28 YEARS AGO — 1996
• A new filtering process that deals with two waste products— effluent and wollastonite tailings from a local mine — will be experimented with here. The joint project is being undertaken by the Essex County Planning Office, NYCO, the Essex County Water Quality Coordination Committee, Cornell University, and the Town of Willsboro. NYCO is the largest and oldest producer of wollastonite in the world, having been mining for 40 years. Wollastonite is used in everything from automotive grills, brakes, bumpers, and fenders to ceramic tiles and glazes, but is most notably an asbestos remover. People at the Willsboro Sewage Treatment Plant, however, are not interested in the ore itself, but rather its waste product, or tailings. Preliminary data has shown that wollastonite retains 90 percent of the phosphorus in effluent, the main culprit in water pollution. Cornell University, which has experimental sites in Willsboro, will research the idea by building an analysis chamber on the site.
• Stan Kourofsky used to yell a lot in his conservation classes at Champlain Valley Tec. It’s not that Kourofsky is a mean teacher. In fact, he’s known to be very open and allows his students to be creative in their hands-on learning techniques. But whenever he gave instructions to students working with the school’s old backhoe loader, he always had to talk above the reverberating growls of the antiquated machine. This year, however, CV Tec (formerly known by the acronym BOCES) has leased some new heavy equipment that purrs in comparison to the decades-old machinery. It provides a lot more benefits to the class as well. “The old equipment was built in the 1970s. It didn’t provide adequate training for these kids to go into the workforce,” Kourofsky said as he proudly displayed the new loader and log skidder his students will use to learn the logging and conservation trades.
50 YEARS AGO — 1974
• Ticonderoga Town Supervisor Melvin Porter today disclosed his decision to vote against the proposed $6.5 million North Country Community College (NCCC) building plan proposal. Porter’s decision, which he said comes after considerable study, deals a perhaps mortal blow to the proposal. Porter, as Ticonderoga town supervisor, controls about one-sixth of the 18-man Essex County Board of Supervisors’ voting power. The building plan would provide a large athletic building and a large physical education building at the two-year Saranac Lake college, along with grounds development. NCCC President George Hodson has declared that rejection of the building plan could kill the college. Several supervisors this week have mentioned using the St. Pius School at Saranac Lake instead of building new facilities. The NCCC Board of Trustees has rejected that plan once, declaring after the bonding resolution was defeated that it still favored the building plan.
• John Stewart, the new county historian, told the Clinton County Legislature Finance meeting this week about the projects he currently has underway and what he hopes to accomplish. Currently, he is working on a subject and genealogy file which has not been kept up to date in the past, he said. Family names in the county are now being indexed by towns and also placed in a cross-index system. Most counties are now conducting cemetery searches, he said, as early censuses only included the name of the head of the family, and cemeteries provide the only records. He said that some work in the county has already been completed, which is fortunate because some of the older stones cataloged during the 1930s are now missing. Presently, there are only two copies of the headstone recordings, he said, and he feels more should be made. Some of the towns within the county do not have historians, although by law they should.
75 YEARS AGO — 1949
• An estimated 900 miners and mill workers in the Port Henry and Chateaugay districts of the Republic Steel Corporation have been idled by the steel strike, it was revealed yesterday. Between 500 and 550 men were laid off Thursday night in the Port Henry district and the balance at Lyon Mountain. Maintenance men and non-union foremen are still on the job in both districts. Cessation of orders from steel plants necessitated the closing down of iron mines and processing mills at Mineville and Lyon Mountain. (Almost all of the Port Henry district’s activities are carried on at Mineville.) The steel strike came two to three weeks before contracts of United Steel Workers (CIO) unions in the two districts are scheduled to expire. The Chateaugay district contract expires Oct. 15, and that at Mineville on Oct. 25. Spokesmen for the Republic Steel Corporation said yesterday that they did not expect a strike to result.
• The 15th and 16th poliomyelitis cases of the year in the Plattsburgh area are currently under treatment at the Physicians Hospital, Health Officer Dr. Leo Schiff reported during the weekend. Latest to be admitted to the hospital were Arthur Gonyo Jr., 11, of West Chazy, and Allan Lyons, four, son of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Lyons of Chazy. The Gonyo boy was placed in the iron lung yesterday. Dr. Schiff said that the youth was experiencing difficulty in breathing. He described the Lyons boy’s case as mild. Admission of the pair brought to six the number currently being treated here for the disease. Two of the six are adults.
100 YEARS AGO — 1924
• Reports from the south drifting in last night brought home with full force the terrific fury of the three-day storm which lashed the eastern seaboard with unremitting vigor. Two men were injured near Tupper Lake when a New York Central train jumped the tracks. Two bridges were washed down into the riverbed of the Ausable River, and the state highway in many places was blocked by a wall of water. At Elizabethtown, barns were moved several feet by the water, and one collapsed. A number of families were removed from their dwellings by boat. Six bad washouts in three miles from Keene to Elizabethtown were reported last night by State Highway Engineer A. J. Keating of Essex County. A two-mile detour is necessary, he said, over a good sand road. The state highway will be usable again by Saturday, he anticipated. There are several washouts from Jay to Ausable Forks, he said, but the road is safe and traffic can get through.
• When the clarion call, “Play Ball,” echoes around the home grounds of the Senators at Washington, Saturday afternoon, Plattsburgh will be well represented in the stands by a faithful trio who have not missed a World Series in many a long year. Sid Spiegel sold peanuts at the Polo Grounds 21 years ago, he told the Press last night, and has not missed a World Series since. In Sid’s day, the Polo Grounds were known as Brush Stadium. John Long will round out a decade of attendance at World Series games this year. He and Sid leave this morning by automobile and pick up Professor William J. Leonard, of local terpsichorean fame, in New York. After putting up for the night at the Langwell Hotel in New York, which is managed by Albert Lynch, formerly of Plattsburgh, the gay party will go over the road to Washington, where all comforts during their stay have been arranged by Capt. Clifford Privett, another old Plattsburgh boy. Sid wasn’t quite sure last night whether or not he would be able to resist the temptation to call out, “Peanuts, popcorn, chewing gum and chocolates,” but it is believed the restraining influence of his friends will be sufficient to calm him down.
— Compiled by Night Editor Ben Rowe