28 YEARS AGO — 1996
• As the AIDS epidemic continues to rage across the globe, the North Country needs to build its defenses. In 1996, an estimated 28 million people worldwide have HIV. That’s expected to grow to as many as 110 million people by the turn of the century. In the United States, AIDS is the No. 1 killer of men between the ages of 25 and 44. For women that age, it’s the No. 3 killer but steadily continues to climb. Dr. Wouter Rietsema, a local infectious-disease physician, sees about 30 HIV-positive cases in his practice. Although some patients acquired the virus elsewhere, many did become infected locally. “We need to recognize and understand high-risk groups,” Rietsema said during a discussion on AIDS at a Grand Rounds lecture at CVPH Medical Center. “We have no understanding of why people do what they do in these risk groups.” We need improved identification in the North Country, he said. “The education of primary-care providers is important in helping us identify the disease early. Many ailments that patients bring to physicians could signal the possibility of HIV infection. If we can identify infections earlier, we can break the transmission of the disease,” he said.
• A local non-profit is close to securing property on the former air base which will allow it to house the county’s poor and unemployed. Evergreen Townhouse Corporation will take over 18 townhouses and a dormitory-like facility near Sharon Avenue once the federal government approves the application. The organization applied for the property about two years ago during the Plattsburgh Inter- municipal Development Council’s planning stages. It did so under the Stewart B. McKinney Housing-the-Homeless Act. The act allows providers of services for the homeless to jump ahead of local and state governments and agencies like PARC in the pecking order for closed military property. As part of the application process, Plattsburgh Airbase Redevelopment Corporation has submitted a letter to the Air Force supporting the property transfer. “In all cases, PARC is trying to be helpful,” said David Holmes, PARC’s chief executive officer. Evergreen plans to provide emergency, temporary housing for people that are evicted or unemployed and are trying to regain their financial stability.
50 YEARS AGO — 1974
• Documentation and mapping of the “sunken history of Lake Champlain” will be the target of the Montreal diving team of Kenn Feigelman and John Oldham when they begin diving operations in Cumberland Bay next month. Deep Quest 2, which the divers call their archeological expedition, began last year with the exploration of the lake bottom near Point Au Roche, according to Feigelman, expedition director. This year’s expedition, according to the two young Canadians, will deal with the searching and documenting on both film and in writing the location of shipwrecks and artifacts found in Cumberland Bay, site of a major naval confrontation between British and American naval forces in 1814. To aid in the mapping phase of the expedition, according to Fiegelman, who is an assistant technical director working in the lab of Eastern Coated Papers of Canada Limited, will be John Caramia of Peru, a diving member of the Adirondack Archeology Association. Last summer, Caramia and other members of the association made a profile (map) of about seven miles of Cumberland Bay with a side-scanning sonar unit made by Klein Associates of Salem, N.H The unit, according to Caramia, is attached to a boat and is dragged through the water, making a map of objects laying on the bottom. With about seven miles done, there is about 50 miles of the bay left to be mapped, Caramia explained. The mapping of the seven-mile strip took about five hours. The sonar unit is rented for $170 per day which makes it expensive, but a much-needed instrument.
• Rod Serling, author of numerous television dramas including “The Twilight Zone” and “Requiem for a Heavyweight” will speak in the College’s Memorial Hall Gymnasium beginning at 8:30 Sunday evening. Admission is free and the doors will open to the general public at 8:15. The topic of Serling’s talk will be “The 20th Century and Other Insanities.”
75 YEARS AGO — 1949
• Dial telephone service will be introduced in Lyon Mountain at 7:00 o’clock this morning, R. S. Fox, manager of the New York Telephone Company, announced yesterday. It will also mark the establishment of Lyon Mountain as a separate dial office with its own base rate area and toll rate center. Mr. Fox explained that there will be no change in the rates for local service because of the introduction of the new office. Lyon Mountain customers will continue to have toll-free service to Dannemora and the rates to other points will be essentially the same as at present. Individual and four-party line service will be available to customers within the base rate area. The number of customers on rural lines will be reduced so that no one line will have more than eight customers and the average will be less than that. A four-party line customer will hear one ring in addition to his own while a customer on a rural line may hear four rings, his own and three others.
• The use of an amphibious army duck is proving a labor and time saving method of laying cables in the Adirondack area by the New York Telephone Co. The company has rented from Maurice Broderick the army duck which he has displayed on numerous occasions in Plattsburgh. It is capable of carrying a 7 1/4 ton load in and out of water. A roll of cable weighing between four and five tons is carried on the machine and is laid across all water obstructions. At present, a crew is employing the use of the “duck” at Lake Titus. Broderick’s machine is 31 feet long, eight feet wide and eight feet in height.
100 YEARS AGO — 1929
• Youthful vandals have been causing some damage at the City Hall during the past few days and the police have been informed regarding the matter. It is likely that a small band of youths, including a girl, ranging from 9 to 12 years of age, will be questioned and the parents probably informed to take better care of the children. The youths, whose names are known to the police, are a stubborn lot and have paid little attention to the warnings of employees about the City Hall to cease their mild depredations in the Public Library and around the City Hall. It is said they engaged in a battle on the lawn around the City Hall and stones were flying thick and fast for a while. Little care was given to which direction the stones were thrown and as a result one window in the Chamberlain’s office was smashed.
• Acting under orders from Mayor W.E. Cross, Chief of Police Senecal this week closed up what was reported to be the most flagrant of Plattsburgh’s speak-easies on Miller Street. Complaints of uproar lasting into the early hours of the morning, coupled with profane language that made it impossible for neighbors to sleep and rendered it unpleasant for women to pass by, poured in upon Sheriff S.A. Day and were passed over to the Mayor for him. The Mayor delivered an ultimatum to the proprietor and at 6 o’clock that night, when he and the chief inspected the premises, all signs of the illegal traffic had disappeared. Similar action will be taken in the case of any other such nuisance which is reported to him as distributing the neighborhood, the Mayor told the Press yesterday.
— Compiled by Night Editor Ben Rowe