Jim Bridgman

50 Years Ago

  • The guidance counselors at John F. Kennedy Junior High School and Hawley Junior High are setting up job boards at the schools to try to match odd jobs in the community with students who are looking for work. Suggested jobs include baby-sitting, spring-cleaning help, regular house-cleaning, mother’s helper, yard-worker, lawnmowing, raking, watering plants for vacationers, animal-sitting, running errands, or walking a dog.
  • There will be no breakfasts served in Northampton schools during the current school year, the school committee decided last night. The action was taken to avoid added expenses to the city and, in part, to express displeasure with the state’s requiring of the program without funding it.

25 Years Ago

  • An adoring crowd of predominantly women gathered to hear Angela Y. Davis, an activist and scholar who made a name for herself with her radical politics, speak at Smith College Friday night. Davis was speaking at the inaugural conference for the journal “Meridians,” a new scholarly feminist journal put out jointly by Smith College and Wesleyan University.
  • Michael Cosgriff, Northampton’s choice for a new school superintendent, has signed a three-year contract, at $97,000 for the first year. The committee selected Cosgriff in January to replace retiring superintendent Bruce Willard, who will remain on the job until June 1.

10 Years Ago

  • Barry F. Wilby, longtime educator at Easthampton High School, was remembered today as a person widely respected by students because he respected them. Wilby, a lifelong Easthampton resident who had battled diabetes, died Saturday at age 67. He taught social studies for 35 years and also served as a dean of students and assistant principal at the high school.
  • Invasive species, rare habitats and wildlife management were a few of the topics addressed at Saturday’s ecology symposium at Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary. Roughly 45 people gathered to hear local environmental professionals share important research and ecological projects underway in western Massachusetts.