"Pages of history" features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.
June 10, 2004, The News Journal
Kindergarten all-day plan put on hold in Delaware
A bill that would require full-day kindergarten statewide by the opening bell of the 2008 school year fizzled Wednesday when the House Education Committee tabled it.
But Rep. Melanie L. George, D-Bear, said there is committee support for the program and she is confident the General Assembly will still meet Gov. Ruth Ann Minner’s call to make it available to students within four years….
While most of the state’s 19 school districts operate all-day kindergarten on a pilot basis, only two have full-day programs districtwide and a third is planning to start in the fall.
Committee members voted to put House Bill 444 on hold because they were concerned about its effects on already tight school budgets and they wanted results of studies that will be included as part of the $1 million the Joint Finance Committee is recommending in the 2005 budget.
“I take exception with anyone who says this is a political move on my part,” said Rep. Nancy Wagner, R-Dover North, a teacher and now coordinator of Capital School District’s tech-prep program. “I know the effects of unfunded mandates on local school districts … I don’t doubt the value of full-day kindergarten, but what would a school have to give up?”
Minner sought the $1 million now in the budget recommendation….
June 11, 1973, Evening Journal
Wilmington shopping mall contract canceled
The contract calling for development of a giant retail shopping center in downtown Wilmington was canceled today and city planners went back to the drawing boards.
Mayor Thomas C. Maloney called an emergency meeting on Downtown Wilmington, Inc., this morning, and disclosed afterward that the agency had voted to cancel the four-year-old contract with Pan American Development Corp.
He said ... Pan American had been unable to deliver on its proposals to develop the southern section of the Wilmington Civic Center as a regional shopping center.
Periodically, representatives of Pan American and of Downtown Wilmington had issued statements claiming major tenants had been lined up for the two department stores supposed to have been the keystones of the center. ...
Downtown Wilmington was handed the job of developing the commercial section of the Civic Center. It is a joint venture of the city and the Greater Wilmington Development Council.
Maloney said he still is confident that the area, bounded by 4th, King, 8th, and Walnut streets, can be developed. ...
Recent development news:A $60 million education, health care and retail hub begins construction in Seaford
June 13, 2016, The News Journal
50 massacred in Orlando; Rehoboth LGBTQ community holds vigil for victims
Hours after a gunman killed 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, members of Delaware’s LGBTQ community gathered in Rehoboth Beach to grieve, pray and share their love….
About a hundred people comforted one another during an evening vigil hosted by CAMP Rehoboth Community Center, a nonprofit gay and lesbian community service organization on Baltimore Avenue….
Some struggled to understand how, in 2016, people in the LGBTQ community could be gunned down in a club many frequent to celebrate their sexuality. ...
In addition to the dead, another 53 were wounded in the attack at Pulse Orlando. ...
The attack is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
The shooter, who was killed by police, has been identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida….
June 14, 1967, Evening Journal
Editor's note: This archival story uses language that was common at the time.
Certain approval seen on Marshall for Supreme Court
President Johnson’s appointment of Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court — the first Negro so named — appears certain to be confirmed when the Senate gets to it.
Johnson’s announcement yesterday that he is nominating Marshall, 58, to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark surprised neither the solicitor general’s critics nor his supporters.
Civil rights leaders around the nation today generally applauded the appointment and praised Johnson for making it. ...
Catch up on history:Three Mile Island, Exxon Valdez oil spill: News Journal archives, week of March 24
June 15, 1940, Wilmington Morning News
French retreat; Nazis expect collapse
The main armies of France fell back June 14 far below abandoned, German-invaded Paris in a retreat that may be their last movement of the war.
Other forces far to the east were declared to have thrown back, with “tremendous losses,” a German head-on attack against the Maginot Line.
All but broken under the mightiest assault ever thrown against men, the Poilus who fought the main battle of France counter-attacked with a desperate fury as they retired under the Nazi pressure. ...
Paris, from which the government long since had fled, was gone – occupied by Germans and ringed by their armored units and infantrymen.
Tours, the new emergency seat of the ministers from which Premier Reynaud sent a “last appeal” to President Roosevelt last night for American aid, was being abandoned for yet another refuge – presumably the far southern seaport of Bordeaux. ...
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
