St. John Valley area From our Files – Week of April 3, 2024

Compiled by Linda Pelletier, Special to The County
3 weeks ago

50 Years Ago — April 3, 1974

  Seeds furnish beads for rosary – Tourists often bring souvenir palm trees back from their trips to Florida. But not Msg. Albert Long, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Church, who brought back a bit of the real thing: enough seeds of a Queen Palm Tree to make a string of rosary beads. “They are very hard, much like a miniature coconut,” he explains. “I had to sandpaper the end of the seed in order to get the drill started.” 

25 Years Ago — April 7, 1999

Beard be gone – Before the entire Fort Kent Elementary School population, Principal Gary Stevens had to come clean on his challenge. Stevens challenged the students to collect double the amount of General Mills box tops this year over last, as part of a PTA fundraiser. If the students met their goal, Stevens promised to shave his beard before the entire student body. The students exceeded their goal raising what equaled more than $600 which was used for the special programs, the Chewonki classroom science presentation and Americana Inspirata, a native American singers presentation.

10 Years Ago — April 2, 2014 

Week begins with a spring snowstorm — Brian Roy and his father Clarence were out on a Monday morning in 2014, to clear snow from the nearly 20 commercial and private locations in town for which they have snow removal contracts. On Sunday March 30, 2014, Madawaska accumulated another 12 inches of snow, according to Corey Bogel, meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Caribou office.