Nov. 9, 1994

About 100 new jobs will be created in Westbrook next year with a $4.5 million expansion of IDEXX Laboratories Inc., on Eisenhower Drive. The company will start renovating and moving into an additional 90,000-square-foot building in January, and is scheduled to have the project done by July. The space was formerly occupied by Global Zero, now in Sanford. IDEXX will start staffing the new space in April.

Westbrook’s deputy city clerk, Trudy J. Storer, and her assistant, Helen Jordan, resigned last week from the three-person clerk’s office. Storer will continue through next week. Jordan left Friday, two working days before yesterday’s election. Barbara Hawkes, the clerk, said she is recruiting their replacements. Jordan said she was resigning because of “stress.” Storer gave no reason but is reported to have accepted the city clerk’s job in Rochester, New Hampshire, at $34,000 a year, a pay raise of nearly $11,000.

Robert Carson, chief of the Scarborough Fire Department, has written to Westbrook city officials praising the work done by the city’s firefighters that helped them stop a fire at 163 Saco St., Oct. 15. Carson called it “one of the most complex residential structure fire situations a department can find. The tactics employed were textbook and street smart.” The fire destroyed the barn but firemen stopped it in the ell that connected the barn to an apartment house.

The old Frederick Robie School, a Little Falls landmark, remains under town control after the Gorham Town Council split over a proposal to turn the deed over to the Gorham PTA for conversion into a youth center. The building has not been used as a school in some 35 years. Several councilors questioned the PTA’s ability to finance the required building upgrades because they said no town or school district tax money should go toward the structure.

Mike Caiazzo and Mike Mouradian, members of the Gorham High School cross-country team, have been competing good-naturedly to be Gorham’s top runners since Mouradian started as a freshman last year. Caiazzo, a senior, has consistently been Gorham’s best since he started four years ago. This year and last, Mouradian has come very close to beating him. Last week, Gorham competed in the state Class B championship. It was Caiazzo’s last high school cross-country race and Mouradian’s last chance to best his friend. The result: Caiazzo finished sixth overall with a time of 16 minutes 26 seconds. Mouradian finished seventh with a time of 16 minutes, 37 seconds.

Nov. 10, 2004

Taken prisoner of war by Germany in World War II, a Westbrook soldier who died 10 years ago didn’t live to see the Bronze Star he earned for heroism in the Battle of the Bulge 60 years ago. Louise Knight, of West Valentine Street, widow of Clyde Knight, said last week that the medal arrived in October 1994, four months after he died. She keeps it in a frame. Knight was a rifleman in the 106th Infantry Division. Incredibly, before entering the Army, he had no familiarity with weapons. He never went hunting and he never wanted guns in the house, his wife said. Knight’s bravery is being remembered this week as part of Veterans Day, Nov 11.

The Catholic Church will merge its three parishes in Westbrook at St. Mary’s later this month, closing the St. Edmund’s and St. Hyacinth’s churches. At Masses last weekend, the Rev. Joseph Manship told parishioners that all three churches would be closed on Nov. 21 and the three parishes would be meeting at St. Mary’s the following weekend. It is likely that St. Mary’s will be known by a different name when the combined parishes begin to meet there. The merger had been anticipated for some time.

It was a day of firsts for the Gorham girls soccer team. Coach Jeanne Zarrilli won her first state title as a coach and the Rams earned the first girls soccer state title in the school’s history. The Rams downed eastern Maine’s Winslow Black Raiders, 2-0, at MBNA Field in Northport Saturday afternoon for the Class B crown. “To win this in my last senior game is amazing,” Ashley Wingert said. “This team’s amazing. This is just perfect.”

The owners of Port City Graphics have put the old Westbrook police station up for sale just a couple months after purchasing it from the city for about half the price they are now selling it at. Owners Paul Gore and Joe Mazzone are asking $1.1 million for the property, which the city sold to them for $450,000. Gore said while the original plan was to move into the building, the decision to sell came after he and Mazzone received an unsolicited offer from a contractor soon after the closing in September. Though that deal fell through, he said, “it seems like there’s a lot of pent-up demand for the building. We just put it on the market to see if there was any interest in it.”

Pete Profenno plans to reopen his Westbrook restaurant in a new location a couple doors down from the old one. Profenno is in the process of purchasing a building at 934 Main St. that will serve as the new home for his restaurant, which will be expanded to include pizza and take-out sandwiches. He expects the remains of the building destroyed by the fire, which investigators say was deliberately set, would be torn down sometime next week. He plans to fill in the lot for the winter, and in the spring will build a two-story apartment building on the site. He said he was actually in negotiations to buy the other building, which once housed Hebert’s Market, before the fire, with an eye on opening a pizza restaurant there.

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