Forum Flashbacks: April 16 – 22

FORUM FILE PHOTO
Nixon praises MHS for student success A group of Maryville High School seniors took part in a discussion early Wednesday afternoon with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, center. Also in attendance were Maryville R-II Superintendent Larry Linthacum, center left, and former Missouri State University President Mike Nietzel, now a member of Nixon’s staff as an advisor on higher education and workforce readiness. Participating MHS students, clockwise from left to right, were Hannah Hall, Jacob Cacek, Dominic Mattock, Dakota Shields, Patricia Euler, Dominique Wiedmaier, Riley Elliott and Jessica Knowles.

25 years ago

• OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An explosion believed caused by a bomb shattered a downtown federal office building today, blowing out a huge chunk of the nine-story structure and killing at least eight.
  At least 200 people were injured. Mike Osburn, deputy chief of staff for Gov. Frank Keating, said the Oklahoma Civil Emergency Management Agency confirmed eight dead included six children.
  “The facts are not in but what we do know, a terrible tragedy has occurred here in Oklahoma City,” Gov. Frank Keating said. “Considerable loss of life has occurred.”
• Just like that, the Northeast Nodaway R-V School District lost another administrator, this time Superintendent Tim Gutzmer.
  Only two months after the board of education declined to renew the contract of elementary school principal Marcee Goslee, Gutzmer handed in his letter of resignation.
  “There are several factors,” Gutzmer said this morning. “I just didn’t want to work there anymore. From the board to some of the employees, it just wasn’t working out. I guess you could say some of the board members and myself had different philosophies.” …
  Gutzmer’s resignation comes two weeks after Northeast Nodaway voters booted two incumbents from the board of education, electing instead Kenneth Runde and Robert Schmitz, with whom Gutzmer exchanged words at an earlier board meeting.

15 years ago

• With camera in hand, party hat on, ready for the celebration, Pat Cummings headed to work on Friday, April 15, the 50th anniversary of McDonald’s restaurants.
  Cummings bought the Maryville McDonald’s in 1986. Now, a new venture is in store for Cummings who took a seat on the Maryville City Council last week after running unopposed in the general election.
  “I try to bring myself and my values to anything I do,” Cummings said. “I am now bringing myself to the Maryville City Council with my dedication, common sense and honesty.”
• A powerhouse Missouri company nearly threw a monkey wrench into the Northwest Missouri State University-Ventria Bioscience partnership, but negotiations between the parties avoided what could have been a major problem.
  Last week, St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch — the nation’s largest beer producer, and the nation’s No. 1 rice buyer — said they would no longer purchase rice in Missouri if Ventria completed its move to Maryville, saying Ventria’s genetically-modified rice crops could contaminate unmodified rice.
  Ventria executives and Northwest officials were quick to call Anheuser-Busch’s position “ridiculous,” saying the modified rice could not cross breed with normal rice.
  But on Friday, with the help of the state, the two sides reached a compromise. Ventria promised that it would not grow modified rice within 120 miles of normal rice crops, and the brewery will continue to buy Missouri rice.

5 years ago

• The West Nodaway R-I Board of Education accepted the resignation of Superintendent Nancy Greeley during a special reorganizational meeting Wednesday.
  Greeley, who spent 24 of her 34 years in Missouri public education at West Nodaway, first as a kindergarten teacher, then later as an elementary principal and superintendent, will replace the retiring Larry Price as the Region-H Supervisor of Instruction for the Missouri Department of Education.