A Look Back, April 2

50 Years Ago

■Sally Collins of 23 Ridgewood Terrace, the mother of six children, has been named by the Massachusetts Electric Company to a 16-member customer advisory council. She was chosen as a representative from this area because of her involvement in consumer affairs here.

■Police were scouring the city shortly after noon today for a man who held up the Lawrence Associates Inc. real estate agency on Bridge Street this morning. Owner Frank D. Lawrence said that a lone intruder entered the agency and told his wife to lock herself in the bathroom while he looted the cash register of more than $300 in paper money.

25 Years Ago

■An effort to open a store-front cooperative market in Northampton gained momentum at a meeting at the Florence Civic Center on Saturday. Those in attendance chose River Valley Market as the name for the planned store. When it opens its doors, the store will be a cooperative, full-service market selling natural and organic goods, as well as conventional groceries.

■Thieves fired up a forklift inside an Industrial Park warehouse Saturday to rip a safe from the floor, making off with its contents and palettes loaded with cigarettes in what police are calling a professional heist. Police say the thieves cut phone lines, then pried open a steel door of E&J Distributors, Inc., warehouse.

10 Years Ago

■The transformation of Pulaski Park, an acre of common space on Main Street bordered by the Academy of Music and Memorial Hall, got the green light from the Community Preservation Committee Wednesday night to the tune of $1,450,000.

■Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, a one-time staunch opponent of gay marriage, will officiate at the wedding of state Senate President Stanley Rosenberg to his partner Bryan Hefner. Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat, is the first openly gay person to lead a legislative chamber in Massachusetts.