Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten years ago

April 4, 2012

It will be Pirates on donkeys Monday, April 9, in the Elementary School gym, when Pomeroy High School Associated Student Body sponsors a fundraiser with a donkey basketball tournament. According to senior Haylee Koller, each high school class will have a team, and each team will have two teachers participating. The tournament comprises four games “filled with laughs,” Haylee promised.

A group of agriculturally connected residents of Finland is the fifth led to eastern Washington Agricultural Museum by Eero Kovero over the past couple of years. Eero, professionally affiliated with Pro Agria in Hameenlinna, said most of the group are from southern Finland and are farmers. He is a grain farmer also. The first tour he brought to Pomeroy was in October, 2010. The stop is usually at the middle of a schedule that starts in Seattle and covers the northern sector of Washington moving eastward, before concluding with an eastward swing into the Yakima Valley.

Twenty-five years ago

April 2, 1997

Pomeroy High School graduate Brooke Warren, Class of ’96, fulfilled her goal of playing college-level basketball by making the Northwest Nazarene College team this fall, then went way beyond her wildest dreams. NNC captured the NAIA Division II women’s championship two weeks ago in Angola, Ind., and Pomeroy girls’ basketball coach Jim Greene said Brooke was probably the first Pirate to ever play in a national tournament, let alone on a national championship team.

The Emergency Medical Technicians who go out on Garfield County ambulance calls appreciate that residents believe they do a super job, but they hope community members also realize the important role the local hospital plays in their effectiveness. Wynne McCabe, the Emergency Medical Services coordinator for the county Fire District, said, “The situation we have now is ideally suited, where we can get to advanced life support (at Garfield County Memorial Hospital) within minutes.”

Fifty years ago

April 6, 1972

It couldn’t be put on the accident report this way, but a flatbed truck owned by Frank Dixon collided with the road Sunday morning. Dixon, who was away from the truck, in a field he farms on Gould City-Mayview Road about three miles north of Pomeroy, said the 1953 vehicle, parked on the road at the edge of the field, for some unknown reason took off down the hill traveling about 300 yards. The truck went over a 30-foot embankment, back onto the road, its nose colliding with the pavement, according to Sheriff Russ Pierce. Dixon said that it was the first time since the truck was new that it had traveled “in a straight line.”

Bruce Fritzler, of Dayton, local manager for Pacific Power & Light Company, presented a narrated slide show on the Centralia steam-powered generating plant at the Kiwanis luncheon Monday. The steam plant, which opened last summer, is the first steam-powered generating plant in the Northwest. In other areas, coal-powered steam plants are an accepted means of producing electricity accounting for 80 per cent of electricity produced. By being able to develop its extensive hydroelectric resources first, the narrator said, the Northwest benefits by more efficient and less polluting thermal plants.

Seventy-five years ago

April 3, 1947

The mobile x-ray unit of the state Department of Health, division of preventive medical service, will be in Garfield County on Monday and Tuesday, April 21 and 22. The unit is being sponsored in Garfield County by the Garfield County Tuberculosis league and Dr. J.W. Sherfey of the county health department. Citizens of Garfield County, men, women, and children, are urged to avail themselves of the opportunity to have an x-ray picture taken of their chest, free of charge. Films taken are sent to Seattle where they will be developed and interpreted. The two sponsoring groups are desirous that no less than 1,000 persons will have x-ray pictures taken the two days the mobile x-ray unit is in Garfield County.

Pomeroy now has an active flying club, Pomeroy Fliers, Inc., an organization consisting of seven prominent young farmers and business men who are interested in aviation and in learning how to pilot an airplane. The group, composed of Cr. R.W. Frick, Charles Richmond, Alton Houser, Jay Foster, John Armstrong, John Cardwell and Lloyd Ferrell, purchased a Piper coupe airplane recently. Last Sunday they completed the construction of a hangar, 30x40 feet, on the Ferrell farm north of town in which they will house their plane. They have employed Don Keatts as their instructor.

One hundred years ago

April 1, 1922

Buck Mallory of Barlett, Ore., was arrested by Deputy Sheriff Len Jennings last week for dynamiting fish in the Crooked Fork of the Salmon. The fish were dynamited last August. He pleaded guilty and was fined $50 and costs by Judge Tompson.

It was found necessary to change the location of the swimming pool site from the west part of the athletic grounds to the east of the grounds, because the space needed would encroach too far upon the requirements of field athletics. The City Council at a meeting Monday afternoon adopted the plans presented by the swimming pool committee, and everything will be ready to open the sale of tickets on Saturday morning. As previously announced, the sale of tickets will be in the hands of the school children.