50 Years Ago

■Appointed principal of the Maple Street School in Easthampton is Richard Guistina of 14 Brook St. He is a graduate of Westfield State College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in education with a minor in guidance. Guistina will replace John Quintaglie who resigned to take a position in Barre, Vt.

■The Amherst School Committee voted Monday night, after considerable discussion, to adopt a schedule for elementary schools that calls for school dismissal at 1:15 p.m. on Wednesdays next year. The purpose of the “afternoon off” is to give teachers planning time, Robert Fischer, committee member reported.

25 Years Ago

■The theme for the Taste of Northampton arcade games to be run next month as fund-raisers for The Cooley Dickinson Hospital will be the American West. “For the eighth annual Arcade, we’re bringing back the era of the Wild West,” said Peter Kistenmacher, the arcade’s chairman.

■A Northampton middle school student competed this month in the 1999 North American Irish Dancing Championships in Chicago. Siobhan Burke placed 13th in her age group, which included dancers from Ireland, England, Canada, and the United States.

10 Years Ago

■Seven volunteers climbed into kayaks and canoes and floated onto Fitzgerald Lake this weekend to launch a counteroffensive against an invasion of water chestnuts. Their efforts yielded 16 30-gallon trash bags full of the invasive plant, which the volunteers pulled up to prevent it from choking out other native plans that live in the 40-acre lake.

■Anthony Lucchesi, 15, has been winning state and regional BMX racing titles since he started speeding around dirt tracks on his BMX bicycles at age 12. But on Friday, Lucchesi learned that he won the thing that had been eluding him — a chance to train with other elite racers at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California.