Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten years ago

October 17, 2012

Tom Sherry brought Tom’s Tailgate Weather Forecast to Pomeroy for the Pomeroy-Garfield Palouse football game. Viewers voted for him to attend this game rather than the Colville at Clarkston game the same night. The Pirates-Vikings game received 3,636 votes, 54%, to 3,241 for the game at Clarkston. Sherry’s weather forecasts on KREM 2 News at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. were presented with the backdrop of boisterous Pirate backers, and the TV celebrity also presented the two schools with checks for $222.

The Pomeroy High School 2012 Homecoming Royalty recognized at halftime were Queen Megan Miner and escort Mr. Football Austin Reisdorph, senior princess Hannah Meir and escort Ryan Smith, junior princess Emma Woodland and escort Michael Wymore, sophomore princess Cheyenne Miller and escort Eric Wade, and freshman princess Teresa Meyers and escort Brendan Lueck.

Twenty-five years ago

October 22, 1997

Bob and Ann Heitstuman along with Ann’s brother and sister-in-law Carroll and Edna Mae Schultheis from Colton, returned last Tuesday from a 10-day fall foliage tour with Trieloff Tours. They traveled through Massachusetts, Maine, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and New Hampshire. After that tour they went to New York City for two nights and a day and took a 10-hour tour of the Big Apple. Then they went on to Springfield and Marshfield, Missouri. They saw 25 shows in Branson and visited a nephew of Bob’s in Marshfield. Ann said they saw many historical sites in Boston, including the Freedom Trail, USS Constitution, Old North Church, the route of Paul Revere’s ride, the Minuteman site, Boston Tea Party site and even went to Harvard. They ate their first lobster dinner in Portland, Me., but it was not their favorite meal.

Fifty years ago

October 19, 1972

Those with some wheat left may be facing their biggest potential profit in 25 years. Information indicates the Pacific Northwest is the last stronghold of exportable wheat supplies, with wheat crops all over the rest of the world depleted. U.S. trade agreements with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, following the Soviet Union wheat sale, have sent the price of wheat spiraling upward. The price spiral looks as if it will continue.

The strange, but wonderful tradition called “Homecoming” is being carried out this week at Pomeroy High School, preparatory to the Homecoming Football Game.

Seventy-five years ago

October 23, 1947

Jesse Wills, a resident of Garfield County for 46 years and a grower of peaches for 33 years, sold his 16-acre fruit farm on the Snake River near Wawawai, in Garfield County, to Morris Carter, of Wawawai, Friday, for $800 an acre. Mr. and Mrs. Wills have operated the orchard for the past 33 years, developing it from sand bars to its present productive stage. In the early days water for irrigation was pumped by a gasoline engine from the Snake River, now by electric power. The peaches in the fall were delivered to the surrounding towns by team in a wagon, an all-day trip to Pomeroy, Pullman and Lewiston by this mode of transportation. Wills was the first to purchase a pickup to deliver his produce.

The city council contracted with Paul Sauers & Associates, Seattle, professional exterminators of rats, to annihilate the rodents at the city dump grounds, along Pataha creek from A street to Tenth street, and along the mill ditch on the north side of Main Street. Rats have been recognized as disease carriers since the dawn of history, and the primary role they play in the spread of bubonic plague, typhus fever, and many less important illnesses is well known.

One hundred years ago

October 21, 2022

The arrival of the Nez Perce party at the school house Monday was hailed with delight by the high school students and the seventh and eighth grades, who were admitted to the assembly room. Miss Mary Dixon gave a brief historical sketch of the Steptoe expedition. Henry Powakee, Sam Morris, Benjamin Five Crows, Louis Broncheau, and Thomas Bell, of the Nez Perce party, gave speeches. Powakee, Five Crows and Broncheau helped Steptoe in his flight across the river and gave interesting accounts of that event and the exhausted condition of the soldiers. Intense interest was manifested by students and teachers throughout the speaking. Many never before had heard the Nez Perce tongue in tones above the low, conversational utterances and the oratorical and declamatory styles were in themselves a revelation. David McFarland interpreted.

The helicopter, or vertical rising air machine, is not an impossibility, and, should a real use for such a type arise, successful ones may be seen before many years, according to Dr. Albert F. Zahm, aeronautical expert for the navy. Had there been a need for the helicopter during the war, he said, any of several types could have been perfected, of which working models have be known. Much interest has been shown of late in reports of successful machines of the helicopter type being perfected in both Germany and England. However, while some flights have been made, none of any consequence are reported by a machine equipped with horizontal propellers or revolving planes, designed to rise vertically from a confined space and descend on the same.