A Look Back: Sept. 26

50 Years Ago

■Northampton’s Zoning Board of Appeals will be asked for a variance to permit a summer baseball-basketball camp to open this coming spring in Northampton. The camp, originally planned for Williamsburg, now is being eyed for a 40-acre site off Bridge Road. It would be on the north side of the road, opposite St. Mary’s Cemetery and near the new church.

■Now beginning its third year of operation, the Northampton Hotline has proven itself a success. In its second year, the service received about 2,000 calls, double the amount received during the first year of operation.

25 Years Ago

■As expected, the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has rejected the city’s request to trap and kill beavers in the Brookwood Marsh Conservation Area. Failing to get an emergency permit to remove the beavers, the Conservation Commission will discuss the fate of the animals Monday night.

■The University of Massachusetts engineering department is the birthplace — and an Israeli husband-and-wife team the founders — of a new high-tech company that promises to return a portion of its profits to the university. AIM Engineering, the new company, will provide research opportunities to students and pay royalties to the university on UMass-patented products it develops, the principals announced last week.

10 Years Ago

■After being found in a state of advanced deterioration at the State Archives, the original Chesterfield Town Charter has been meticulously restored and copies of the document given to the town courtesy of state Rep. Stephen Kulik, D-Worthington, state Sen. Benjamin B. Downing, D-Pittsfield, and state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst.

■An author of one of the most well-known children’s books and the owners of a landmark bookstore are being honored with first-ever awards from the Jones Library. The Samuel Minot Jones Awards for Literary Achievement, dubbed the “Sammys,” will be presented in April to Norton Juster, author of “The Phantom Tollbooth,” and Nat Herold and Mark Wootton, the owners of Amherst Books on Main Street.

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