A Look Back: June 23

50 Years Ago

■Superintendent of the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District Ronald J. Fitzgerald is resigning after 10 years to accept an appointment as director of the Massachusetts Advisory Council on Education. The 39-year-old school superintendent will leave Amherst in September to begin his new job in Boston.

■Time has run out for the old junior high school on Lessey Street in Amherst. The abandoned town building will be demolished to make way for the Boltwood Walk project within the month.

25 Years Ago

■A local minister who went with other clergy on a fact-finding mission to the Balkans says he can see no quick way to make friends from foes and to end religious and ethnic intolerance. The Rev. Peter Kakos, minister of the Edwards Church, returned June 6 from a trip to Bosnia, Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Croatia with 18 members of the Boston Theological Institute. Kakos said, “I went with the American perspective of we can solve this within a matter of months. I left realizing it will take decades.”

■The Northampton Rotary Club on Monday bestowed a top honor on two if its members, Daniel Yacuzzo and Harley Sacks. The two men were named Paul Harris fellows in recognition of their support for the work of the Rotary Foundation.

10 Years Ago

■University of Massachusetts professor Amilcar Shabazz’s leadership on diversity issues has earned him recognition from a Springfield organization. Shabazz, a professor in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies, will receive a Common Ground award from UnityFirst.com, a communications consulting group that distributes diversity-related news electronically, at the MassMutual Center in Springfield on Saturday.

■All 240 students at R.K. Finn Ryan Road School celebrated the summer solstice Friday by forming themselves into a miniature sun. Parents watched as the school staff arranged the children into nine lines, representing rays of the sun, which rotated around kindergartners in the middle.

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