28 YEARS AGO — 1996
• CVPH Medical Center is purchasing for $2 million the plaza that housed Paper Cutter and will relocate its kidney-dialysis service and Women’s Imaging Center there. CVPH President Kevin Carroll announced the move Tuesday, saying “it will be a more efficient and user-friendly and a much pleasanter” place for patients to get routine care. The 54,000-square-foot complex behind Hannaford supermarket on Smithfield Boulevard is owned by Pyramid Corp., which also owns Champlain Centres but will become home to the hospital’s dialysis unit by late summer. The 45 acres of property on Tom Miller Road that the hospital had purchased last year to build a medical complex became too costly to develop and will be sold, Carroll said.
• Ralph K. Martin, a retired U.S. Navy captain, wants to navigate the base reuse group through the rough waters of redevelopment. Martin, 53, is one of several applicants to come forward since the storm rocking the Champlain Valley International TradePARC began to gain strength. The tides last week swept Chief Executive Officer David Holmes and Chief of Staff Al Flateau out of jobs. “I don’t look at it as just base redevelopment but North Country region redevelopment,” said Martin, as he sat on an overstuffed couch in his farmhouse. He seemed relaxed, sinking into the floral pattern with the ease and confidence of a man who has seen the world. “If we, our community, are going to live and prosper here, we need to diversify our industries.”
50 YEARS AGO — 1974
• Attendance at the Crete Center is growing as planned, according to Director Al Grissino. By Friday, attendance had doubled over Tuesday’s opening night figure, he said. Tuesday’s paid attendance was about 500, Grissino said Friday night. Wednesday’s was slightly over 600, Thursday’s was over 800, and Friday’s was estimated at more than 1,000. “We didn’t expect to reach capacity,” he said. “It’s going exactly as we planned.” The center still has two problems to cope with. One is parking lot lights; the other is the dirt surface in the lot, which could become a major difficulty in rainy weather. The more than 75 light globes high atop poles in the parking lot were expected to be operable early this month. The holdup is a part of the transformer, Grissino said.
• At least three of the five prospects eligible to take the civil service examination to determine the next Plattsburgh police chief said Friday they plan to take the examination. The five city police officers who qualify for the examination include Capt. Leo Connick, Lt. Herbert Carpenter (chief of detectives), Lt. Robert Carpenter, Lt. Earl Atwood, and Lt. Gerald LaPier. Connick, when contacted Friday by Press-Republican, said he “surely” was going to take the examination. The captain, who is an 18-year veteran on the city police force, made the rank of captain on March 2, 1969, and according to rank would be next in line for the vacant police chief position. “As long as they are going to give the examination according to the civil service law, which I’m sure they are, I’m interested,” Connick said.
75 YEARS AGO — 1949
• Ground will be broken Monday for the city’s Cornelia Street fire station, Alderman Daniel J. Ryan told the Common Council last night. A widow and her four children are still tenanting the multiple apartment stone structure occupying a portion of the site where the fire station is to be erected, but Corporation Counsel Allen M. Light assured the Council that they will be removed by the time workmen are ready to commence razing the structure. Aldermen were told previously that the widow receives a substantial pension. And a letter from the office of Architect Alvin W. Inman cleared up the dispute as to why terra cotta tile, rather than concrete blocks, is being used as brick backing at the fire station. Inman’s letter explained that the tile is greater load-bearing than concrete blocks and is more impervious to water and moisture.
• In 1874, there was founded in Plattsburgh the first legally organized charitable association in northern New York, the Home for the now the Children’s Friendless, Home of Northern New York. On Sunday, May 22, the Home will observe its 75th anniversary. The facts related to the origin and growth of the Children’s Home from its inception in 1874 are taken from the annual reports written by the Home’s first two presidents. The first account written by Mrs. M.K. Platt in 1899 and the second account written by Mrs. E. G. Moore in 1924 provide a graphic and inspiring record of human effort, sacrifice, and achievement in the field of social service. In the early seventies, Miss Marcia Brown, then principal of young women at Plattsburgh Academy, visited the Clinton County Poor House. In this “miserable structure,” she found the situation so appalling that she felt compelled to describe her visit in the Plattsburgh Republican: “In detailing the condition of this only refuge for Clinton County paupers, full to overflowing with men and women and children of all ages, some idiotic and some insane, she drew attention to the case of a baby boy, sick, lying in a hard cradle on straw, covered with but a single cotton garment, cared for by gabbling, idiotic women. This article closed with the question, ‘Are there no benevolent women in Plattsburgh to care for such a case?’ Miss Brown did not close her efforts with a newspaper article. She asked several women to meet with her to consider the case of the sick boy. Eight ladies responded. They found a woman who took the child into her home to grow up with her own children.
100 YEARS AGO — 1924
• The first case, to come before U. S. Commissioner W. L Pattison under the new order from Washington on seizure of empty liquor bottles and the arrest of the person transporting them was heard Saturday when Fred Besson of Burke, N. Y., waived examination and was held on $1,000 for the special session of the federal grand Jury at Albany May 26. Besson was arrested last Friday night by Agent Walter C. Semsey at Chateaugay. In his car, it is alleged, were 15 cases of empty beer bottles. He was charged with violating the tariff act of 1824 by receiving, purchasing, and transporting with the intention of filling, bottles which had been Imported into the United States contrary to law.
• There will be another meeting tonight in the American Legion rooms to help allez-service men make out the bonus application. The rooms will be open at 7 o’clock and a force of typists and notaries will be on hand. ex-service men are urged to out the applications as early as possible. The American Legion has already handled about one half of the number of applications in Plattsburgh. In nearly every town in Clinton County the American Legion has helped ex-service men and many new members have been gathered.
— Compiled by Night Editor Ben Rowe