21 WFMJ archives / March 6, 1973 | “This Land is Your Land” was the theme of the Austintown Kiwanis Club’s 53rd annual minstrel show at Austintown Fitch High 51 years ago. Cast members included, front from left, Gene Shonce, Dick Lightbody, E. Ray Davis, Jim Shepherd, and Tom Krake; back, Sam Stambaugh, Harold Lemke, Allen Bohr, and Don Wentz.  Davis was the interlocutor.

March 7 

1999: Sudan Tave Zelman is named Ohio's 34th superintendent of public instruction, the first woman to hold the state's top educational post. Unfortunately, she says, Ohio has become more partisan than most states in its approach to the challenges facing public education. 

As part of its monthly look back at a decade in the 20th Century, The Vindicator recounts some of the events in the Valley between 1911 and 1920: George Wick's loss on the Titanic, the 1913 flood, the 1916 riots in East Youngstown (Campbell), and Carnegie Steel's 1917 building of employee housing in McDonald.

The city of Warren has a brother-sister duo of sergeants in its Police Department. Sgt. Cathy Giovannone took the Civil Service test in 1985 at the urging of her brother, Sgt. Joseph O'Grady, but she was hired before he was, giving her seniority. 

1984: Dennis Tyler, president of the Youngstown Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 28, warns that a strike is possible if City Council does not recall six laid-off police officers. 

Police Chief Randall Wellington says he will seek to padlock places that are being used for illegal gambling.

A 39-year-old former Youngstown man is arrested 10 years after escaping from Youngstown City Jail after being stopped by a Bratenahl police officer for driving with a license plate that was dangling by one bolt. He had been jailed on a charge of burglary.   

1974: A strike by 2,800 members of the United Auto Workers at the Fisher Body fabricating plant forces a shutdown of the Vega assembly line in Lordstown. 

Youngstown City Engineer Edmund J. Salata tells the Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce early bird breakfast that some Youngstown bridges will be closed and others posted for lower limits because of deterioration. 

Amil Dinsio, 36, of Mill Creek Blvd., is sentenced to two consecutive 10-year terms in federal prison on convictions stemming from the $430,000 burglary of the Lordstown Branch of the Second National Bank of Warren. 

President Richard Nixon orders the Justice Department to draft legislation intended to strip away one of the news media's principal shields against libel suits by public officials or public figures. 

1949: General Fireproofing Co. reports a 1948 profit of $3.8 million, compared with $3.1 million in 1947 and $1.6 million in 1946.

The Rev. Charles French of Toledo is named minister of Warren's First Baptist Church. 

On stage at the Palace in Youngstown, The Ink Spots, stars of stage, screen and radio.