2019 One year ago today
Described by friends as a man full of life who’s never met a stranger, Gary Simpson strikes up conversation with everyone he meets. And he meets a lot of people. Born and raised on a family farm about six miles east of Colton, Simpson is a familiar face on the Palouse. Simpson is retiring as the groundskeeper at Pullman Regional Hospital this month after 14 years. … In the early 2000s, the world’s only freshwater cod was all but gone from the waters of the Kootenai River in North Idaho and British Columbia. Once counted in the thousands, regional populations of burbot — sometimes known as ling cod — had dropped to a mere 50. Today, that number is closer to 50,000.
2015 Five years ago today
For local nonprofits that provide food to the hungry on the Palouse, 2014 was bountiful year. Palouse Cares collected more than 40,000 pounds and raised $34,000 to distribute among its food banks in 14 communities in Whitman and Latah counties, according to president Rick Minard. … Cuban immigrant, Washington State University alumni and author Lorenzo Martinez hopes his latest book — a memoir of his journey from Cuba to the U.S. and discovery of his sexual identity — will endow his readers with a certain message: to achieve happiness, one must let go of the past and accept who and where one is today. When 18-year-old Martinez’s plane touched down in Miami in 1962, the America he saw was not the one he had expected, but it was still a step forward.
2010 10 years ago today
Hossein Taheri had to spend his winter break in Moscow as it could have been risky for him to travel home. Taheri was among several University of Idaho and Washington State University students who spent the holiday season in Moscow and Pullman. Taheri’s friend, Maziar Rostamian and his wife, Akhgar Kiakojuri, arrived to Moscow from Iran and will spend New Year’s Day together. … After months of construction, the Whitman County Humane Society is looking forward to moving into their new Pullman Animal Haven facility a few weeks into the new year, around the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The move has been pushed back because of problems with the fence structure, Administrative Manager Janice Clark said.
1995 25 years ago today
On July 25, 1908, life was a lot different in Whitman County. A chattel mortgage filed away in the dusty Whitman County vault lists six valuable assets — horses Daily, Dick, Snip, Chip, Nellie and Cricket. That record, and all other Whitman County records, are stored in two dark and damp floors — heavy, bound probate books dated 1889; superior court execution dockets; a farm book dated 1910 with handwritten tax rolls for all the county farms; boxes of old commission minutes. … Two days before a self-imposed good-faith negotiation deadline, the chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee and the Idaho director of the Department of Fish and Game announced an interim agreement to regulate steelhead fishing on the Clearwater River.
