STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
Clayton R. Erickson, principal of the Calipatria High School, today denied that he and the other two principals in the Calipatria Unified School District had threatened the job of Mrs. Elsa Downs of Niland, a registered nurse with the Imperial County school superintendents migrant program.
Mrs. Downs said Worth Duncan, coordinator for the program, informed her that the three principals told him they would not seek federal aid for the migrant program as long as she remained on the job.
“It is news to me,” Erickson commented.” It would have to go through Mr. Stevens (James Stevens, district superintendent). We have not had a general principals’ meeting with Mr. Stevens all summer, nor have we principals gotten together to discuss it personally.”
J. Eugene O’Brien, Niland School principal, confirmed Erickson’s statement. The last meeting on immigrant education we had been in the spring, and she (Mrs. Downs) was not mentioned. The Calipatria District has nothing to do with her employment. That is done through the (county) education center in El Centro,” he said.
40 years ago
Seventy-five years ago today, the first edition of The Brawley News was printed in a small adobe building near what is now the intersection of Sixth and Main streets, Brawley.
It was a weekly paper at first, and until April, 1905, was named the Imperial Valley News. Myron Witter, who took over The Brawley News in 1905, guided the paper through its formative years and began publishing on a daily basis on Jan. 14, 1914.
By the very nature of its business, the history of a newspaper is tied closely to the history of the community it serves. As a community prospers, so does the newspaper. And, the news it prints today becomes the “raw data” for historians of the future.
The atmosphere of a town is reflected in its newspaper — The Brawley News has been a mirror of north end attitudes, conflicts and events for the past seven and a half decades.
30 years ago
In addition to facing teachers and homework for the first time in three months, students at four El Centro schools will have to cope with temporary classrooms, uncarpeted floors and even portable toilets when summer vacation ends Tuesday.
The disarray is due to a $3.2 million renovation program at Wilson Junior High School, Harding, Washington and Lincoln schools. The reconstruction, which will modernize school buildings and create more classroom space, was supposed to be completed by the beginning of the school year, but school officials now say it will be four weeks before all the work is done.
“That first week is going to start off a little rough because we’re not going to have the classrooms as nice as we’d like them to be,” said Assistant Superintendent Joe Vogel, who has been supervising the reconstruction of 16 buildings on the four campuses.
20 years ago
A man known now only as John Doe is lying in the intensive care unit in Pioneers Memorial Hospital in Brawley.
Authorities think he will become the latest in the ever-growing number of illegal immigrant deaths in Imperial County.
The man, thought to be from Mexico City, is 30 to 35 years old and was found under a bush in the desert near Calipatria on Aug. 26. He’s being treated in the intensive care unit at Pioneers for heat stroke and his condition is worsening every day. He’s been unconscious since he was found
If he dies, his likely will be the 80th death in Imperial County related to illegal immigration so far this year. He would be number 80, of course, only if someone else doesn’t die first.
County Coroner’s Office investigators have started charting immigrant deaths on a map in their office. The highest concentration of heat-related deaths, 26 so far, is in the northwest desert area of the county. Thirty-nine people also have died in county waterways this year.
County Coroners Office records indicate total drownings last year, illegal immigrant or otherwise, was only 29.
The total number of heat-related deaths in 1997 was only 10. So far this year, illegal immigration has led to 26 people dying in the deserts that surround local cities and towns.