50 Years Ago
- This is tow truck weather. By 9 a.m. today, after temperatures in Northampton went as low as 18 degrees below zero, more than 100 calls came into the city’s AAA and ALA service centers. Dead batteries! Stalled cars!
- Raymond G. O’Neill Jr., a former Northampton resident, has been elected vice president of data processing operations, of IBM World Trade Americas/Far East Corporation, which conducts IBM’s business in 45 countries outside the United States. O’Neill, who is a graduate of St. Michael’s High School, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond O’Neill of 22 Fort Hill Terrace.
25 Years Ago
- A shortage of school crossing guards has required the city to pull police officers from their regular duties to help shepherd students across streets on a daily basis and left some locations around the city untended altogether. Police Chief Russell Sienkiewicz said Tuesday he feels the shortage has reached a “critical point,” with only 13 civilian crossing guards available to staff 14 locations in the city.
- Reflecting the headlong rush that has characterized last-minute preparations for the inauguration of George W. Bush, the 260 students in the University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band got only a single day to rehearse for their role in the Inaugural parade. “This is it,” said Director George Parks, taking a moment from shouting instructions into a hand-held microphone in Boyden Gymnasium on the Amherst campus. “One day.”
10 Years Ago
- Matt Parsons of Hadley recently won first place in the Class A non-irrigated division of the 2015 National Corn Growers Association’s corn yield contest in Massachusetts. Parsons won with Pioneer brand hybrid P0604AM ™.
- More than 100 people braved subfreezing temperatures Monday afternoon, crowding below the steps of Northampton City Hall, as Mayor David Narkewicz unveiled a Black Lives Matter banner on the building. This is a nation that continues to struggle with the “scourge of racism,” he said.