March 30, 1983

A fire that was almost a carbon copy of the Jan. 19 Fruitland fire swept through the second and third floors of a three-story apartment house at 593 Main St., Westbrook, Sunday night. All the tenants were left homeless. The fire started when cooking oil caught fire in a second-floor front apartment while French-fried potatoes were being prepared, exactly as the Fruitland fire did. As at the Fruitland, it went through a false ceiling into walls, floor and attic areas, said Fire Chief James Rulman. Phil Chayer, who lived on the second floor, was taken out of the building by fireman and to the Osteopathic Hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation. The other residents got out with out injury.

Westbrook High School students stood dumbfounded on the school lawn last week. Even at that range, they could see the big

letters on a banner fluttering on top of the S.D. Warren smokestack: “Class of ’83.” In the night, some senior or seniors had climbed the ladder on the side of the 347-foot stack to put the banner there. “We got it down as quick as we could,” said William F. Hilfrank, director of community relations at the big paper mill. “It was a pretty foolhardy stunt, and our own feeling was that these things tend to get imitated if they’re talked about.” Warren hired a professional climber, who went up the ladder and brought the sheet down before noon.

The Westbrook City Council voted a 90-day moratorium on new

state-authorized roadside business signs in Westbrook. City lawyer

Richard Sullivan said the moratorium “will give public notice to

everyone that we’re treating them all alike and that we’re giving this thing some further thought.”

Brendan Rielly, 12 years old and a seventh-grader, son of Mr. and

Mrs. Edward Rielly, 6 Colony Road, won the spelling bee at Westbrook Junior High School and will represent the city in the Cumberland County Spelling Bee on April 2. First runner-up is Trisha Breasheares, an eighth-grader and daughter of M. and Mrs. Sam Maiorano, 41 Westbrook Gardens. Trisha missed the word

“complimentary.” Brendan spelled it right, and then clinched the win

by correctly spelling “equitable.”

March 31, 1993

Nine-year-old Amanda Watts, daughter of Jeff and Denise Watts of

Westbrook, has been unconscious for nearly three weeks after

choking on a hot dog at the Cumberland County Civic Center on March 12. She was first taken to the Maine Medical Center, where she fluttered in and out of consciousness. After two weeks Amanda “took a turn for the worse” and was transported by ambulance to Children’s Hospital in Boston. Her father, Jeff Watts, is a machinist at S.D. Warren Co. and a volunteer Westbrook fire fighter. Both S.D. Warren and the Westbrook Fire Department have been contributing to the tremendous costs involved in her hospitalization. “The Westbrook firefighters’ children emptied their piggy banks on Sunday, and gave us a big bucket of coins,” said Kim Caron, who with her husband Gary, are best friends of the Watts family.”We haven’t counted it yet, but it was a two-gallon bucket,

three-quarters full of money. It will go into the trust fund for

Amanda.”

Ed Meserve and Heron Murray, both 16-year-old juniors in the

Westbrook Regional Vocational Center, left March 31 for Archangel,

Russia. They will be gone a month. They are taking three sets of

cold-weather clothes, boots for the Russian snow and mud, and food for gifts. Maybe a little of the food will be for themselves. They don’t expect flowers and warm sun and sumptuous food. They do expect to do a lot of learning about the far northern Russian city of 400,000 and about the conditions of life there.

Two Gorham teams walked away with top honors at the Odyssey of the Mind competition March 20 at Marshwood Junior and Senior High Schools in Eliot. They will go to the University of Maine for state competition April 3. In the competition the students work together to solve a long-term problem, and also work on a spontaneous problem.