100 years ago, 1918
Mayor Burnham has given orders to close Auburn hall for the present. There have been dances and basketball games there many nights each week, but the coal supply is giving out and there are no signs of any more. “If anyone wants to rent the hall without heat,” said the mayor, “he may have it, but we have got to stop heating it right away. I don’t see but what we shall have to burn wood to heat the stores.”

50 years ago, 1968
There was a Ladies Day atmosphere at the Lost Valley Ski Area Wednesday. And it was natural that it should be so, because Wednesday was Mom’s Day with Donna Dyer manning a nursery to care for pre-school children of skiing mothers. The nursery was crowded yesterday but outside were some of the pint sized skiers enjoying the less challenging slopes reserved for them. The mothers present were not limited however, to those women with pre-school age children. Most of them were mothers of children in school and there were not a few grandmothers among them, all holding their own in splendid fashion. There was an interesting geographical representation among them with Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth Foreside, Cumberland Center, Lisbon and Monmouth among the areas with skiers on the slopes.

25 years ago, 1993
From his third-floor office in the City Building, Steven Levesque can see the neighborhood where he delivered newspapers as a boy — but from the vantage point now of development director. The new job has brought Levesque back to the Twin Cities after an absence of nearly 20 years. “You know how there’s always one thing that makes you know you’re home? For me, it’s the smell of Country Kitchen (bread baking) — it’s a very familiar smell,” Levesque said with a smile during a recent interview.

The material in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors made at that time may be corrected.