100 Years Ago: 1925

About 200 children on and about Lincoln street are taking advantage of the large skating rink on the old school yard next to the Lincoln street fire station. The rink was built by firemen and some of the boys in the district and flooded by the fire laddies. It cost practically nothing and affords the children of the district a safe place to skate.

50 Years Ago: 1975

Flames of ‘suspicious origin’ completely destroyed an Auburn lumber company early this morning.

Firefighters were called to the Tri-State Lumber Co. on Old Portland Road shortly before 4 o’clock, and found the structure completely engulfed in flames. Despite all firefighting attempts, the building was leveled within a half hour.

Fire Chief Ralph Adams said the cause of the early morning blaze hasn’t been determined but it is “suspicious”. He has asked State Fire Inspectors, along with w Auburn Detective Walter Hall, to investigate.

Destroyed in the blaze was an ell-shaped building containing both a sawmill and planing operation. All equipment was lost, and although there was no immediate estimate of the dollar loss, it will run high. Also destroyed in the blaze was an auto owned by the firm’s manager, Henry Caouette.

The heat from the fire was so intense that it burned tires on one of the company’s large tractor-trailer units parked nearby. Paint on the cab of the vehicle was also scorched by the heat.

25 Years Ago: 2000

As director of the Sandy River Players upcoming rendition of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” Jeffrey M. Watts sought to accurately portray the plight of the Frank family. So Watts, along with his assistant Daryle Hilton, traveled to Amsterdam to visit the house where Anne Frank and seven other people lived in an attic for two years during World War II.

Four Dutch people, who brought food and news of the war, aided the family. In August of 1944 someone tipped off the Nazis, and the family was arrested. Anne Frank was only 13 when the family went into hiding. She died in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, Germany, at the age of 16, only two weeks before the liberation. Her father was the only member of the family to survive the concentration camps. When the father returned to visit the attic where the family had been confined, he found Anne’s diary. The book was published in 1947; it is now printed in 50 languages. The original play debuted in 1957.

“This is an important show, and it deserved a lot of research,” Watts said. They spent seven hours over two days in the attic hideaway getting a feel for the atmosphere a young Anne Frank wrote her diary in.

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