A Look Back: Feb. 7

By JIM BRIDGMAN

For the Gazette

Published: 02-07-2023 7:00 AM

50 Years Ago

■Vincent E. Busone, personnel director at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Leeds, will never forget his coffee break which he took one day this week. He was sitting in the hospital canteen when he leafed through the pages of the Gazette and matched his lottery ticket to the winning number in the newspaper. He is now $2,500 richer.

■Mayor Sean Dunphy, cited for “outstanding, selfless service to the community,” received the Outstanding Citizenship Award from the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce at the chamber’s annual dinner dance, held Saturday night at the Hotel Northampton.

25 Years Ago

■Because of the school’s strict academic eligibility requirements, nearly a quarter of Amherst Regional High School students were ineligible to participate in extracurricular activities, including sports, last fall, officials say. As a result, officials are considering reducing the requirements.

■Under a new policy, home education students who choose to enter public high school would have to do so at the beginning of ninth grade, if they want a Northampton High School diploma, although waivers of the policy may be a possibility. The Rules and Policy Committee of the School Committee has accepted a draft policy that would limit the granting of high school diplomas to students who have completed all four years at the high school, or at some other accredited institution.

10 Years Ago

■Saturday mail may soon go the way of the Pony Express and penny postcards. The Postal Service said Wednesday that it plans to cut back to five-day-a-week deliveries for everything except packages to stem it financial losses in a world radically reordered by the Internet.

■Caught in an ideological crossfire, the Boy Scouts of America is retreating until May from a decision about whether to ease its policy of excluding gays. Whatever the organization eventually does, it’s likely to anger major constituencies and worsen schisms with Scouting. The delay, which the Scouts attributed to “the complexity of this issue,” was announced Wednesday.

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