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Stories by Tom Stafford
Springfield and Newsweek: A happy marriage
Thirty years after Newsweek published its 50th Anniversary edition on Springfield and the American Dream, the award-winning journalist who shot the pictures describes the relationship between the city and magazine as “a marriage that worked.”“It was like a love affair,” Wally McNamee said during a late April interview in the ...
Special graduates have emotional ceremony
People who need better heart function usually are directed Springfield Regional Medical Center’s second floor. But at 1 p.m. Friday, it would have been hard to persuade the nearly 100 gathered in Assembly Room A on the hospital’s Garden Level that there was another place in the world that could ...
Alleged cancer fraud ‘atrocity’ to terminal woman
Whatever the financial cost — whatever the lost attendance at fundraisers or the skepticism shown those trying to raise money for people in dire straits — Erin Perks said allegations that Michelle Mundy faked cancer for financial gain robbed cancer patients something more valuable.“It took a bit of our fight,” ...
Port authority gives $1M to local projects
When the Springfield Port Authority awarded grants last month to a food bank, the new ice rink and for a statue of world boxing champion Davey Moore, it pushed the total the port authority has paid for local projects to near $1 million.“Good, bad or indifferent, that’s what we’re doing ...
Loftis raising final $650,00 for ice rink; campaign required to make sure facility opens ‘debt-free’
Tom Loftis has given himself until Nov. 15 to raise another $650,000 so that the Springfield Family Ice Rink and Expo Center, whose walls are going up now, can open this fall, debt-free.Last week, Loftis said he has $1 million in commitments and $750,000 in tentative pledges for the fundraising ...
Lamme used math to make electricity practical
In “The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity and the Men Who Invented Modern America,” historian Maury Klein says the key events in America’s powering up for the electric era came during the Chicago World’s Fair of 1883 and the building of the hydroelectric dam just downstream from Niagara Falls.Clark County’s Benjamin ...
A crusty silverback reflects on Mother’s Day
Six months have passed, and it’s startling now to look back at the pictures.At just under 6 pounds, I knew our grandson, Atticus, was smallish.But I’d not been around newborns for a while.So when he arrived before the polls opened on election day, Nov. 6, I didn’t know what normal ...
Postal food drive Saturday
The Second Harvest Food Bank of Clark, Champaign and Madison Counties distributed a record 28,000 pounds of food to 733 families in a six-hour event last month that was nearly three times as big as the largest previous mobile pantry in the agency’s history.That means Saturday’s National Association of Letter ...
Wittenberg board OKs $4.5M in cuts
Wittenberg University’s Board of Directors this weekend approved a plan to cut $4.5 million from the budget in the next four years.The spending cuts were worked out over a difficult 10 months in which Wittenberg President Laurie M. Joyner arrived on campus and sounded the alarm about a $7 million ...
Rail promoter was anything but legitimate
The idea of illegitimate birth is old-fashioned.But when the Springfield, (South) Charleston, Washington (CH) and Chillicothe Railway was conceived in 1904, that wasn’t so.And in “The Little Traction Line to Nowhere,” Douglas B. Kirkpatrick’s self-published book about the train service that never grew beyond the dozen miles between Springfield and ...
School readiness what the doctor ordered
It didn’t hurt that it was on a bright yellow sign I could see through the window next to my desk. Still, it’s the kind of thing that, as a reporter, catches my eye.In big, black block letters the sign said: Covenant Children’s Academy Presents Dr. J. Duffee, Pathways School ...
Officer faces leave in cancer probe
A South Vienna police officer whose wife is under investigation after allegations that she lied about having cancer and took money from fundraisers will be placed on administrative leave. And a longtime family friend who helped the family with fundraisers said Thursday that he was heartbroken by the news. The ...
Wittenberg must cut and grow, president says
Wittenberg University President Laurie M. Joyner hoped to close the university’s $7 million projected budget shortfall over the next four years by cutting $5 million in expenses and generating $2 million in new income.The budget she’ll present to the board when it convenes Thursday has $4.5 million in cuts, which ...
$50K to help food bank meet soaring demand
Second Harvest Food Bank of Clark, Champaign and Logan Counties might know within three weeks whether it has all of the $94,000 it needs to expand its refrigerated space and meet soaring demand.The food bank last week learned it will receive $50,000 from the Springfield Port Authority and Cargill might ...
Family held strong legal traditions
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s most widely quoted opinion involved hard-core pornography, about which he famously or infamously wrote: “I know it when I see it.”Jacobellis v. Ohio came to the court in 1964, five years after Stewart stood on a shaded knoll in Ferncliff Cemetery not far from ...
Church observes Mother Father Deaf Day
His hearing is fine.But auditory neuropathy runs in Robin Hoopes’ family.“Even though the ear might be registering sound,” he explained, the auditory nerve “fires out of sequence” and the message that’s supposed to be delivered “doesn’t quite get there.”Hoopes will give the featured address today at the 10:30 a.m. Mother ...
Local students advance to state writing competition
Twenty-five Clark County students will participate in the state Power of the Pen competition May 23 and 24 at the College of Wooster as the result of their performance during the regional tournament March 2 at Wittenberg University.Northwestern Middle School won the sweepstakes trophy for the best combined seventh and ...
Hospital survey results inch upward
Patient satisfaction scores at Springfield Regional Medical Center improved in eight of the 10 categories measured by Medicare and held steady in the other two, according to the latest update to the government agency’s Hospital Compare Website.The hospital, though, still lagged behind state and national averages on all of the ...
Witt sues student for computer violations
Wittenberg University wants in excess of $25,000 in compensatory damages from a student it says improperly accessed employee and perhaps student computer accounts while working part-time as a university web specialist.A suit filed last week in Clark County Common Pleas Court also seeks a temporary and permanent injunction and unspecified ...
Witt profs split over bombing connection
A Wittenberg University Russian expert says a Russian journalist she follows is convinced the Boston Marathon bombings were retribution on the United States from Chechen separatists for the State Department’s failure to list Chechnya’s president among officials suspected of human rights violations.“I don’t know how true it is, but that’s ...
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