OTHER TIMES

100 Years Ago – 1917:

All of the employees of the Chester Shipbuilding Company who remained from work owing to the refusal of the company to grant an increase in wages were at work yesterday and in compliance with the request of the leaders of their organization will stick on the job pending the final outcome on the conference between officials of the company and a committee of the workmen. All indications point to a satisfactory adjustment of wages being made. Both sides are eager to have matters settled once for all so as to avoid future trouble during the war period.

75 Years Ago – 1942:

Chester’s pretty new fireboat was almost lost yesterday. While it was being demonstrated at the municipal wharf at the foot of Market Street, it caught fire, and the city firemen, in the new uniforms, went into action to extinguish the flames. The fire broke out when gasoline leaked from a carburetor, became ignited, and flowed over a hot manifold. The boat was purchased to protect defense industry along the Delaware from the city to Essington.

50 Years Ago – 1967:

The Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction (DPI) came up Thursday with a possible alternative to halfday sessions in Chester public schools: Keeping classes crowded until temporary facilities can be secured. Dr. Anton D. Hess, DPI’s commissioner of basic education, said this solution “might be more desirable” than half-day sessions “from the point of view of school board community relations.”

25 Years Ago – 1992:

A former security guard at Eastern College is Radnor pleaded guilty to an arson charge stemming from a Dec. 26 blaze in a campus library which caused an estimated $230,000 worth of damage. Assistant District Attorney Michael Galantino said police responded on two other occasions in the early morning hours of Dec. 26 to suspicious fire. He said about 5:30 a.m. they observed a car traveling at a high rate of speed near the library, driven by the 20-year-old Whitehall man, and they could see a “glow” inside the building.

10 Years Ago – 2007: Five suspected drug dealers selling narcotics inside a Long Lane bar in Upper Darby were arrested Thursday night after a two-month undercover investigation. Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood faulted the state’s bureaucracy for not giving local officials the authority to shut down nuisance bars. – COLIN AINSWORTH