21 WFMJ  archives / Jan. 26, 1983 | WFMJ-TV broadcast three live sessions during NBC’s “Today” show on the local reaction to President Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union address 43 years ago. “Today” co-host Jane Pauley interviewed U.S. Rep. Lyle Williams, R-17th, and others – union members and officials, businessmen and other politicians -- at Stambaugh Stadium. She noted that Youngstown’s unemployment rate of 20 percent was the highest in the nation.

January 24

2001: Jim Spencer, the new president of Delphi Packard Electric Systems, says the company is now providing products to all but one of the top 20 automakers while also pushing harder for sales in telecommunications and other industries. 

The city of Youngstown is proposing a no-interest $2 million loan to Metropolitan National Realty Holdings for the renovation of the former McCrory store building adjacent to Metropolitan Bank. The city hopes the renovation will bring more people downtown. 

Youngstown State University President Dr. David Sweet says there won't be a national search for a new head football coach to replace OSU's new coach, Jim Tressel, because the national signing date for high school recruits is fast approaching. 

 

1986: The United Steelworkers of America files an appeal in U.S. District Court seeking to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Bankruptcy Judge William T. Bodoh that allows the sale of the Van Huffel Tube Corp. in Warren. 

Marcell Driver, 17, drops his appeal of an OHSAA ruling that he was ineligible to play basketball at Boardman High School. Coach Alan Burns told the OHSAA that the boy and his mother have moved back to Detroit. 

A 16-year-old cat has been left a $10,000 trust fund in the $220,000 estate of the late Ruth Partridge, 77, a 37-year teacher at Harding High School. The will requires that the cat live out its days in a loving and dog- and child-free home. Miss Partridge's home at 1409 Genesee Ave. N.E. was left to the North-Mar Missionary Alliance Church, with other bequests going to the Hiram College English Department and the Trumbull Animal Welfare League. 

 

1976: A 14-year-old Hayes Junior High girl is abducted from a bus stop by three men and turned over to a fourth man, who told them to take her back because they kidnapped the wrong person. She was dropped off unharmed on Liberty Road. 

Officials at General Motors Corp.'s Lordstown plant announced that the passenger-car assembly line that produces the Chevrolet Vega and Pontiac Astre will shut down for the second week of February.

Paul Robeson, who enchanted concert audiences with his rich bass voice and shocked many with his ties to Russia, dies in Philadelphia at the age of 77 after suffering a stroke. 

 

1951: The Senate Kefauver crime investigation committee meeting in Cleveland says it may call Youngstown racketeers when it moves on to a probe of Detroit's Purple Gang. 

Five people escape with their lives when the car they were riding in is struck by a Pennsylvania Railroad train at the West Avenue crossing. The driver was Simeon S. Booker, pastor of Third Baptist Church. 

The Western Hemisphere's first jet transport plane flies from Toronto to Miami via Tampa in three hours and 31 minutes, less than half the time of other commercial airliners.