A Look Back, Dec. 4

50 Years Ago<sbull value="sbull"><text xmlns="urn:schemas-teradp-com:gn4tera"></text></sbull>

■State Department of Natural Resources officials today confirmed reports that DNR Commissioner Arthur W. Brownell has turned down all sites he has viewed in Hampshire County for a state-built skating rink. None of the nine sites Brownell viewed on his trip to Hampshire County two weeks ago met with his approval.

■Four employees of the Lesnow Manufacturing Co., Inc. of Easthampton, were arraigned in Hampshire County District Court this morning on charges of stealing more than 300 coats from the firm. Police estimated at $15,000 the retail value of the sport coats and jackets allegedly stolen from the company between Nov. 1973 and Nov. 1974.

25 Years Ago

Mark’s Meadow School will no longer be the official laboratory school for the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, ending a 38-year relationship. Instead, Dean Bailey Jackson announced this week that the School of Education will establish “professional development school” status with all elementary and secondary schools in the Amherst-Pelham Regional District.

■A social studies class at Northampton High School was surprised two weeks ago when their discussion was interrupted by an unusual intruder: a drill coming up through the floor. Students and teacher Marilyn Tracy watched in their second-floor classroom as several small holes were drilled in the floor inside a 2-foot-square opening in a classroom wall.

10 Years Ago

■A licensed practical nursing program will return to its roots at Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School after a sharply divided board of trustees voted Tuesday to make space by ending its 23-year-old lease with the Northampton Parks and Recreation Department, which now has six months to find a new home.

■Signaling a desire to close the book on the controversial Northampton Business Improvement District, many of downtown’s movers and shakers at a standing-room-only forum Tuesday brainstormed ideas for how to replace the organization that divided the business community for five years. Mayor David J. Narkewicz urged people to let go of past differences about the BID and consider ways that all stakeholders can work together to keep downtown strong.