Forum Flashbacks: Feb. 4-10

FORUM FILE PHOTO
Alice Gabrielson displays the plaque she won as the “Older Worker of the Year” for Northwest Missouri.

25 years ago

• A truly remarkable woman for any age, the 80-year-young Alice Gabrielson has won Missouri’s 6th annual “Older Worker of the Year” for Northwest Missouri by the Division of Aging.
  Gabrielson is a cafeteria employee at Maryville High School. She has worked for the district for 14 years, having also worked in the cafeteria at Eugene Field. She works at the snack and salad bar.
  Gabrielson said she enjoys the children at the school.
  “Those kids have been taught good manners at home,” she said about the students she sees everyday.
  She is also active as a piano player at the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a volunteer for the Red Cross and a dorm parent at Camp Quality.
  “The things you do in life that you volunteer for and don’t get anything for, they are the most rewarding,” she said.

15 years ago

• Although Mark Jelavich was named the winner of an economic forecasting contest in January, the grand prize for winning the contest won’t do much to improve Jelavich’s own personal economic outlook.
  Jelavich, a Northwest Missouri State University economics professor and a Maryville Daily Forum columnist, will receive… drumroll please… a T-shirt for winning the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s annual Economic Challenge.
  Jelavich entered the contest, along with about 25 other people, in December 2004. He was asked to predict where several economic indicators would be one year down the road, including the country’s gross domestic product, inflation and unemployment rate.
  In January, Jelavich was notified that he had made the best predictions overall. …
  Although most people in the contest predicted an inflation rate of about 2 percent, Jelavich thought it would be higher and guessed 3 percent. The actual inflation rate was 3.3 percent.
  Jelavich predicted that the gross domestic product would grow by 3.3 percent, and the actual increase was 3.1 percent; he guessed an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent, close to the actual rate of 4.9 percent.
• Maryville’s one-story Public Safety Department building houses a number of secrets… one, a meth lab storage location for the region.
  A joint agreement with the Department of Natural Resources has Public Safety officers in Maryville sitting on a stash of illegal drugs.
  “Essentially, we have what’s considered to be an explosive resistant container you can put all those hazardous chemicals in that are used in meth production,” said Keith Wood, Maryville Public Safety director.
  The Maryville facility contains one of 20 temporary storage sites sponsored by Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources. It’s a weigh station to dispose of chemicals uncovered at methamphetamine labs.
  The Clandestine Drug Lab Collection Station Program is made up of specially-designed buildings, or collection stations, that provide safe, legal and secure locations where meth lab chemicals seized by law enforcement can be managed and temporarily stored pending processing and proper disposal.

5 years ago

• A Maryville High School senior is one of 53 state and territory winners in the annual art contest, Doodle 4 Google.
  An assembly was held Friday morning in front of the Maryville High School student body in the school gymnasium, to announce Anh Le as the sole winner for the state of Missouri, and to unveil a “life-size” version of his entry titled, “My Creative Rift.”
  “It means a lot to me, because I have put a lot of work and effort into my drawings and pictures, and I just know that it will pay off, and it certainly has,” Le said.
  Google representatives Victoria Edwards and Jarett Jacobsen stood in front of nearly 500 MHS freshmen through seniors and high school faculty to make the announcement.
  “We look for creativity and artistic ability, but also how they identify and match with the actual theme, which this year is ‘What makes me … me,’” Jacobsen said.
• For the first time in nearly 30 years, Maryville Parks & Recreation has a new director. Aaron Dobson, former parks superintendent for the City of Rockwall, Texas, assumed his new duties on Feb. 2, the day after former Parks & Rec director Rod Auxier officially retired.
  Dobson, 37, is no stranger to Maryville or northwest Missouri, having grown up in Holt and earned a bachelor’s degree in corporate wellness and recreation from Northwest Missouri State University. …
  Accepting the top job at Parks & Rec, which operates as a quasi-independent city agency with its own property tax-based revenue stream, “represented a unique opportunity to come back home” and live closer to family, Dobson said.
  He added that he was also attracted to Maryville because he feels the community has demonstrated “a true love” for the park system and considers its facilities and programs to constitute “a valued asset.”