Forum Flashbacks: May 14-20

By Geoffrey Woehlk | May 15, 2020 |

FORUM FILE PHOTO
Darth Vader — a.k.a. Galen Gibson-Cornell — and Lee Yates (in the right) sat front and center at the Hangar in Maryville on Thursday for the first showing of Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, the latest and reportedly last of George Lucas’ epic space opera. Afterward, Yates, a long time Star Wars fan, was impressed with the film — “You know going in that it is going to be dark, but you still leave feeling punched in the gut. It is wonderful.”

25 years ago

The phone rings and Susan Staashelm immediately answers.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the communications supervisor at Maryville Public Safety says.
As the call comes in, the phone number of the calling party is flashed on an LCD screen next to the phone on Staashelm’s desk.
Within one second the address from which the call is coming appears on a computer monitor along with the last five times that number has made a call to the 911 line and the reason why. The monitor also displays any special information that has been pre-entered in their file, housed at Maryville Public Safety. …
Now, the City of Maryville and Nodaway County are moving ever closer to bringing the entire county on line with the 911 service now in place in Maryville.
An old coaching cliché is “You can’t win unless you expect to win.” Wanna bet?
The Maryville High School track squads came away from Saturday’s Missouri 3A District 16 Track Meet with boys’ and girls’ titles, thereby pleasantly surprising boys’ coach Mike Thompson and girls’ coach Chris Heslinga.
The pair figured their teams would do well and win their share of events, but thought district titles to be an unrealistic goal.
“We’ve always had good teams and we have another great team this season, but it would have been a lot of pressure going into this meet expecting to win,” Thompson said. “To come away with a district championship is beyond what I expected.”

15 years ago

Less than six months after a brutal murder of a pregnant woman in Skidmore, the officers who were critical in finding the baby cut from her womb were named Law Enforcement Officers of the Year by a national organization.
On Wednesday, the officers — Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey, Maryville Public Safety Investigator Randy Strong, Missouri Highway Patrol officers Jeffery M. Owen and David Merrill and Kurt Lipanovich, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation — were chosen above officers in five other nationwide cases as the 2005 Officers of the Year by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

5 years ago

Local U.S. Postal Service employees, along with a team of volunteers from Living Hope Church, collected just over 5,000 pounds of foodstuffs over the weekend during the 23rd annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, a national anti-hunger effort organized by the National Association of Letter Carriers.
In addition to the 5,020 pounds of non-perishable food set out by Maryville residents for pickup by postal workers, the effort also gleaned $121 in cash gifts.
Both cash and in-kind donations will be used to support operations at the Nodaway County Ministry Center
The West Nodaway R-I School District will have a new superintendent next school year, but Nancy Greeley’s replacement will be a familiar face. Shannon Nolte has been the K-12 principal the past two years and will now step into the superintendent role.