50 Years Ago
- A local chapter of “Overeaters Anonymous” has formed in Northampton. The group meets every Wednesday in the downstairs lounge of the First Church of Christ on Main Street. There are no requirements for membership except a desire to stop eating compulsively
- Northampton has added another zip code to its listings. The U.S. Post Office announced today that the new code — 01063 —has been assigned to Smith College so that one mail sorting operation at the local post office can be eliminated. Smith’s mail will arrive at the post office ready for final sorting to the various college offices and dormitories, and will no longer have to be sorted out from the general city mail.
25 Years Ago
- After 38 hours without sleep, William Dunn and Joshua Shanley arrived home Tuesday night. The two Amherst firefighters had spent five days and nights in New York City at the site of the destroyed World Trade Center as members of a Critical Incident Stress Management team dispatched by the Massachusetts Fire Marshal’s office.
- A local grassroots effort to save the former Northampton State Hospital’s main building got a boost this week when it was added to the list of the state’s 10 most endangered historic resources by a statewide organization. Historic Massachusetts, a private, nonprofit group based in Boston, named the building to its 2001 list, as representative of a number of endangered historic hospitals statewide.
10 Years Ago
- After a 20-year absence from downtown, the former landmark Seth Thomas street clock has returned to Main Street. On Thursday, Mayor David J. Narkewicz mirrored his predecessor Calvin Coolidge — who dedicated the clock in 1910 — by celebrating the homecoming of the “magnificently restored” timepiece.
- Senate President Stanley Rosenberg chastised elected officials for “reluctant leadership” and urged support for gay and lesbian legislative candidates during a breakfast in Boston on Thursday. “We need to get behind them and get them to the finish line,” said the Amherst Democrat, adding that with very few LGBT members in the Legislature, it is urgent for voters to “replenish the ranks.”