By JIM BRIDGMAN

50 Years Ago

■Bernard Wysocki, 24, has joined the reporting staff of the Gazette. A 1971 graduate of Dartmouth College, he has been working as a general assignment reporter at the Amherst Record.

■“Don’t be timid anymore,” Kay Raymond urged some 100 women at a conference on rape held Saturday at the Unitarian Church here. The all-day affair, from which men were excluded, and which featured guerilla theater, a speak-out, talks, and a workshop on self-defense, was sponsored by the Valley Women’s Center in Northampton and Everywoman’s Center at the University of Massachusetts.

25 Years Ago

■The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center intends to start charging its prime tenant — an independently run shelter for homeless veterans — for the cost of utilities and some maintenance. The city’s veterans’ agent opposes the move, which the shelter’s director says could force the program to curtail staff and services.

■The Supreme Court today refused to revive an invalidated Ohio law that banned some late-term abortions, the first of many such laws enacted across the country. Although today’s court action is not a ruling and sets no national precedent, it is sure to be hailed by abortion rights advocates.

10 Years Ago

■By 2020, state economists predict more than 11,500 new jobs will be added to Hampshire and Franklin counties’ labor force — mostly in the Valley’s traditionally strong sectors of education and health care — according to a report of anticipated local industry occupation gains and losses.

■Claudia Lefko, a local activist and founder of the Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange, recently joined a delegation of American and Italian doctors and nurses who traveled to Baghdad for a collaboration to improve the quality of cancer care, a mission known as Baghdad Resolve. In 2000, Lefko founded the Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange with the goal of fostering dialogue and connection between children on both sides of the conflict.

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