100 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 11, 1912

Special train from Seattle

A Bend railroad excursion from Seattle, that promises to be the biggest thing of its kind yet seen in Central Oregon, is due to arrive here on Sunday, September 1, and the excursionists will remain over Monday, which is Labor Day.

W.D. Cheney, president of the Bend Park Company, is the moving spirit of the excursion. While complete plans are as yet not arranged, it is practically assured that there will be a train of Pullmans, with a dining car. Previous to the date, the railroads are to advertise the excursion extensively in Seattle and Washington.

As the cost of the round trip from Seattle to Bend will be but $25, including berth and meals, and as the excursion will be boosted by a tremendous amount of advertising, and, above all, as scores of Seattle people are owners of Bend property and thousands are vitally interested in the town, there seems every reason to believe that a large crowd will take this opportunity to get to Bend and spend a few days here.

It is Mr. Cheney’s purpose, according to tentative plans, to have all those who come on the trip taken around Bend and the adjacent country in automobiles, and to tender to the visitors a big banquet.

One carload of the Seattleites will be members of the Band Park Company’s selling force, which numbers more than 25 persons at present. However, the excursion will in no way be a real estate selling affair but be entirely a business men’s special train, arranged to give as many Puget Sound people as possible an exceptional opportunity to see Bend and Central Oregon.

Fruit prospers here even without proper attention

An exceptionally good year for fruit is reported by George A. Jones of the Pilot Butte dairy ranch, which lies just east of town. Apples, plums and prunes are maturing well and despite the fact that little scientific attention been given the orchard of some 450 trees, prolific yields are assured. The greatest number of trees are apples. Already a good crop of cherries has been picked. The few peach trees were fairly well loaded, but too many people wanted them enough to annex them, for any to be left for the owners.

“If we used the same careful and scientific methods of conducting our orchard as they do at Hood River,” said Mr. Jones, “I have not the slightest doubt that these Bend trees and others would produce well every season.”

75 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 11, 1937

Pay tribute to Amelia Earhart

Atchison, Kansas: Amelia Earhart’s home town held a memorial service last night, the nearest approach to a funeral that could be provided for the woman flier who was lost in the Pacific Ocean a month ago.

Hundreds were there who had known Miss Earhart in her childhood.

The community band played “America.” Rev. Tillotson of the First Methodist church offered the opening prayer. He said that although there was slight possibility of her being alive, this town of her birth had hope for her.

Dr. Burris Jenkins of Kansas City was the principal speaker. He quoted from a poem that Miss Earhart once wrote for a magazine.

“How can life grant the boon of living, compensate for the dull, gray ugliness and pregnant hate, unless we dare?”

“It is this very quality in Miss Earhart,” Dr. Jenkins said, “that lifted her above all petty rivalries and jealousies, criticism and condemnation. How do we know that this flight failed or that it wasn’t a great triumph?”

Barrage of bottles injures movie stars

Two men were booked at the city jail in connection with a whiskey bottle hurling bout at the Olympic auditorium last night that slightly injured Chico Marx and showered Al Jolson and his wife Ruby Keeler with flying glass.

Jolson “mammy singer” of the stage and screen, outraged at the peril to his wife, interrupted the boxing program to challenge the whole gallery to come down and fight. The bottle had sailed down from the gallery.

“Come on down, you coward”, he screamed.

Miss Keeler was not hurt, though several pieces of glass struck her face.

Marx, the screen comedian, was cut on the hand by a glass splinter.

The bottle left the gallery, 50 feet above, during the seventh round of a dull fight between George Godfrey, a giant man, and Hank Hankinson, Ohio heavyweight.

Jolson and Miss Keeler, his actress wife, ringside seats where the bottle struck. Glass splinters and remnants of the whiskey sprayed over them.

Max Baer, former heavyweight champion who was refereeing, stopped the fight while Jolson made his challenge.

Theodore Watts was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

50 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 11, 1962

Russians successfully launch third spaceman

The Soviet Union put up its third man in space today, and appeared to be planning to keep him up there for days if all goes well. Six hours after the bachelor cosmonaut was launched, the Russians said he had made at least four orbits of the earth.

The Russians also coupled their launching of Maj. Andrian Nikolayev with an appeal to the United States to halt all high-altitude nuclear tests. The appeal said it was known that such tests could “jeopardize” the safety of the Soviet cosmonaut.

(The Russians have set off at least three nuclear tests in a current series underway in Siberia and the Arctic, but which have not been announced to the Soviet people. The United States recently concluded a series of high-altitude nuclear tests in the Pacific but, except for the possibility of one or two more, the series is completed.)

Nikolayev, a onetime lumber jack, was launched from an undesignated place in the Soviet Union aboard the spaceship Vostok III.

Nikolayev was reported to have withstood the blastoff without ill effect and to be “feeling well,” at one point he spoke by two way radio with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, vacationing on the Black Sea coast. They exchanged felicitations and congratulations.

At 156 miles, Nikolayev was flying 46 miles higher than either previous Russian spacemen, Maj. Yuri Gagarin or Maj. Gherman Titov. But both American astronauts went higher — Lt. Col. John Glenn to 160 miles and Scott Carpenter to 164 miles.

Film world shocked by Marilyn’s death

Entertainment world personalities and millions of ordinary movie and television fans experienced a shock wave of sadness today as an aftermath of the sudden death of blonde screen star Marilyn Monroe.

News of Miss Monroe’s death from an overdose of sleeping pills flashed around the world Sunday.

Clark Gable’s widow was one of the first to learn of the blonde beauty’s death. Gable and Miss Monroe co-starred in “The Misfits,” adapted from playwright Arthur Miller’s story. It was the last picture for both the famed stars.

Typical of the reactions at the personal level was that of actor Dean Martin, a close friend.

“I just can’t believe it …. I just can’t believe it,” he said. “She was a wonderful person and a wonderful talent.”

Martin was Miss Monroe’s co-star in the film “Something’s Got To Give.” The 36-year-old actress was fired and the film shelved because of her frequent absences from the set.

25 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 11, 1987

‘From Oregon with Love’: a good message

A Japanese television show created by an Oregon travel agency has become one of the top-rated programs in Japan and a good way for the state to advertise itself in the Orient.

“From Oregon With Love” has increased the number of people in Japan who know something about the state, provided advertising for American companies and even caused hundreds of tourists to invade a Central Oregon ranch where the program is filmed.

“We came up with a script to get exposure for Oregon,” said Sho Dozono, vice president of operations for the Asumano Travel Agency, the Portland firm that developed the idea for the show. “They had never heard of Oregon and had never been here. We helped write the story.”

The program — which tells the story of an orphan who comes to live with his aunt on a ranch in Central Oregon — began filming in 1984 as a series of 13 hourlong shows.

In each of the three years since then, the show’s crew of about 40 has returned to make a two-hour sequel.

“It’s kind of their ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ ” state Tourism Director Ed Remington said.

“It’s a big boost into our economy,” said Marjean Whitehouse, executive director of the Madras Chamber of Commerce. “The spinoff has been tremendous. We have absolutely been swamped this year with Japanese visiting the location sites.”

She said last year 11 busloads of Japanese sailors in Portland for the Rose Festival visited the area.

Jeannie Belle, who owns the North Butte Ranch where much of the series is filmed, said tourists often stop and want to tour the ranch, even including her house.

Belle, whose parents homesteaded the ranch in 1910, said local officials convinced her in 1984 to let the series be filmed there.

“Nobody else in the country would have it and they knew I was soft-headed,” Belle said. “They gave me a song and dance.”

Dozono said a study showed that before the series began only about 10 percent of the people in Japan had ever heard of Oregon. In 1984 after the original series ran, the figure jumped to 78 percent.