From the Files

125 Years Ago

Adams County News

June 29, 1898

Local and Personal

John H. Newlin of Lind had the bad luck to mash one of his fingers so badly last week that it was necessary to have it amputated.

Roy Gilson, the 8-year-old son of E.D. Gilson, fell about thirty feet from the platform of a windmill last week and broke his leg.

Enquiry is made almost daily about houses in Ritzville. If some enterprising citizen would build about fifty houses they could all be rented within a month.

100 Years Ago

Ritzville-Journal Times

June 21, 1923

Reject pumphouse bids

The city council last week rejected all bids for the pumphouse at the park wells. There has been so much delay in reaming out the old well that there is no telling how soon a pumphouse could be built, so the matter will be dropped until the wells are in shape.

The new well is not being used, but will be used as soon as the motor for it arrives. The motor has been ordered for months, and the factory in the East has advised that it was shipped, but it has not arrived. In the meantime the old well in the coulee is being used. As the season has been cool, no difficulty has been experienced in providing ample water for the town.

Local Brevities

Henry Langenheder, a nephew of Charles Langenheder, arrived Tuesday morning from Germany. He intends to work in this country.

75 Years Ago

Ritzville-Journal Times

June 24, 1948

REA workman hurt; 3 more farms energized

A member of a wiring crew was injured and three more Ritzville farmers received REA electricity as the Big Bend Electric cooperative's summer construction program marched steadily ahead this week.

The injured man was Dan Seaman of Spokane, employed by the Hughes Electric Company of Spokane which is working on new Big Bend lines in Adams County.

Seaman was thrown off a load of poles Monday near Marengo when one of the poles shifted suddenly during unloading operations. He was taken to Ritzville General Hospital where abdominal wounds were sewed up.

Chet Templin, Bob Telecky, and Bob Smith are the three farmers who received REA power this week from a Big Bend construction project north of Ritzville. The Howard Hennings and Walter Telecky farms are scheduled to be hooked up next.

Two Ritzville youths die in plane wreck

A low wing monoplane carrying two young men from Ritzville plowed into a wheatfield between Lind and Ritzville late Thursday afternoon last week and both fliers were killed instantly. The victims were the pilot, Richard L. Kautz, 27-year-old partner in the Associated Oil service station here, and his single passenger, George H. Rehn, 19, who was graduated from Ritzville High School last year.

Cause of the crash has not been determined. Kautz and Rehn had taken off in the PT-22 Ryan primary trainer from the Lind airport. About 5:10 p.m. Rudy Plager saw the plane hurtling towards the ground and heard it crash in a wheatfield on the Fred Albershardt ranch.

At the Ritz

James Stewart in "Call Northside 777" with Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb, and Helen Walker.

50 Years Ago

Ritzville-Journal Times

June 28, 1973

Twister Upturns Locust

A little twister hit about dusk last Friday at the Maudice Ferderer ranch home 14 miles west of here. It tore shingles off the south side of the home, and uprooted a 40-foot-high locust tree sitting to the east of the driveway at the home's front. But it didn't move lightweight articles sitting on a packing box at the home's north side.

Maudice told the Journal-Times there was no warning it would hit. He was standing about 60 feet from the back door when the howling wind suddenly whipped into the yard, breaking off a major limb of a three-limbed tree there. There had been no wind or dust prior to the strike.

Ferderer made it to the back door and found it all he could do to open that door. Once open, he had equally as much difficulty in closing it. He said he figured the home's interior was a near vacuum at the time. Inside the house he found, in attempting to close several open windows, they were as hard to move as the back door had been. Both his wife and daughter Karen reported they had found it hard to breathe.

25 Years Ago

Ritzville-Journal Times

June 25, 1998

City looking for answers to sewer plant funding

Where does Ritzville go from here? That was the question the city council posed to its engineer, Tom Haggarty, during the Tuesday, June 16, council meeting. Facing a Department of Ecology mandate to build a new sewer plant, funding for the facility was not granted under the state's Centennial Clean Water Act. The city had high hopes of receiving the approximate $2 million it needs to complete the plant after working closely with DOE officials the past several months.

Attempts to find out where the city ranks among those not funded in 1998 have been unsuccessful. Both Haggarty and Mayor Kirk Danekas said they have repeatedly left messages with DOE but those calls have not been returned.

- The Journal