March 1980

The Scott Paper Company’s S.D. Warren mill in Westbrook, which shifted fuel years ago from coal to oil, now pays $2 million a month for oil. Scott is looking at alternatives, including coal. Regional Waste Systems, which buries the area’s solid waste, hopes Scott will burn that. Scott and RWS will visit a waste burner in Saugus, Mass. Scott is cool to RWS and interested in co-generation, a plant that gives heat for paper-making and generates electricity to sell to Central Maine Power Co. Fuel would be branches from the forest, railroad ties and scrap wood, and maybe coal, if RWS would take the ashes.

A front-page picture shows Patricia (Mrs. David) Gillis and Anne (Mrs. Kenneth) Cassidy, Lincoln Street, Westbook, walking with their babies, Marcill Gillis, 17 months, and James Cassidy, 7 months, on the first day of spring, “mild and pleasant.”

Westbrook aldermen tabled plans for traffic lights at three intersections when Mayor O’Gara and his assistant, Harold Parks, didn’t have recent accident numbers. The three are Saco Street-Wayside Drive, Warren Avenue-Cumberland Street, and Spring Street-County Road.

Co-sponsored by the Windham Chamber of Commerce and the L.C. Andrew Company, the Energy Bus will be at the Andrew parking lot Saturday with information on solar greenhouses, passive solar heating, woodstoves and other energy savings.

As they did last year, South Portland’s seven city councilors will get together for an overnight meeting Saturday and Sunday in the Chebeague Island home of a friend of one. City Manager Robert Ganley said there is no agenda. It is understood that streamlining the city’s boards and commissions will be discussed.

In a letter, Gorham’s Bernard Rines asks for building Gorham’s sewers with foresight rather than crisis management.

U.S. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie writes, “Our security is threatened by many dangers, and the price of military weakness is a very alarming one. But so is inflation. In working to counteract one of these threats, we cannot afford to aggravate the other.”

In a 4-3 vote, Westbrook’s City Council refused to accept a new contract with firefighter, apparently because it called for giving the four shift commanders the new title of captain.

South Portland teachers have accepted a three-year contract.

April 1, 1980, will be Census Day. It comes every 10 years.

Maury and Fran Gleckman of Westbrook Hardware are back from a vacation trip to Las Vegas, Nev., and Laguna Beach, Calif.

March 1990

Bill Childs, who turned 34 last week, carries on his law practice while also managing Race-Me Stables, Westbook, a four-generation family tradition of harness racing. Race-Me Stables is owned by his parents, Probate Judge Dana Childs and Jean Childs. Bill is training “Traffic Court,” a 2-year-old horse, for its first racing season this summer.

UNUM is buying a British company, National Employers Life Assurance Holding Company Limited, for 40 million pounds.

A program at the Prides Corner Kiwanis Club meeting will mark the 40th anniversary of the start of Little League baseball.

The Davis Education Foundation has given $450,000 to enlarge the book collection of Westbrook College’s library.

E.C. Jordan Engineering Co., Portland, was bought last year by C-E Environmental. That company now has been bought by a Swiss Company, Asea Brown Boveri Inc., which has 215,000 employees and $25 billion annual sales.

Westbrook schools will go to a centrex phone system April 1, except Prides Corner, which will remain in the Portland system. New numbers are assigned. The change will cut costs, the schools said.