25 YEARS AGO — 1985 Vermont Gov. Madeleine Kunin and Transportation Secretary Patrick Graham sign an agreement authorizing the construction of a new bridge between Alburg and Rouses Point. It now goes to Albany for signatures. The new span will have no tolls.
After nine and a half hours of deliberations, a Franklin County jury finds Jeffery Brewer of Jay guilty of second-degree murder in the Sept. 2 shooting death of Bernard Lyon of Saranac Lake. Sentencing is set for Feb. 25.
Political frustration and doling out of patronage jobs to the other party are two reasons why Gerald Forcier resigns earlier this month as Essex County Republican chairman. It ended an 11-year tenure.
Beginning in February, Franklin County residents will be able to have photos taken for New York driver's licenses at Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake. This will mean the end of Saturday hours in Malone.
50 YEARS AGO — 1960 Plattsburgh Air Force Base is designated as one of four major Atlas missile launching systems in the Air Force. Each of the sites will cost $47 million. Construction of the underground launching sites will begin as soon as the land can be acquired.
A fire that claims the life of an 11-year-old boy south of Elizabethtown was followed by another fire that razed the home of his relatives in Upper Jay. Regis Francis Monaco died when the home his grandfather Nicholas Monaco burned. Shortly after, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Solon Bashaw in Upper Jay burned.
Outlines of the Atlas launching sites the Air Force plans for Plattsburgh begin to emerge. There will be nine such site locations in Clinton and Essex counties in New York and Grand Isle and Franklin counties in Vermont.
It is now up to Essex County doctors to decide whether the Welfare Department patients get generic drugs or not. The department and the pharmacists agree to accept the decision of the physicians.
75 YEARS AGO — 1935 Joseph Maroun of Tupper Lake is in Mercy General Hospital suffering from injuries received in two accidents. He was first injured while hauling cord wood. Aid was summoned and a car started with him for the hospital. In route, the car skidded on the icy highway and crashed into a lamp post.
Fire levels a house, horse barn and milk shed on the farm of Ernest Fresn with the loss estimated at $7,500. The farm is located on the state road, a half mile north of the city limits.
Thomas Coates, 31, of Plattsburgh meets with serious injury when his left arm is amputated below the elbow. His arm was caught in a logging machine while he was working with a Delaware and Hudson Railroad crew near Willsboro.
Incorporation papers are filed in Albany on the Adirondack Music Camp, Chateaugay Lake, for approval by the Department of Education.
100 YEARS AGO — 1910 L.G. Perrin, superintendent of the Lozier Motor Works, denies that the Plattsburgh factory will close once a plant is opened in Detroit. In fact, they are constantly installing new machinery to increase output.
Had not skating champion Edward Lamy fallen after getting into a pocket he would have qualified in the first heat of the handicap at St. Nicholas Rink in New York City and undoubtedly have won the event.
Peter Smertczyk, a miner employed at the Lyon Mountain mines, meets a terrible death while he was at work from a car while he was adjusting a block connected with a hoisting apparatus in Shaft 7. He dies of a fractured skull.
During the past season there were exported from the Province of Quebec through the Port of St. John's to the United States 149,866 cords of pulpwood all of which entered at Rouses Point.
— Compiled by Contributing Writer Sue Botsford, who can be reached at 834-7201 or botsford@westelcom.com
