Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

February 24, 2010

Pomeroy Pirate wrestling team placed second at the 2010 State Class B wrestling tournament in Tacoma.

Sixty items, including photos, can now be searched and viewed online, through the Denny Ashby Library website: http://www.pomeroy.lib.wa.us. Creation of the collection was made possible through the Washington Rural Heritage Program, whose goals are to enable small and rural libraries around the state to create digital collection of unique items that tell the stories of their communities and to make these collections accessible online to a wide audience.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

February 22, 1995

Dr. Nancy Rodway arrived in Pomeroy with her husband George and daughter Kelsey to begin her duties at Pomeroy Medical Clinic, Rodway will work as a pathologist for Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, covering for vacationing pathologists in Moscow, Colfax and Pullman. In Garfield County, she would like to establish “a heavy preventative medicine base, and emphasize geriatrics.

With the move of safe deposit boxes across Main St. from Key Bank to Bank of Whitman, transfer of accounts at the bank building at the corner of 8th and Main was completed.

Fifty Years Ago

February 19, 1970

Things couldn’t have been better for the Pomeroy Pirate basketball team last weekend as it tucked away the district championship for the first time since 1963. It’s always a pleasure for Pomeroy to beat its old rival Colfax even in ping pong! But it was a double delight to send the Bulldogs home with a 65-48 whipping because it also meant the crown was in the bag for the Pirates.

Pomeroy wrestlers added another trophy to their collection when they won the bi-district tourney at Colfax last Saturday. Five Pirates will be in the state ‘A’ tournament at Colfax this Saturday.

When Pomeroy’s Chief of Police Tom Bunch retires on February 28 he will be completing 39 years and eight months of continuous law enforcement work in this county. The retiring chief presently holds the title of “senior chief” in the state in terms of service and in this category beats the closest ‘competitor’ by 14 years.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

February 22, 1945

The B-24 Liberator bomber, missing in the Blue Mountain area since last Monday, was found in a canyon near Troy, Oregon, a short distance from the Garfield County southern boundary line. The 10 men aboard the plane were killed instantly. The plane was on a training flight from the base when it crashed.

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Adams were in Walla Walla Tuesday where Mr. Adams accepted in formal review at the Walla Walla air base a Distinguished Flying Cross and an oak leaf cluster in behalf of his son, First Lieutenant Robert H. Adams, missing inaction in the Pacific area since September 2, 1943.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week county basketball fans will have an opportunity to revel in their favorite sport to the heart’s content, when the sub-district tournament starts here tonight.

One Hundred Years Ago

February 21, 1920

A jury in the superior court decided that the W.J. Chard estate is not entitled to costs for a runway beneath the new Inland Empire highway in the Pataha valley west of Pomeroy. Chards had contended that the road crossing their land would cut part of it off from access to water for stock, and that the state should pay for a cattle runway under the road. The jury decided that Chards, S.L. McGee and J.P. Anderson should only receive from the state the cost of building new fences to allow for the road. The jurors considered that the benefits to the landowners which the road brought quite offset the inconvenience and the value of the land condemned.

C.A. McCabe, chairman of the Garfield County game commission, has been notified that 75,000 silver trout fry from the state hatchery at Walla Walla have been allotted Garfield County this year, delivery to start within a few days.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

February 23, 1895

Rummens wants to pay 4c. per pound for fat calves.

It is claimed that Pomeroy has furnished the most bitter and dirty post office fight of any town on the Pacific coast.

The R.&G. Corset is the favorite. S. Kasper has a complete line. Try one and you will never wear any other kind.

The ball nine in Pataha reorganized for the season and are now practicing.

Pataha is getting to be noted for prize fights. One every week is the average.

Two of the young scholars had a lively set-to the other night. It did not take the teacher long to straighten them out.

Some of our young people are doing a lot of corresponding with the opposite sex unbeknown to their parents.