This day in history: Gonzaga protests Eastern’s proposal to buy Holy Names Academy

From 1975: Eastern Washington College (now University) was considering leasing the soon-to-be-closed Holy Names Academy, drawing an immediate rebuke from Gonzaga University.

“To purchase at taxpayer’s expense new pieces of property … makes no sense from a financial point of view,” Gonzaga President Bernard J. Coughlin wrote in a letter to the governor. “And decisions like that to drive private education from the scene of the state makes no sense from a social point of view.”

Eastern’s president said that the college had no agreement as yet with Holy Names, but the college has been looking for a place to “focus” its offerings in Spokane. It currently had several programs based in in various locations throughout Spokane.

Coughlin said expansion of Eastern Washington College into Spokane could “threaten the existence of the city’s private colleges.”

Holy Names was only three blocks from the Gonzaga campus.

From 1925: A Valleyford High School student, 18, died in a freak accident near Freeman.

He had been at a party at a nearby farm with his sister and brother-in-law when they decided to start home in their Ford. They asked the boy to get in the car, but he said it was too crowded and they assumed he had gotten into another car.

While driving home, the sister and brother-in-law tried to go up a steep slope. The car was unable to make it, so they backed down to a bridge and tried it again, unsuccessfully. This time, when they backed down to the bridge, they missed the bridge and the car turned over into the stream.

They were unhurt, but when they got out of the car to investigate, the body of the 18-year-old was found pinned beneath the car.

“He had evidently been riding on the back, unknown to them,” said The Spokesman-Review.