A Look Back, Jan. 19

50 Years Ago

• This is tow truck weather. By 9 a.m. today, after temperatures in Northampton went as low as 18 degrees below zero, more than 100 calls came into the city’s AAA and ALA service centers. Dead batteries! Stalled cars!
• Raymond G. O’Neill Jr., a former Northampton resident, has been elected vice president of data processing operations, of IBM World Trade Americas/Far East Corporation, which conducts IBM’s business in 45 countries outside the United States. O’Neill, who is a graduate of St. Michael’s High School, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond O’Neill of 22 Fort Hill Terrace.

class="wp-block-heading">25 Years Ago

• A shortage of school crossing guards has required the city to pull police officers from their regular duties to help shepherd students across streets on a daily basis and left some locations around the city untended altogether. Police Chief Russell Sienkiewicz said Tuesday he feels the shortage has reached a “critical point,” with only 13 civilian crossing guards available to staff 14 locations in the city.
• Reflecting the headlong rush that has characterized last-minute preparations for the inauguration of George W. Bush, the 260 students in the University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band got only a single day to rehearse for their role in the Inaugural parade. “This is it,” said Director George Parks, taking a moment from shouting instructions into a hand-held microphone in Boyden Gymnasium on the Amherst campus. “One day.”

10 Years Ago

• Matt Parsons of Hadley recently won first place in the Class A non-irrigated division of the 2015 National Corn Growers Association’s corn yield contest in Massachusetts. Parsons won with Pioneer brand hybrid P0604AM ™.
• More than 100 people braved subfreezing temperatures Monday afternoon, crowding below the steps of Northampton City Hall, as Mayor David Narkewicz unveiled a Black Lives Matter banner on the building. This is a nation that continues to struggle with the “scourge of racism,” he said.

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