Jim Bridgman

50 Years Ago

  • Mayor Sean M. Dunphy said yesterday that he plans to continue living in Northampton after taking up his new post as chairman of the state Appellate Tax Board. Dunphy will officially become a member of the board when he is sworn in by Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. Dukakis has said that he will designate Dunphy as chairman of the board.
  • Powdered wigs and knee britches may be a common sight around Northampton come Oct. 18 and 19. The Northampton Bicentennial Committee and the Sixth Massachusetts Continentals — a group recalling an early Continental Army infantry regiment — are jointly sponsoring the second annual Pioneer Valley Muster Days next weekend.

25 Years Ago

  • Students poured through the doors of Northampton High School’s new gymnasium for the first time Friday afternoon, and its walls soon echoed with the deafening cheers of the pep rally that inaugurated its use. Northampton High School students have been without a gym for more than a year due to the school’s construction and renovation project.
  • A dishwasher, bed, sofa, refrigerator and stove top are not items you would necessarily expect to pull out of the Connecticut River. But on Saturday, about 40 volunteers found those items and many more when they participated in a Source to Sea river cleanup. For four hours, the group of student and community volunteers combed a one-mile stretch of riverbank hidden by cornfields in the Meadows section of the city, off Hockanum Road.

10 Years Ago

  • Amherst Media is putting on hold plans to construct a new building on Main Street, and two properties it purchased in 2013 — once envisioned by town officials and others as forming a municipal historic landscape park — may go back on the market.
  • A party at the Smith College Campus Center Saturday that ended with a crowd of approximately 500 people pouring onto Elm Street, fights, and two arrests has led to discussions between campus officials and Northampton police about proper staffing at large college events. All on-duty Northampton officers as well as Easthampton and State Police responded to help disperse the crowd and break up numerous fights around 1 p.m.