Press-Republican Archives

Lynn Wilke, Peru Central High School's band and chorus director, conducts his last marching band half-time show. The 33-year veteran of Peru's marching and concert bands and chorus is retiring at the end of the school year. (1984)

25 YEARS AGO — 1984
  A Clinton County Legislature committee recommends construction of a new $2.5 million County Jail. Both the state and federal governments have ordered Clinton County to improve conditions at the 53-cell facility.

  Because of a disagreement over reimbursement between officials at CVPH Medical Center and the New York State Department of Correctional Services, non-emergency inmate patients are no longer being accepted at the hospital.

  An Amtrak train traveling to Montreal from New York City derails in Port Henry. Several wheels on the three-car Northbound Adirondack derailed. The 25 passengers were not injured.

  A "white night" rides into the North Country leaving residents to battle with snow-covered streets and driveways. Reports ranged from 7 inches in the Tri-Lakes area to 6 inches in Plattsburgh to a dusting in Ticonderoga.

50 YEARS AGO — 1959
  Staff Sgt. Ernest Dixon, 35, is found guilty of first-degree manslaughter. The Clinton County jury deliberated three hours. They found the former airman guilty of fatally beating his wife, Audrey Vivian Dixon, Feb. 28. Sentencing is set for Nov. 17. He could get 20 years in prison.

  About 300 steel workers in Lyon Mountain and 600 in Mineville return to work following the Supreme Court's upholding of the Taft-Hartly back-to-work injunction.

  Fisher Hill Mine of Republic Steel in Mineville is scheduled to be reopened Nov. 23 after two years of inactivity. The opening will mean the increase of about 100 people in Republic's Mineville workforce.

  Federal aid is denied for construction of a new junior-senior high school in Plattsburgh. The denial was based on the fact that there appears to be no need because of increased enrollment, even through Plattsburgh has a substantial number of students from Plattsburgh Air Force Base.

75 YEARS AGO — 1934
  Spectators will not be allowed into the trail of Thomas F. Showers of Syracuse, who is charged with first-degree murder, which starts Nov. 19 in Malone until jury selection is complete. Space considerations are the issue. He is accused of killing Cleo Tellstone of Bloomingdale.

  With three of six barracks finished, workmen are busily engaged on the remainder of the buildings to have the new Civilian Conservation Corps. camp at Plattsburgh ready for opening by the first of the year.

  Construction of Malone's new sewage-disposal plant on the village farm just north of the Malone paper mill is well-advanced. The work is expected to be completed by Jan. 1.

  Work on enlarging and concreting Plattsburgh's second distributing reservoir at Cosgroves is expected to be completed in 10 days to two weeks.

100 YEARS AGO — 1909
  Frank White, a well-known farmer living about five miles east of Malone, is found dead with a bullet through his body, and whether the shooting was accidental or otherwise is still a mystery.

  The enlisted men at Plattsburgh Barracks are paid off, thus distributing about $15,000 among the soldiers stationed there.

  The recent school census of Plattsburgh shows that there are 2,154 children between 4 and 18 years of age attending schools in the city.

  A large force of men are at work on the new mill of the Chateaugay Pulp Co., pushing the structure to completion.

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