Digital Bob Archive

JUNE 1918 - PART 1:

The month started in Juneau with an industrial accident that took the life of one of the town's foremost businessmen, H.S. Worthen. A native of New Hampshire he had been operating the Juneau sawmill, on the south edge of town, for several years as the Worthen Lumber Company. About 3 p.m. on June 1 Worthen was at the foot of the chute on which logs were hauled into the mill and was helping the two men who regularly worked there because the mill was short of men. A log rolled unexpectedly and struck Worthen in the solar plexus. He was rushed to the General Hospital at the end of Gastineau Avenue but died a half hour later without regaining consciousness. He was 50 and was survived by his widow, Mrs. Dora Worthen.

More and more Juneau people were going into the service. John Gowey Shepard, who was usually known by his middle name (pronounced goo-ie), had joined the aviation service earlier and received orders to report to Berkeley, California, for training. William Short, proprietor of the Circle City Hotel, tried to join the Navy and when he was turned down there, joined the U.S. Ambulance Corps. Harry Morgan passed his examinations for the Naval Academy at Annapolis where he would join another Juneau man, James Simpson MacKinnon. Miss Clara Kyrage, who was born in Juneau and had graduated from the nursing school of Providence Hospital at Seattle in 1915, joined the American Red Cross as a nurse.

A.M. Mathews, superintendent of the Juneau Public Schools, announced that there would be a special summer session to permit elementary students who had been promoted upon condition in certain subjects to make up the deficiencies and enter the higher grade with full standing. Classes were to begin on June 16, and would be held for two hours each morning, five days a week, for six weeks.

Governor Thomas C. Riggs, Jr., named E.J. \"Stroller\" White to the position of publicity agent for Alaska. The Publicity Bureau had been created by the 1917 legislature and J.J. McGrath, a long time northern newspaper editor, was appointed to head it. McGrath quit the post after three months, after which the work was handled by a number of people working out of the governor's office until the appointment of White. He announced that he would devote full time to the job and would hire a manager and editor for his paper, The Douglas Island News.

Early in June the Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Company shut down its big mill, which had a capacity of 8000 tons of ore a day, and carried on operations with only its 40-stamp pilot mill. P.R. Bradley, the mine manager, said that the big mill could not be economically operated on the 1000 tons of ore that were being mined each day. There were presently 175 men on the payroll, he said, and he needed a minimum of 350. Efforts to recruit men from other parts of Alaska or from the States had proved futile and Bradley did not expect to resume full operations at the mine until the war ended.