A Look Back, June 20

50 Years Ago

■The fourth annual Beerfest, sponsored by the Northampton Rotary Club, will be held at the Three County Fairgrounds Saturday and Sunday. The Beerfest will feature continuous music by the Bavarian Barons, an authentic Bavarian brass band, schulplattler dancing, German food and music.

■The Registry of Motor Vehicles office in Northampton may be shut down by the state as part of Gov. Dukakis’ 10 percent across-the-board budget cut, the Gazette learned today. A legislative source said that the decision to close the Northampton office had already been made earlier this week.

25 Years Ago

■DataViews Corp., a 21-year-old technology spin-off from UMass whose visualization software has been used in everything from satellites to power plants, has been sold to a division of General Electric. DataViews is at 47 Pleasant St. and has been a subsidiary of Dynatech Corp. in Burlington since 1990.

■A creative curriculum, involvement in the community, and individual attention for students are the goals of the Four Winds School, which will open for seventh- and eighth-graders in September. The school will be in a room at the old Deerfield Elementary School, owned by the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association.

10 Years Ago

■About 200 people gathered Friday night at Smith College for music, prayer and meditation to mourn the killings of nine Charleston, South Carolina, churchgoers. “It’s really important to be here,” longtime activist Frances Crowe of Northampton said before the vigil. “Small acts lead to more courageous acts, and this is just one of the small things.”

■Nearly 100 people gathered at the Hotel Northampton Friday to celebrate 37 years of accomplishments in the city’s Police Department by retiring Chief Russell P. Sienkiewicz. Speakers thanked Sienkiewicz, of Hatfield, for modernizing the department, increasing its professional standards and helping drive the efforts to construct a new police headquarters, which opened in 2012.