Stories from Thursday, October 22, 2009

Both campuses of the Piggott School District were evacuated late Wednesday morning, after a custodian discovered a threat on the wall of a restroom at the high school. Authorities were summoned as students and staff moved to the football field, but nothing was found during a subsequent search of the building...

Rector's James W. Graves Head Start's PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions and Support) Celebration Day was held Friday, Sept 25. Children were rewarded for following classroom rules and making good choices for the month of September with special activities that included painting the storage shed (and themselves) and were given prizes and treats. ...

Former Clay County Sheriff Robert Leon Beaton Sr. died Thursday, Oct. 15, at Greene Acres Nursing Home at age 89. He was born Nov. 14, 1919, on Panther Island in the Bard community. Raised at Paragould, he was a 1938 graduate of Paragould High School and completed one year at Notre Dame University. ...

For the past few weeks, persons traveling along Highway 90 just north of Rector have most likely seen a unique graveyard from the roadway. The Halloween display features several graves complete with partially buried occupants along with ghosts hanging down from the limbs of the surrounding trees...

Doyne Reed Ward was born April 21, 1927, at Bee Branch, to the late Sam and Vannie Ward. He was a World War II Navy veteran having served on the U.S.S. Columbia. He was a member of the Blooming Grove Missionary Baptist Church, where he served as a deacon. He loved to deer hunt, coon hunt, crappie fish and watch his great-grandchildren play ball. He had one major fault -- he was a Chicago Cubs fan...

The Rector High School Helping Hands Foundation will present a benefit showing of The River Within at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, at the First United Methodist Church fellowship hall. Tickets for movie are free, but those who attend must have a ticket in hand. Donations will be accepted for the Helping Hands Foundation, which assists disadvantaged students in the Rector school district...

Help can come from the most unexpected places. Near the end of the 2008-09 school year, Marmaduke superintendent Tim Gardner applied for grants to allow the district to remodel the elementary library. During the summer break between the last school year and the current year, Gardner learned the school's application had been denied...

Jack Partridge of Paradise Valley, Ariz., brother of Nancy Kemp of Rector, was on the Arkansas State University campus Monday and Tuesday of this week as part of the second annual Journalism Alumni Speakers series...

While Halloween is a time when many local youths and those who are young-at-heart dress up as an assortment of ghouls, ghosts and other creatures designed to create a scary atmosphere, one group of students is setting out to face a truly frightening reality...