■Girl Scout Troop 249 held a parade recently, in which the girls dressed as tombstones with solemn messages. The parade, the first community safety parade, was organized by troop members and their leader, Mrs. Nancy Duseau. It ran from John M. Greene Hall, Smith College, to the Northampton High School football field and featured bands, costumes and floats.
■Manager Clifford Boyd has announced seats are now on sale at the Academy of Music in Northampton for the fall opening performance of the Broadway hit comedy “Plaza Suite” The acting company is headed by Larry Parks of the stage and screen and Betty Garrett, who has appeared on television, stage, and screen.
■Springfield College recently donated 28 6-year-old IBM personal computers to the Leeds Elementary School. The gift was arranged through Thomas Larkin, who directs the academic computing center at the college and had recently upgraded the school’s computer network.
■Northampton has won a $500,000 state grant to help upgrade its sewer plant to accommodate the new Coca-Cola co. plant in the Northampton Industrial Park. The plant began producing beverages again in August after a long on-again, off-again courtship of Coca-Cola USA by city officials.
10 Years Ago
■Bonnie Isman is retiring as director of the Jones Library after “I’ve been there for 30 years. It’s a good, round number,” said Isman, “I’ve been planning to retire in 2010 for a couple of years.”
■Police say chemicals discovered in the attic of a Bridge Street home Monday afternoon were used to manufacture methamphetamine, a powerfully addictive drug commonly referred to as meth or crystal meth. “We can’t say when it started and when it ended, but we know it did happen at one time,” said Northampton Detective Lt. Kenneth Watson.