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Stories by Tom Stafford
Americans once believed the Irish caused cholera
A day after the holiday on which most everyone pretends to be Irish, the notion of anti-Irish bias seems more laughable than a Mike-and-Pat joke.But in 1849, with Springfield enduring a cholera epidemic that killed about 75, anti-Irish sentiment lurked just beneath the surface of the reporting of Springfield’s newspaper, ...
Brain’s superiority isn’t a no-brainer
The human brain is overrated.The proof is simple.If it were “all that,” as my kids used to say, wouldn’t it allow us to out-think living things that don’t have a brain?And if that’s so, how do we explain the fact that we’re on the verge of being out maneuvered by ...
Local priest was in St. Peter’s Square for naming of pope
Minutes after Rev. Ryan Ruiz accepted Rev. Juan Robert Ortega’s invitation Wednesday, the Springfield Catholic Central High School graduate and former Centerville priest considered himself twice blessed.Not only did Ruiz get a ride through the rain to Rome’s St. Peter’s Square, he was standing next to his Argentine classmate when ...
Museum lands checkoff grant money
The Heritage Center of Clark County is more sophisticated than your average store-and-lock, but Director of Collections Virginia Weygandt said it will use $15,000 from the state’s first tax checkoff history grants to answer three questions everyone with stuff in storage wants to know:“What do we have? Where is it? ...
Remembering Davey Moore’s life, fights
After losing his featherweight championship to Sugar Ramos in Los Angeles, Davey Moore had slipped into the coma from which he would not emerge.That made Springfield Daily News Sports Editor Bob Sullivan remembered a remark Moore had made years earlier.“Only 10 seconds separates me from being champion and being nothing,” ...
Alumni of Distinction class proves classy
A star of the basketball court becomes a life coach for kids coming before the juvenile court bench.A high school newspaper editor becomes at age 29 a fearless real-life editor whose paper becomes a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.The son of a man who died of wounds suffered in World ...
Bacteria strains a health risk
Powerful strains of bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics, causing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to sound an alarm this week and one Ohio expert to call it “one of the most serious public health issues of our time.” The CRE bacteria have developed resistance to carbopenem antibiotics, ...
City groups seek coordinated anti-violence effort
“Stop hate together” is the theme of the “Not in Our Town” event scheduled for 5 to 7:30 p.m. April 18 at the Rocking Horse Community Health Center.And while sending out a “Save the Date” message to other organizations in the community, organizers hope to make April 18 an important ...
St. John Male Chorus celebrating 70th anniversary
A brief, formal history of the Male Chorus of St. John Missionary Baptist Church exists.But then so does a tenor who has been in the group for 62 of its 70 years.Claude M. Castleberry will be part of the anniversary celebration when the Male Chorus and choruses from other churches ...
Spirit of longtime photographer still alive
Howdy Weber has been gone about two years now.Maybe because I miss him, it seems longer.But, oddly, the longtime Springfield News-Sun photographer stills seems very much alive to me, too.I thought of Howdy again a couple of weeks back while writing a play about the 30th anniversary of Newsweek’s American ...
Enon meteorite a promising oddball
The late Ulysses Drummond, who for 60 years held on to the 1.65-pound stone the Smithsonian Institution stores as the Enon meteorite, was his father’s 16th child and his mother’s 11th.Although this circumstance is easily explained by his parents’ previous marriages, the parentage of the stone he toted around with ...
Central grad waits for history to unfold in Rome
As he descended the stairs at the priests’ residence at the North American Pontifical College near Rome’s Trevi Fountain on Monday, Fr. Ryan Ruiz sensed something was afoot.Moments later, he knew the news rocking the Vatican soon would reverberate through the halls of his childhood parish, St. Mary Catholic Church ...
After baby’s death, mother becomes a milk donor
After watching her five-day-old daughter, Victoria, endure four surgeries in 48 hours, and knowing the increased post-surgical swelling was causing her pain, Melissa Smith on Jan. 23 prayerfully made the decision no parent wants to make.“We wanted to let her fight,” Smith said from her desk at the office of ...
Mad River could get state status
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources will host open houses on Thursday and Saturday to gather public input on whether Clark County’s 22-mile section of the Mad River should be designated a Recreational River under the Ohio Scenic Rivers Program.The events are scheduled from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday and ...
Church to celebrate views on gay members
Highlands United Church of Christ will mark Sunday its declaration of an “open and affirming” status, which it says will make it the first of its denomination in Clark County that celebrates the sexuality of gay, lesbian and transgender people as a gift of God.“This shows we are committed,” said ...
Witt grad roots out truth on Gennett
Music lovers wax poetic about the creative stew of New Orleans, Creole and Mississippi Delta cultures that produced Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and Blind Lemon Jefferson.In his excellent revised history of Gennett Records, Rick Kennedy explains how an equally complex mix of economic, social and cultural forces ...
Stafford: ‘Promiscuous sitting’ may teach us a lesson
It seems comical now. Strange.But this was in the 1840s, when more traditional Methodists in Springfield were trying to uphold the tradition of men and women sitting on separate sides of the sanctuary.In their attempt to do so, they used what now seems an obviously loaded term for the newfangled ...
Fagans to lead United Senior Services
United Senior Services has tapped Maureen Fagans to help it determine how to serve Clark County’s growing and more diverse senior population and to develop the facilities it will need to do that.Fagans will become the organization’s executive director March 18, after four years as the head of Springfield’s Center ...
Springfield Catholics surprised by pope’s decision
When Darlene Tempelton heard a special announcement was imminent about Pope Benedict XVI, “I was sure they were going to say he died,” she said. But the news the Catholic Central High School campus minister gave to students at morning prayer Monday was more unusual than that. The pope’s planned ...
Local symposium focuses on Vicksburg, Gettysburg
There is not yet a show called History Rehab.But Parker Hills has scheduled an intervention April 13 for anyone overly dependent on the notion that only the immense forces of social change, fate, or perhaps God drive what’s sometimes a very human history.When he appears at the Clark County Historical ...
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