50 Years Ago
- The Cooley Dickinson Hospital is seeking a 5 percent average increase in its room rates, hospital Administrator William T. Lees Jr. said today. Room rates at Cooley Dickinson currently range from a low of $78 per day to a high of $190 per day in intensive care for coronary patients.
- A minister from Indiana says he will start a new fundamentalist church in Northampton because God wants the church here. The Rev. Richard Paasch came to Northampton this month to establish Faith Baptist Church. He said that in the northeast “there are a lot of churchgoers but very few Christians.” He noted that that statement may not sit well with some people, but he says he believes in “talking straight out.”
25 Years Ago
- Calling a recently released draft transportation plan a “major milestone” but not the end of the road, Ward 5 City Councilor Alex D. Ghiselin said he is looking forward to city throughfares that are safer than ever in the future. While there are still more than 2,000 accidents per year in the city, the number of accidents has dropped in the last four years, despite an increase in traffic volume, he said.
- The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, a statewide arts advocacy organization, is moving into new digs this weekend at the historic Shepard House, part of the Northampton Historical Society. The foundation, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, provides about 80 grants annually, for a total of about $500,000 a year.
10 Years Ago
- Family, friends and co-workers gathered Thursday morning amid displays of colorful quilts to celebrate the life of longtime Leeds Elementary School teacher Denise Wood. A third-grade teacher with a passion for quilting, Wood, 63, was born and raised in Northampton, and taught at Leeds for 20 years. She died at home on Sept. 16.
- Downtown Amherst’s first new office building since the mid-1980s is a go. The Planning Board on Wednesday voted 6-0 in favor of the site plans and a series of special permits that will allow developers Barry Roberts of Amherst and J. Curtis Shumway of South Hadley to build the four-story building, with a little more than 5,000 square feet of space on each floor, at 236 North Pleasant Street.