This Week in Bonners Ferry In History
100 Years Ago
Two lumber workers, John Mack and Paul Bradshaw were victims of a couple of daring holdup artists last Thursday. The robbers found Mack and Bradshaw in a gondola car, guns were drawn and the men were told to “dig up” — $17 in currency and silver were taken. As the train slowed near the Kitchen and Kelly camp siding, the men were ordered off the train and into the woods where their good clothes were stolen and they were bound, gagged, and tied to trees. After some time Mack got free and went to a nearby home and then called the Sheriff’s Office. One of the robbers was captured after a gunfight, the other was shot in the arm but managed to escape.
A fire of unknown origin destroyed the International Hotel at Eastport on Sunday. The loss is between $5,000 and $6,000 and is partially covered by insurance.
Do Your Bit by G.B.H.
“Let every fellow do his bit and smile while he is doing it.
It may be leading hopes forlorn.
It may be only hoeing corn
Still he is acting like a man
In doing it the best he can.
Let’s all find out what Duty means
In bearing arms or planting beans
And ere we reach the Great Beyond
Let’s dig down deep and buy a bond.
Dig for the coins while we have Got ‘em
Down deep until we scrape the bottom
Let’s back our boys who are facing hell
To serve their Uncle Sam-u-el”
50 Years Ago
Harv and Karen Pedey announced today they have sold the service station they have operated in Bonners Ferry the past four years — Harv’s Texaco Service — to Jim and Claire Godwin, residents of Bonners Ferry for the past 20 years.
Ken Dinning, who has operated Ken’s Barber Shop in Bonners Ferry for the past 11 years, announced this week that he will close the shop June 1st and will enter a farming partnership with John DeBoer at Copeland.
Holy Requiem was held last Friday at St. Michael’s Church for Mrs. Ann Andrew, 71, who passed away at the local hospital May 20th. She was one of the few remaining residents of St. Michael’s Mission. Born in Boundary County on May 8, 1897, she was the daughter of Nickola Jerome and Lucy Tamia Abraham.
15 Years Ago
A major environmental clean-up in northern Boundary County that will run close to $2 million due to metal leaching into creeks from the now defunct Continental Mine is expected to begin this summer. It is estimated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will spend $1.5 million on the project cleaning up both Blue Joe Creek and Boundary Creek.
Three Bonners Ferry students, Tyler Roady, Cody Foster-Witko, and Paul Thomas brought home medals from the North Idaho College Drafting Competition. “It’s pretty impressive they did as well as they did,” said BFHS manufacturing technology/communications systems teacher Leonard Eby.
This year’s 42nd American Legion Memorial Day Parade on May 26 had an especially solemn resonance and tone following the wake of the Iraq War still fresh in the minds and hearts of these who attended the service earlier at Grandview Cemetery.