Peekin’ into the past

Five Years Ago —July 7, 2016

Baseball and softball fans can rest easy at the Holyoke Ballpark under the newly installed awnings, which provide shade, cover from rain and protection from foul balls. The awnings were part of an improvement project to get the ballfield ready for the July 21-24 Babe Ruth Regional Tournament. New bathrooms and above-ground dugouts were also built.

Melissa Memorial Hospital has received a $500,000 capital grant from the Colorado Health Foundation. The Capital Support Grant for Renovation of Melissa Memorial Hospital aims to increase health care access to underserved populations, providing half a million dollars for the clinic expansion project to increase patient capacity as well as bilingual health care services.

Slowly but surely, wheat harvest is picking up in Phillips County. With continued rain throughout the past week, there are still several fields looking green, but both CHS Grainland and Paoli Farmers Co-op saw a few trucks taking loads in to the elevators.

Ten Years Ago —July 7, 2011

On June 14, Phillips County commissioners received notice from Great Outdoors Colorado that the county grant request for Homesteaders Park playground, turf field and disc golf course project has been funded for an amount up to $200,000.

Dorothy (Ortner) Horrell was one of two Coloradoans inducted into the Colorado 4-H Hall of Fame at the June 23 banquet of the Colorado 4-H state conference.

HHS senior Whitni Redman was elected for a national office at the June 28-July 1 FBLA National Leadership Conference and will represent nine states as the Mountain Plains Region vice president in 2011-12.

Grainland Cooperative’s merger with CHS became effective last week, and business was officially conducted under the merger June 27.

Twenty-Five Years Ago —July 11, 1996

Holyoke’s newest business specializes in “putting information at your fingertips.” Servant Computerized Services is a home business recently started by Joel and Rita Hiller. Its first major production is an information line (known as INFO Line) devoted to the Holyoke community. This information line, 854-INFO, is accessible free 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It includes more than 25 main directories, with subdirectories included in many of these.

A “fun friendship” has come to a family relationship as a father and son work together in a local electrical business. Byron and Rick Prottsman recently became coworkers when Rick joined his father Byron’s business, Moonlight Electric.

Bill and Edna Hayes celebrated their 70th anniversary on July 10. Edna is 87 years old, and Bill will turn 96 later this month.

Fifty Years Ago —July 8, 1971

Rex Bell is the new pastor of the Holyoke Seventh-day Adventist Church. He preached his first sermon here last Saturday morning.

A tornado sighted east of Holyoke along Highway 6 last Saturday caused extensive damage to the roof of the farm home of Richard Einspahr 3 miles east of Holyoke. After hitting the Einspahr home, the tornado moved to the southwest and disappeared again.

Seventy-Five Years Ago —July 11, 1946

A call for bids for the construction of Enders dam and dike, 2 miles south of Enders on Frenchman Creek in southwestern Nebraska, was announced July 1.

Early reports by farmers to local elevators indicate that in Phillips County the current wheat harvest is almost equal in yields and quality to the all-time record of 1945. Combining began here Tuesday and in the west part of the county on Monday.

Plans are underway for the enlargement and development of the highest astronomical observatory in the world, located at Climax, jointly sponsored by Harvard University and the University of Colorado.