Aug. 10, 1983

Aldermen voted 7-0 to approve three exceptions to their freeze on Westbrook city employment. They will allow the city clerk to replace one employee and the public works director to replace two. Mrs. Ethelyn Eldridge, an assistant in the clerk’s office 28 years, will retire after the Nov. 8 election. City Clerk William L. Clarke said he hopes someone can learn her job before she goes. Her responsibilities include records of births, deaths and marriages; fishing, hunting and dog licenses; most of the election details; and handling of license payments. She also fills in for the clerk’s other employee, Elaine Finik, as needed. Wilfred Clark joined the Public Works Department Aug. 15, 1960, as helper on a rubbish truck. On Monday he’ll mark that

anniversary; on Aug. 18 he’ll be 60 years old, and on Aug. 18 he’ll work his last day in the department. He was promoted to Sewer Department superintendent in 1970, two days after City Engineer Albert Hume and Sewer Superintendent Ralph Proctor left city employment on the same day.

Gail Jackson, 21, and her brother Tom, 19, are due home

in Westbrook Friday on a bike trip that started in Los Angeles, June 24. They are children of Mr. and Mrs. Wayne Jackson, 17 Woods Road. Both former Westbrook High School basketball stars, they have had a summer of excellent conditioning for the college basketball season that’s ahead for both. They rode first to San Diego so they would be traveling from the farthest corner southwest, to the most northerly state in the east.

The Jimmy Fund Drive is gaining momentum, according to Leo Kimball, Westbrook, president of the Jimmy Fund Council of Southern Maine. “We’re really just getting off the ground,” he said. “We’ve raised almost $7,000 since last fall but it’s been pickin’ and scratchin’ all the way.” Kimball has a personal stake in the Jimmy Fund. He lost his daughter, Leslie, 13, to leukemia five years ago. “After diagnosis, she was taken to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. That’s where the Jimmy Fund originated. Leslie was there for 11 months, off and on, and my wife stayed with her every night until the end. When I saw the work, dedication, the compassion

there. . . it made an almost unlivable experience livable. I decided to see if I could help.

Aug. 11, 1993

Starting next month, the Gorham Municipal Center grounds will become a parking lot for those high school students who drive to school. Police Lt. Ron Shepard told the Town Council last week that ongoing construction work at the school resulted in inadequate parking for students. The concern is that students will park on the side streets adjacent to the high school, which will create bottlenecks and make it difficult for emergency vehicles to get through, he said.

A reader wonders why the Westbrook School Committee recently hired Ronald Thibeau for a newly created job of computer technician at the junior high, when it cut from its budget the $40,000 to buy the computers he was – the citizen thought – hired to run. The hiring was on the recommendation of Superintendent Edward Connolly. “Computer training and

teaching would continue whether the original purchase was made or not,” Francis Amoroso, administrative assistant to Connolly, said Monday, though he also said he’s not familiar with the education side of things.

A proposed new Westbrook school health education philosophy

touches on some “pregnant” issues, including AIDS and AIDS education, Superintendent Edward Connolly warned the school committee Monday, and members may want to read it carefully. It will come before the committee at its next meeting, Connolly said. After the Monday agenda-setting meeting, the philosophy wasn’t typed yet and he offered no details of what it says. Besides the topic of AIDS and its prevention, it will deal with the issues of sexual abstinence, versus control, and whether condoms should be distributed. “I fall very conservatively . . . I don’t think that’s our job,” Connolly said, not making plain just what he was

referring to.

Westbrook police notes: At a house near West Pleasant Street someone has more than 20 rabbits that run loose all the time, a caller said. A man wanted police standing by while he took his belongings from a Westbrook Gardens apartment. Four men and a woman were warned to stay out of the park at Saccarappa Falls after dark. It was 3:34 a.m. Westbrook Community Hospital asked police to take a combative patient

to P6 at Maine Med. A man hit a woman at Westbrook Gardens. Police found that there were court papers to be served on him. Someone not wanted at a party assaulted the host. A boy around age 12 was at the side door of the bus stop at nearly 1 a.m. waiting for his uncle. Screaming coming from Saccarappa Cemetery at 1:36 a.m. was traced to two boys who were warned to stop. A man said his wife moved out but

keeps calling him up and showing up in the house without warning.