A Look Back, Sept. 23

By JIM BRIDGMAN

For the Gazette

Published: 09-22-2024 11:01 PM
50 Years Ago

■The Northampton Board of Health last night voted to order the Food Mart store on King Street to remove all chicken and tuna salad from its shelves by Monday. David Kochan, sanitarian for the board, said the food preparations were “grossly contaminated with bacteria and were potential disease carriers. There is no excuse for this type of food to be sold.”

■Samuel H. Lovejoy opened his defense before a Franklin County Superior Court jury yesterday afternoon by acknowledging that he toppled a 500-foot Northeast Utilities weather tower, but contending that “nuclear power is so dangerous it allows you to break the specificity of the law for a higher good.”

25 Years Ago

■After a lifetime of sharing his passion for the written word, Laurel Park resident Irving D. Baker will receive a fitting tribute tomorrow: a library will bear his name. The Jonathan Edwards Academy, a private Christian school in Millers Falls, will honor Baker by naming its school library after him.

■Members of a second-grade class at the Bridge Street School will learn to play the violin or cello through a pilot program offered by the Northampton Community Music Center. Set to get under way in early October, the full-year program will be offered for free to all 20 students in Karen Hurd’s second-grade class.

10 Years Ago

■Police dispersed a crowd of more than 200 University of Massachusetts students and their friends celebrating the halfway point to St. Patrick’s Day at the Amherst Townehouse Apartments Saturday. The festivities, dubbed “Halfway to Blarney,” began early in the afternoon amid concern from town and UMass officials that the party could become as rowdy as the now infamous “Blarney Blow-out” in March.

■Hundreds of bicycle riders turned out Saturday for the Northampton Cycling Club’s seventh BikeFest. With rides starting out from Look Park in Northampton, riders could choose from five group rides, ranging from an 8-mile family ride to a 104-mile route traversing Hampshire and Franklin counties and into southern Vermont.