21 WFMJ archives / May 31,  1985 | Crews searched for bodies in a race against nightfall at the site of a demolished roller skating rink at the intersection of  Niles-Vienna Road and Route 422, where most of the nine fatalities in Niles were recorded after a tornado roared from Newton Falls into Western Pennsylvania 40 years ago. 

May 31

 2000: Two students of Eagle Heights Academy in Youngstown, a first grader and a second grader, die in a week, one from a brain tumor and one from a form of bacterial meningitis. 

Some seniors at Boardman High School return to Stadium Elementary School to dig up a time capsule containing autobiographies they wrote 10 years earlier. Fourth graders at the school will bury a new time capsule to be dug up as they approach graduation. 

Girard buys 25 Sig Sauer 40-caliber semi-automatic pistols for members of the police department, providing more stopping power than the Sig Sauer 9-millimeter pistols they replace. The pistols have laser sights that project a red dot on their target. 

1985: Violent storm fronts over the Plains states spawn tornadoes and damaging hail, moving toward the Great Lakes. 

William Johnston, owner of Trail Star Manufacturing in Portage County and chairman of Great Lakes Inland Waterway Inc., says a proposed canal linking Lake Erie with the Ohio River has not received the support it deserves through various campaigns over a period of 50 years.

U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. says he supports the basic framework of President Reagan's tax reform proposal, but says it must contain some tax increases to reduce the deficit and chip away at the national debt, or the U.S. will be headed for a depression. 

1975: A 17-year-old East Side youth is in critical condition in St. Elizabeth Hospital with burns suffered when gasoline vapors ignited at John White School..  Investigators say the fire was arson. 

Warren police charge a 32-year-old Ravenna man and a 16-year-old Warren youth in the robbery-murder of Joseph Zarnick, 61, of Youngstown. 

Ruth Delores Grantz, 7, a student at Kyser Elementary School in Champion, dies in Trumbull Memorial Hospital of injuries suffered in an apparent beating. 

1950:  An estimated 30,000 people line Federal Street in Downtown Youngstown as the city honors its war dead with a Memorial Day parade. 

More than 500 clergy and laity attend a Mass by Bishop Emmet M. Walsh at St. Columba Cathedral, marking the 75th anniversary of the Ursuline Order.