Learning from the past

Staff reports
Published: August 7, 2008

2007: Recently, fire, rescue and police services were called to the scene of a reported residential gas tank leak, says Greene’s Public Service Director David Lawrence.
Responders “were standing within sight of each other, trying to communicate with their hand-held units”, - but they could not hear each other.
In April, Greene Board of Supervisors Chairman Steve Catalano had gotten his own wake-up call.
“A fire call was not dispatched due to radio failure,” he says.
It was time to do something about Greene’s antiquated emergency communications system ( the system).

2003: Some things have a brilliant but brief existence. The golden rose of sunrise. The scarlet orange of sunset. The blaze of a shooting star or a burst of fireworks. The beauty of daylily.
The name daylily gives its own description. Each bud blooms into color for one day only. The plant preserves the show by massing many buds on each stem. Each day, new buds open to give a long, showy display of spring and summer color.  In Virginia, you don’t have to go beyond your own yard nearby highway to see tiger orange of the humble roadside lily. If you truly want to explore the many spenders of the daylily, however, you need go no further than Greene County.

1998: Swarmed by news and media, a teary-eyed Paula Johnson said she was feeling “ anger, hurt, and confusion” in the wake of a baby switching fiasco.
The Greene County woman, who gave her first news conference at the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville Tuesday, recently found out that her 3 year old daughter, Callie Marie Jewel Conley, is not her biological daughter.
Johnson’s daughter was apparently switched after birth at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Pending genetic tests, officials believe Johnson’s real daughter may be Rebecca Grace Chittum whose presumed parents died July 4 in an auto accident.

1983: It didn’t seem to bother anyone when 12 year old Tamela Powell of Stanardsville was selected to the county Bambino All Star baseball team. And only a few raised an eyebrow when the locals earned a berth the late July state tournament in Richmond, sporting the only female player among participating teams.
But when Tamela complied a five game tournament batting average of .419, led her team to second place finish, and received the tournament’s MVP award, that was a different story. And for her male opponents, it required a little adjustment.

1948: The weatherman holds the key to the tight meat situation, according to G. C. Herring, animal husbandman, Extension Service. Adequate rainfall during July and August will mean a bumper corn crop, and finally will encourage increase production and feeding of meat animals, Herring says. To consumers, it will mean increased meat supplies for the future. If the early July estimate for corn production in th United States, of, 3,328,862,000 bushels, and the estimates small grain production of 6.3 billion bushels, materialize, it will stimulate the feeding of cattle this fall and winter.