Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Mel Lester, one of the men who helped build Sweet Home’s timber industry and shape the community, died on Aug. 25 at age 94.
By the seventh grade, Lester was working weekends and afternoons at Brattlie Bros. Mill Co. in Ridgefield, Wash. He quit school in the eighth grade and worked in the mill; and during the summer months, he seine fished with horses on the Columbia River…