Editor’s note: Following is a month-by-month look back at the top local news stories from 2021 as reported by The Times-Gazette. We wish our readers a Happy New Year.
September
1 – The Bright Local School District purchased 17.7 acres of land from Harold and Pat Busch that is located diagonally from Whiteoak High School on Taylorsville Road. The school hoped to use the land for a track and field and soccer complex.
6 – Hannah Hopkins was named the queen of the 2021 Highland County Fair and Wyatt Morrow was named king. Hopkins won the position over five other contestants while Morrow was the only contestant for king. Hopkins’ three court members were Trinity Edenfield, Anne-Marie Ogden and McKenzie Arnold.
15 – Project No. 1, putting mobile hot spots in district libraries and allowing them to be checked out and taken home through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was extended to 2024. This project’s extension, which already put 25 mobile hot spots in libraries across the district, would double the number of hot spots to 50.
21 – Hillsboro City Schools followed the recommendation of the Highland County Health Department and highly recommended that students should wear face coverings because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, superintendent Tim Davis said that they were not going to require students to wear them. He also said that he knew some students and staff wore them, but not how many.
October
1 – The Waddell Company announced that it would move its Greenfield facility to the GMi Company’s Lebanon facility. The company was a noted manufacturer of products, including display cases, since the late 1880s. The company was located next to the railroad tracks on South Washington Street.
8 – Mark McCully, association chief executive officer of Maplecrest Farms, said that the Hillsboro farm ranked as the largest in registering the most Angus beef cattle in Ohio alongside the American Angus Association in the fiscal year 2021. Overall, there were 313,138 heads of Angus cattle registered in 2021 in the country.
18 – The National Weather Service (NWS) station in Wilmington announced that multiple tornadoes touched down near Hillsboro, which included Category EF0 and EF1 tornadoes. The NWS said that a tornado touched down about three to five miles northeast of Hillsboro and then a separate one touched down about six to seven miles west of Hillsboro.
25 – Hillsboro High School and superintendent Tim Davis announced that the school play “She Kills Monsters” was canceled after the rehearsals for the play had already started. Davis said that the district’s decision to cancel the play was because of the “play’s use of inappropriate language, profanity, homophobic slurs, sexual innuendos and graphic violence.”
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
