A Look Back, May 15

50 Years Ago

■Miss Franklin County became Miss Hampshire County when the annual Miss Hampshire County Scholarship Pageant was held Saturday night at Northampton High School. Deborah Dowling, 22, of 134 North St., who just completed a year as Miss Franklin County, captured the local title and will represent Hampshire County in the Miss Massachusetts contest in Attleboro at the end of June.

■The Norwottuck District of the Great Trails Council, Boy Scouts of America, paid tribute to two leaders, David Pool and J.A.N. Lee, who are leaving the district, at a banquet in their honor at the World War II Veterans Club.

25 Years Ago

■The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds celebrated its 75th anniversary Wednesday with a ceremony that drew several hundred veterans, VA officials and staff to the hospital’s campus in Leeds. The ceremony was held in front of the center’s main building.

■Amherst Regional High School Principal Scott Goldman has scrapped a controversial proposal to station an armed police officer in the school next fall. “Public support for the proposal has been virtually absent,” Goldman wrote in a letter to school officials and staff, “while voices opposing the proposal have been persistent, and in some cases, moving and compelling.”

10 Years Ago

■The latest agricultural census shows an increase in the number of farms and acres farmed in Hampshire and Franklin counties, as well as a boom in farm product sales in Hampshire County. Vegetable, potato and melon farms were among the types of farms that were growing, while the number of dairy farms and tobacco farms tumbled.

■The City of Northampton is the first in the United States to receive a 5-STAR rating in sustainability, recognizing its efforts in categories including the environment, education and economy. Northampton Director of Planning and Sustainability Wayne Feiden said the rating system is a “very rigorous process” and “it shows us how we are doing against other communities.”