public lands and allowing log exports from private lands only at a set ratio with the amount of finished wood products being exported.

The stance coincides with the recommendations contained in a November 1973 U.S. Forest Service report and the more recent Stanford Research Institute report on log exports, Bonker said.

WARRENTON — Operating at close to 100% above expectations, the North Coast’s new Harbor Airlines flight service hopes to carry close to 800 people between several small and large cities in Oregon and Washington state during August.

The new airline is currently in its second month of operation, and recently received approval from the Oregon Public Utility Commission to fly between Astoria and Portland.

Jerry Patterson, the airlines’ district manager for Oregon, said in Warrenton that he doesn’t know to what he should attribute the airlines‘ initial success, but said it may be a combination of things.

He said the new 55-mile-per-hour speed limit, combined with the already slow highway system connecting Astoria and Portland, may be causing some people to turn to the air for faster travel.

75 years ago — 1949

The Astoria waterfront was a bustle of activity today, with the two largest individual deliveries of albacore tuna yet to be delivered here reaching port, and gillnetters docking with salmon caught Sunday night.

The Aletta B., skippered by Louis Peterson, docked at the Van Camp docks with about 50 tons of tuna aboard to take honors for one of the highest individual deliveries yet recorded in Astoria this year.

A second large delivery dwarfing previous highs was recorded at the Barbey Packing Co., when the Sunset landed with 25,219 pounds aboard.

LONG BEACH, Wash. — About 130 people from Grays Harbor and Pacific counties and five from Clatsop County attended the field day, which was held Friday at the cranberry and blueberry experiment station.

The growers gathered at the station in the morning and were taken to see the experiments carried on by D.J. Crowley, Robert Wearne and Austin Goheen. Among them were weed control, moss control, pollination of cranberries and breeding of new varieties.

Pollination tests show that bees are not the important agency in attracting pollination of cranberries, since as good a set of berries was evident in plots where bees were excluded as in those where a hive of bees had been caged.

Astoria is making final preparations to welcome the thousands of sportsmen and visitors expected to flood into the city when the annual salmon derby gets underway in two weeks.

Al Hetzel, secretary of the chamber of commerce, estimates that about 25,000 sports fishermen and visitors were here during derby week of last year and believes that just as many, or more, will be here for this year’s derby, which is scheduled for Aug. 30 to Sept. 5.

The county-owned lumber mill formerly operated by the Astoria Spruce Corp. will reopen soon under new management, according to an announcement released Thursday by four former employees who have purchased the local assets of the corporation.

Applications for employment will be accepted next week, the announcement said, and the plant will run on a two-shift daily schedule as soon as possible. Local residents and former employees of the mill will be given preference in employment, spokesmen for the new operators said.

Articles of incorporation were filed in Salem on Thursday by the Northwest Fishermen’s Association of Astoria.

The association is a cooperative group formed by the crews of eight local draggers. The association is currently engaged in packing and marketing bottomfish caught by the member draggers.

Edward David, Del Mar Packing Co. president, said today that the cooperative has a working agreement with his company for the processing of the bottomfish.

Today’s views with today’s news will become a reality today in the columns of the Astorian-Budget. No longer will this newspaper publish pictures of the it-happened-the-day-before-yesterday nature as standard practice.

Installation was completed today of Astoria’s photoengraving facility. Photoengraving is the process by which photographs are converted into printing surfaces — it can now be accomplished in Astoria minutes after the news subject is filmed. The machine used by the Astorian-Budget is a revolutionary service, the Fairchild photo-electric engraver. One of the first few to be installed on the Pacific coast, the machine is the second to appear in Oregon. The La Grande Evening Observer recently installed a similar machine.