Nov. 11, 1971
Sweet Home’s zoo boasts its first inhabitant, Napoleon the llama, who has been holding out at a new corral alongside the F and F Mobil Service Station near the west entrance to town. Napoleon will soon be joined by a kangaroo and a couple of ostriches.
Napoleon was bought several months ago in California by Frank McCubbins. He is tame and has been trained, but his overseers think he has probably forgotten most of his tricks by now.
Reginald Tyler, a slight Scotsman, and his sister, Patricia Wilcox, a Sweet Home housewife, saw each other this weekend for the first time in 24 years. Both were born in Shanghai, but wound up on opposite sides of the world.
Tyler came to this country from Scotland for the first time, with only a week to catch up on familial reunions with Wilcox and other relatives in Vancouver, B.C. Of the few sites he has seen in Sweet Home, Tyler said it reminded him considerably of some of the Scotch countryside with its rolling and wooded hills.
Nov. 6, 1996
The Sweet Home Community Chapel will hold its first service in its new building on Ames Creek Road this week, as the first phase of construction is nearing completion. The congregation of 600 has been meeting in the high school gym during construction.
The church broke ground on the new property in May 1995 following a two-year search for new facilities to house the growing congregation.
The property on Ames Creek Road is 42 acres. With the first phase of construction will allow seating for 375 people, requiring the church to hold two services. The second phase will be a 600-seat auditorium, and the third will be a multipurpose gym. The church plans for a terraced grass amphitheater overlooking a pond, and McCartin also dreams of having cabins around the pond for burned-out inner-city pastors to take a break.
Volunteers are nearly ready to punch a new section of the Foster Lake Trail through from Gedney Creek Boat Ramp to Foster Dam. The trail, about 7.5 miles around the lake, is the product of a small committee that formed last year.
Community interest in a trail around the lake was high, as many people were already walking around the lake along the road. A small section from Lewis Creek to Gedney Creek was completed earlier this year by various volunteers, and Linn County connected the trail through Lewis Creek Park.