50 Years Ago

■Four local boys completed their six-day swing-a-thon for the Jimmy Fund. The four boys, Michael Pekar, Timothy Naumowicz, Michael Naumowicz, and James Landry, stayed on MaineÕs Field all week in tents and swung in six-hour shifts, with two boys swinging and two resting at all times.

■Presently being shown at Forbes Library is a collection of about 300 pieces of local Indian relics, representing well over 150 years of collecting by five generations of the Russell family. Michael J. Russell, 16-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. John Russell of Linden Street, is the present keeper of the treasure, and takes great pride in it.

25 Years Ago

■Northampton’s Planning Board gave developer Chuck Bowles the nod Thursday to proceed with his planned 10-family development off Hawley Street. Bowles is planning to renovate an existing four-family house on Hawley Street, convert a duplex into a one-family condominium behind it, and build five attached condominium units on Bixby Court, a private, dead-end road on Hawley Street.

■A Northampton police officer has earned his sergeant’s stripes, at least for now. Chief Russell Sienkiewicz says he has promoted David Callahan to temporary sergeant to fill in for Sgt. John Kandrotas, who is out on an extended sick leave because of a heart-related illness he suffered earlier this year.

10 Years Ago

■Although the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is said to pose no immediate threat in the Valley, area colleges are taking extra precautions by educating the public. The Five Colleges jointly issued a statement this week that includes facts on the disease, its symptoms and ways it is transmitted, and also discourages travel to countries that have been affected.

■If it looks like a public street and feels like a public street, it’s a public street. That’s what the Northampton City Council decreed Thursday when it officially made a dozen private streets public, the first significant wave of some 35 streets that the Board of Public Works wants the council to bring into the city’s fold before winter.