Forum Flashbacks: June 25-July 1

FORUM FILE PHOTO
Spic and Span: Seth Boyer, of Cosby, uses a rag to shine up his 1949 Model H McCormick-Farmall prior to the start of Saturday’s Heart of America Tractor Cruise. The tractor was originally purchased new by Boyer’s grandfather, Dale Boyer, who farmed near Amity.

25 years ago

• The fire that swept through A & G Pizza and Steakhouse last Thursday was like the loss of a family member for the Groumoutises.
  With $150,000 the estimated damage, it will take a lot for the rebuilding.
  “We want to rebuild,” said Sue Groumoutis, co-owner with her husband George. “This is our living and this is what we want to do.”
• It was a good week for Nodaway County students participating in Missouri Girls State at William Woods University in Fulton, especially for Maryville High School student Karen Barmann.
  Barmann, who early in the week was elected mayor of her appointed city of Pershing, Friday was elected the new governor of Girls State and will preside over next year’s event.
  “Karen is the first girl we have had from Maryville who has gone to Girls State and been elected governor from Maryville,” Mary Belle Miller, chairman of the Girls State Selection Committee of the Maryville American Legion Auxiliary Unit 100, said this morning. “It is quite an honor.”
  Barmann is the daughter of Mike and Mary Jo Barmann.

15 years ago

• So maybe there’s something to superstitions after all.
  Nobody knows if a Maryville woman’s gas station ritual helped her win a sizeable lottery jackpot earlier this month. But the woman now has $100,000 in her pocket from a one-dollar Powerball ticket. And maybe, just maybe, the ritual she goes through to buy her ticket twice a week finally swayed the lottery gods to her side.
  Last week, the store manager at Break Time in Maryville, where the winning ticket was sold, did not want to reveal the winner’s name. But she did talk about the anonymous winner’s superstitious nature.
  “She’s a regular customer,” said store manager Donita Coffelt. “And every time she comes in here, she’d tell the clerk she wanted her Powerball. Then she’d stand here and she’d say, ‘I’M A WINNER, I’M A WINNER, I’M A WINNER …’ She’d say that 10 times.”
• Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt on Wednesday announced the approval of development tax credits to facilitate the expansion in workforce of Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corp. in Maryville. The development tax credits will be used to offset a $150,000 donation to the Nodaway County Economic Development, Inc.
  Kawasaki wants to use the $75,000 in credits to invest in a production training line to provide real-time assembly and quality training to produce more skilled workers for production manufacturing jobs. An estimated 150 new employees will be added to the existing 700 workers at the plant from this expansion.

5 years ago

• It’s a long way from the Supreme Court Building at 1 First Street NE in Washington D.C. to the Nodaway County Administration Center at the corner of Market and Fourth streets in Maryville.
  But in the wake of the high court’s historic decision declaring that gay couple’s have a right to marry, the long miles were reduced to mere seconds on Friday when County Recorder of Deeds Sandra Smail, acting on a recommendation from the Recorders Association of Missouri, dispatched the following email:
  “As of noon today, June 26, 2015, the Nodaway County Recorder of Deeds office will issue Missouri marriage licenses to same-sex couples as per the ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States.”