100 years ago

Oak Harbor Public Schools issued a notice stating that there had been excessive absences as of late. Many excuses the schools received for such absences were not “legal,” the only legal excuse being illness. The district stated that when a child was kept home from school, it cost the schools 10 cents per day and made the family liable to pay a fine of up to $25 per offense for breaking the Compulsory School Law. The law provided that all children between the ages of eight and 15, or 16 unless engaged in remunerative occupation, were required to attend school all the time school was in session.

While Mr. Erie was doing his chores Thursday evening, a hunter shot so close to him that the shot peppered his hat. For a moment, Erie was sure “he had a bee in his bonnet.”  The News writer advised hunters to be more careful, as the sheriff had his eye on a few of them.

Butter made in the Oak Harbor Co-operative Creamery scored fifth among 16 contesting creameries at the State Fair of Yakima. The butter samples sent to the fair were the “ordinary” product shipped out every day from the creamery, not a selected stock.

75 years ago

E.B. Erickson, U.S. Naval Reserve, addressed a large crowd of Rotary members and their wives and families regarding the military draft.

Work on the Oak Harbor sewer project was temporarily suspended when the WPA labor budget was exhausted. A supplemental budget sufficient to complete the project had been prepared and sent to Washington D.C. for approval.

Two prominent families were joined in matrimony with the marriage of Beth Zylstra and Paul Fakkema. Paul was a farmer and Beth had been a bookkeeper in the Oak Harbor Producer’s Co-Operative store.

50 years ago

The Coupeville Lions prepared to launch their Guns for Casey fund drive, an effort to bring the 10-inch disappearing rifles back to Fort Casey. The Whidbey Island drive would precede a statewide drive, to be conducted the following month. There was hope that Governor Daniel Evans might proclaim November “Guns for Casey Month.” The guns that Lions were attempting to have returned to Fort Casey for historical purposes were the only ones of their kind in the world and were located at Fort Wint in the Philippines. The federal government had given the guns to the state, and the Navy agreed to transport them once they had been loaded on a ship. However, the cost would be about $31,000 to bring the guns from the fort to the ship.

Mrs. Wayne Chapman, chairwoman of the Mardi Gras committee, was having trouble finding a local club willing to handle the pie-throwing game. No groups had volunteered and, when asked, each had declined saying the game was “undignified.” Chapman countered by recalling the previous year’s game, during which everything else at Mardi Gras was paused because “everyone wanted to see who was having a pie thrown at him.”

25 years ago

A new police chief took the helm at the Oak Harbor Police Department. Tom Miller, who had previously been a sergeant at the Redmond Police Department, took over for Frankie Orr. Orr had retired after several years of service. On his first day, Miller took a tour of the town led by Mayor Al Koetje and met with police chiefs in Coupeville and Langley.

The “old, shabby” district court building was set to be annexed as a part of Skagit Valley College, which required more space and was “bursting with students.” The building would house college employees temporarily while the college awaited funding to complete its new 14,000 square foot facility, expected to be completed in 1992. The district court employees would be relocating to a building behind the Oak Harbor fire and police station. Once the college’s new facility was built, the old district court building would be demolished.