A Look Back, April 11

50 Years Ago

■Trustees of the Academy of Music on Main Street in Northampton announced today that they are attempting to raise $30,000 to renovate the theater’s stage and reopen the hall to live performances. In recent years, as the stage has deteriorated, the theater has been used solely for movies.

■A day-long program of sex education films and panel discussions held Tuesday at the regional high school in Amherst has drawn praise for its honesty as well as charges of attempts to “capture the minds of our youth.” Local Roman Catholic priest Rev. Henry Dorsch said the presentation pulled sex “out of the context of religion or philosophy” and seemed “to condone premarital sex.”

25 Years Ago

■Amherst College music professor Lewis Spratlan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music for an opera he wrote 22 years ago, but which was never performed until this year. Spratlan, 59, was informed Monday that he won the Pulitzer for “Life Is a Dream, Opera in Three Acts: Act Two, Concert Version.”

■Francis J. O’Donnell, a teacher at Northampton High School for 34 years, will receive the first Smith College Secondary School Teaching Award in a ceremony today at the college. The prize was created as a tribute to teachers who excel in preparing students for successful work in college.

10 Years Ago

■Fifty years ago the advice to college graduates was to go into plastics. Today, it’s data. In order to meet the booming demand for data scientists across nearly every field, the University of Massachusetts Amherst announced Thursday the launch of a new center for data science.

■One after another after another, senior citizens from Northampton stood up before the mayor, public works director, and five city councilors Thursday, begging them not to adopt the proposed rate hike on water and sewer fees starting in July. Given the hikes they’ve seen in property taxes and new charges like the stormwater fee imposed last year, they say they cannot take another increase.