A Look Back, Feb. 23

50 Years Ago

• Mayor David W. Cramer said he will decide by the end of March whether to accept the county’s offer to convert its Gothic Street parking lot to municipal, metered use. The major factor in the decision is the cost of maintaining the lot.
• More than 200 people attended a dinner dance Saturday night at which Sheriff John F. Boyle was honored by the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce as its citizen of the year. “I am just one man,” said Boyle, in receiving the honor. He said that countless other people who work at the jail, including Deputy Master Merton Burt, “deserve as much credit as I do.”

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

• President George W. Bush speaks Spanish, or so it was often said during the presidential campaign. But journalist Molly Ivins, who hails from Texas and spoke Wednesday at Smith College, says the president’s bilingual abilities are perhaps not best described as fluent.
• One of Northampton’s largest users of water is asking the Board of Public Works to separate its water and sewer bills. Packaging Corp. of America, of 525 Mount Tom Road, which assembles corrugated paper boxes and products from paper, says it take in much more water than it puts out into the sewer system. Rate-payers’ sewer bills generally are calculated based on how much water they take in.

10 Years Ago

• After 18 months and 1,500 Habitat for Humanity volunteers working early 10,000 hours, two families on Sunday christened the East Street, Easthampton, duplex they’ll move into next month. The project, which broke ground in August 2014, was a special one for the Pioneer Valley chapter of Habitat for Humanity. As a “Women Build” project, more than half of the volunteers and skilled laborers were female.
• A local professor is casting doubt on the popular notion that Lord Jeffery Amherst decimated scores of Native Americans with smallpox-infected blankets. Pointing to the high number of smallpox outbreaks across North America in the 18th century, and detailing the way the disease is typically transmitted, Amherst College professor Kevin Sweeney questioned the evidence linking the British military commander to a successful act of germ warfare.

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