100 Years Ago: 1923

The Lewiston-Auburn Rotary at the Dewitt hotel Friday noon heard Jeff Smith talk about boys’ work. E. Farrington Abbott presided.

In executive session the Rotary club has appropriated $500 to send boys this summer to the Y. M. C. A camp at Cobbosseecontee. In addition to this, several well-known concerns will finance boys of their own choice for a stay of from three to eight weeks, each, at these camps.

The Augusta Rotary club has also appropriated $500 for similar work and individuals have backed the work to the extent of guaranteeing 35 boys all told.

Jeff Smith’s talk was tremendously powerful. “Character building at these camps and boys’ conferences” was his theme. There is no such thing as a bad boy. Any boy can be saved for usefulness and service if desired. It is our job. The Lewiston-Auburn Rotary club proposes to do its share.

The attendance was 84 out of 92 members, a percentage of 91.3.

50 Years Ago: 1973

The Lewiston Council Knights of Columbus Auxiliary is holding its annual banquet Tuesday evening at the East Avenue clubhouse Lewiston, Following dinner officers will be installed with Maurice Dennis as coordinator.

25 Years Ago: 1998

Upper school students at Hebron Academy who developed the first map of the McLaughlin garden in Paris were honored for their efforts Friday. Lee Dassler, executive director of The McLaughlin Foundation, which is custodian of the expansive perennial gardens, attended a morning meeting at the school to talk to students about the foundation’s preservation work.

She also described the efforts of 11 Hebron students who did the mapping project as a part of a community service component in the curriculum. They worked in the gardens last fall. Dassler said they used a grid that divided the 3.5-acre property into 50-foot square blocks so they could chart the flower beds, trees, lilac bushes, house and adjoining barn, plus garden paths that wind through the property. The map has been turned over to an architect to be reproduced on a formal plan.

“No one has ever mapped the garden” during its 60-year history, Dassler said. The new grid provides a clear bird’s-eye view of a property that contains more than 300 kinds of perennials, including 98 varieties of lilacs.

The nonprofit foundation has enlisted the help of landscape architects and master gardeners to chart the future of the garden, Dassler said. The new map will be an integral part of this process.

“This is the beginning of a really important document for the garden,” she told the upper school students. She encouraged all of them to visit the arboretum on Main Street in Paris to enjoy the garden.

The garden will open for the season in mid-May. The lilacs are expected to bloom just before Memorial Day.

The material used in Looking Back is produced exactly as it originally appeared although misspellings and errors may be corrected.