100 years ago — 1922

That Buddy Reed and Kid Brooks will meet again to compete for honors in the ring is assured, according to a statement made today by Herb Reed who is managing his brother. The boys were on last night in Pendleton in a four-round battle which the boxing commission ordered discontinued at the end of the third round when Brooks had a pair of badly swollen peepers. The Pullman boy remonstrated at the decision of the referee which gave the battle to Reed, as a result the boys will mix again within the next 30 days in a six-round scrap.

50 years ago — 1972

The recent announcement by the Oregon Highway Commission that Stanfield will be by-passed by Highway 32 has raised the ire of some of the Main Street business people. Stanfield variety store owner-operator Willard Welch said that he is “pretty mad.” Welch was at the meeting in 1970 in the city council chambers when state highway officials said the routing would remain down Stanfield’s Main Street. He says he was assured at the meeting that if any change in plans should develop that he and others on the street would be notified. “I am just sick about this,” he said in the wake of hearing the surprise announcement. Elton Frazier, who has operated a service station on the street for 12 years, said, “If they take us off the highway, I am not going to be here.” A state highway department official inquired if the city wants to retain ownership of the street after the city is bypassed. The Stanfield City Council said it wants no part of this.

25 years ago — 1997

The skeletons of the Cold War — hundreds of thousands of rockets, bombs, land mines, artillery shells and sprayers loaded with deadly nerve gas — lie in concrete bunkers called igloos in the chemical weapons depot a couple miles west of Hermiston. Concerned that 103 of the weapons already have leaked, the U.S. Army is eager to build a high-tech incinerator, like ones already operating in Tooele, Utah, and Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific, to destroy the deadly agents. With the blessing of the state of Oregon, the Army will award a contract to build the incinerator at the Umatilla Chemical Depot. Barring a successful lawsuit from opponents, burning will begin in 2001 and be finished by 2004. Originally a conventional munitions storage facility, the Oregon depot was established in 1941 on 20,000 acres of sagebrush. Chemical weapons started coming in 1962 and now fill 89 igloos in a high-security area. The incineration project will require round-the-clock staffing of the depot’s emergency operations center, which is now open just 40 hours a week.