This day in history: Carl Maxey delivered a short but blunt response to an Expo backer withholding information from his clients

From 1975: Attorney Carl Maxey blasted Expo ’74’s deputy general manager Charles E. Aly for the “high-handed” letter he wrote to Maxey’s clients, a group of Expo critics.

“I found it somewhat amazing that a man who is a general manager of a corporation that has been held to be a public one by the state attorney general’s office can write such a cavalier letter after making an open admission that Expo ’74 sustained a $700,000 loss,” Maxey wrote in response.

Maxey was irked because his clients had sent a list of sometimes provocative questions to Aly, but had received no answers. Aly first refused to reply because Maxey’s clients were anonymous, but now Aly was giving another reason for not answering.

Aly said he had reviewed the questions carefully and concluded that every question had already been answered in the news media. He said he had a limited staff and a short time to close out Expo’s affairs, and “we simply cannot do that research for you.”

From 1925: Mrs. Helen Campbell Powell stood to inherit the fortune of her father, mining tycoon Amasa B. Campbell, best known today as the owner of the Campbell House, now part of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

Amasa Campbell died years earlier, but his widow, Grace M. Cambell, had recently died, and the executors of the will had just finished an inventory. Campbell Powell was set to inherit the bulk of the estate, worth nearly $200,000. This included the Browne’s Addition mansion and a number of stocks and bonds.