Column - 2002: Big Ole statue to move one block north

Talk about it

The following is a collection of stories and other items that were included in Alexandria newspapers over the years.

100 YEARS AGO

JUNE 1912

A plan is in place to establish the best roads from Alexandria to Fargo. The Alexandria Automobile Club purchased road signs at $1.65 each to place along the planned route. The club sent three automobiles to find the best route from Alexandria to Ashby. A delegation from Fergus Falls will lay out the best route from Ashby to Barnesville. They are expected to secure similar signs and put them in place along the way. In this way, a through road will be established to Fargo and, in the course of time, it will become a great public thoroughfare. Similar roads are established across different sections of the state.

50 YEARS AGO

JUNE 1962

Bonnie Hartfiel of Evansville was crowned Douglas County Dairy Day Princess at Saturday’s June Dairy banquet. Nearly 120 units from 25 high schools will march in Wednesday’s Lake Region Dairy Days Parade… The new First Baptist Church will be dedicated on Sunday… Sam Mele, field manager of the Minnesota Twins, announced they have finally done it! They signed twins to the league! Richard and Robert Sorenson have been assigned to the Class D Appalachian League in Wytheville, Virginia… WCTN-TV photographers were on hand to capture three local “Vikings.” George Syvrud, Joe Syvrud Jr. and “Skip” Peterson for the Rodger Kent television show, Outdoors Funland, broadcast weekly on that station… The city council voted to buy the old Alexandria Boat Works property on Broadway on which to build a municipal liquor store.

25 YEARS AGO

JUNE 1987

A 1987 Chevy Spectrum Coupe (built by Isuzu) with a list price of $8,055, less $104 Steinbring discount and $500 Chevrolet rebate, means your price is $7,451… Brian Eldevik won numerous grand champion awards for his Suffolk ewes at the Red River Valley Show… The Rev. Karen Soli, pastor at Bethesda Lutheran Church, is one of eight candidates for bishop of the Northeast Synod of ELCA. She and Cheryl Berg of First Lutheran are the only two female pastors in Alexandria… Jackie Treischel, a first-year law enforcement student at AVTI, is the city’s first bicycle safety patrol officer… Bob Hines, owner and general manager of KXRA AM and FM, hired Patti Wicken as sign-on announcer and FM director, and Roxann Maloney as traffic and co-op director for both stations. Ev Walters returns as sales manager with 38 years of radio/ownership/manager experience.

10 YEARS AGO

JUNE 2002

The city approved an agreement with MnDOT to share the funding of the $2.7 million project to extend Second Avenue. The state agreed to cover 92 percent of the actual construction costs. Big Ole agreed to move one block further north to the nearby park area on the Central Lakes Trail… Lorraine Jensen recently graduated with honors from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the U of M, and was selected as an intern in the Governmental Studies Program of the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C…. In the past three years, Joann Serger of Osakis has submitted four poems to publishing companies and all have been recorded in song. Hilltop Records on the cassette, America, published her last songs, Mesmerized and Afraid.

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Marge Van Gorp of Alexandria is a regular contributing columnist to the Echo Press Opinion page.

Tags: opinion, columns