March 24

 

1996: Speaking in Columbus, President Bill Clinton says he did not break a 1992 promise to the Mahoning Valley to place a Defense Department finance center here. He said he supported the Valley and thought it should win the center, but he couldn't overrule the Defense Department's decision. 

 

The Mahoning Valley has shown little population growth in the past five years, but the mass exodus that began two decades ago has seemingly stopped.

 

Akash Paul, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is named CEO of Caparo Steel in Farrell, Pa. He says a $150 million investment will increase the former Sharon Steel Corp. works from 360,000-tons a year to 1 million tons. 

    

1981: One high school teacher and 173 students cross picket lines on the first day that the board of education announces that schools will reopen despite a continuing teacher strike.

 

Camille Bell, the mother of a 9-year-old boy murdered in Atlanta, speaks at Grace AME Church in Warren and says it is infuriating that 15 children were murdered or disappeared before the world began to take note. 

 

Carbon monoxide fumes from a faulty furnace apparently killed three young children and their grandmother in Brookfield. Dead are Jill, 6; Paul, 4, and Stephanie O'Brien, 2, and Lola Piccirilli, 58.

 

1971: Miami Ohio Municipal Court Judge Gerald Tobin sentences an 18-year-old Cleveland youth to 30 days in jail for contempt of court after Donovan LaKowta appeared as a witness in Tobin's court wearing a store-bought shirt that bore an American flag pattern. 

 

The Committee on Schools and Education, an offshoot of the Area Betterment Council, will evaluate schools and education programs in Trumbull County. Dr. Charles Wiland of Kent State University will head the committee.

 

Dr. Lamont C. Cole, professor of ecology at Cornell University, tells 600 Youngstown State University graduates that the world faces an ecological crisis and it will be up to today's graduates to correct present abuses and prevent future ones.

 

1946: New sandstone steps, 52-feet wide and landscaping will spruce up the William Rayen School of Engineering Building on Wick Avenue. Youngstown College President Howard Jones said the project will cost $10,000.

 

With only a week to go, the Mahoning County Red Cross campaign is $80,000 short of its goal of $236,000.

 

A quarrel over a nickel's winnings in a card game ended in a knife fight that took the lives of two Girard men, Ray McDowell, 31, and Randolph Glenn, 36.