Lookback: June 22, 2009

June 22, 2009 03:28 am

— 25 YEARS AGO — 1984
  It took a lot longer than expected to close the deal, but the Crete Memorial Civic Center officially becomes the home of the Plattsburgh Pioneers Hockey Team. The team will become the first team in the Quebec Junior Hockey League outside the Province of Quebec.

  Two indictments are handed up by a Clinton County grand jury charging Michael Touhy Murphy, 13, with the stabbing murder of Andrew Pitkin, 10, He is charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the April 12 death of Pitkin in their lakeshore neighborhood in Valcour. He is free on $50,000 bail.

  Ground is broken for the multi-million-dollar sludge-composting facility to be built on upper Rugar Street, just east of the Northway. The joint county-city venture will also include a dewatering facility at the city's Water Pollution Control Plant.

  Plans to construct a new bridge between Alburg, Vt., and Rouses Point are put on hold until New York decides whether to allow direct funding for the span. The Lake Champlain Bridge Commission says it is unable to expedite the plan.

50 YEARS AGO — 1959
  A closed hearing on a charge that Alex Papineau, a Mohawk Indian, killed a state trooper is adjourned in Malone to July 9. Papineau is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of Trooper Ronald J. Donahue, 23, of Mineville during a struggle May 23 in Bombay.

  An expressway between Plattsburgh and Morrisonville is in the projected plans of the New York State Department of Public Works. The Board of Supervisors allows the Public Works Department to proceed with surveys through Clinton County lands.

  Automobile traffic in Plattsburgh continues to increase. City Police report that in a six-day period over a weekend counters logged more than 83,000 vehicles on north Margaret Street.

  Attendance at the Municipal Beach is running ahead of last year. Revenues are also about $3,000 ahead of the comparable period in 1958.

75 YEARS AGO — 1934
  St. Joseph's Church in Coopersville is destroyed by fire after lightning strikes its steeple. A little girl and other volunteers saved the sacred host and many statues and paintings. The loss of the church, built in 1844, is estimated at $35,000.

  Franklin County District Attorney Harold A. Main announces Thomas Frederick Showers, 27-year-old Civilian Conservation Corps worker, has signed a statement purported to be a confession that he killed 14-year-old Cleo Tellstone in the woods near Saranac Lake. She had been assaulted and beaten to death.

  Vincent DeLeo, alias Vincent Amerigo, an inmate at Clinton Prison, is on trial in Clinton County for the murder of prison guard D.J. Nickerson and stabbing of two other guards March 25.

  The work now under way at Cosgroves, about two and a half miles west of Plattsburgh, is known as TERA Project No. 98-BK-14 and consists of the enlargement and concreting of one of two distributing or equalizing reservoirs of the city's water system.

100 YEARS AGO — 1909
  The big Fort William Henry Hotel at the head of Lake George, already open for the season, is destroyed by fire, a loss estimated at about $400,000. The Delaware and Hudson Co. owned it. It was build in 1858 and rebuilt in 1868.

  After a month of delay, work is resumed at once on Champlain Valley Hospital, and the building will be pushed to completion as soon as possible. The contract for the completion is awarded to Dennis Callahan of Plattsburgh.

  The new bridge from Standish Street to Caroline Street opens to traffic, and a number of teams drive across the structure. The new bridge is 20 feet north of the old one, which was carried out by ice.

  The first commencement of St. Peter's College in Plattsburgh is held. The institution will graduate a class of three young men.

— Compiled by Contributing Writer Sue Botsford, who can be reached at 834-7201 or botsford@westelcom.com

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