Wabash resident Jennifer McSpadden chats with a history buff during an author's fair in December at the Indiana Historical Society. Her book, "A Leaf of Voices," is available on Amazon.com and the Barnes & Noble website, as well as at the Wabash County Historical Museum. Photo provided

By Joseph Slacian

As a volunteer at the Wabash County Historical Museum several years ago, Jennifer McSpadden was given a task to do.

“I had a Civil War project that was to find a list of all the people who died from Wabash County, because there’s no memorial anywhere,” she said. “There’s a little memorial in Center Grove Cemetery where they’ve got this stone column, and on each side of the four-sided column, they’ve got 10 names on each side. It’s for those who were unreturned from the area, which includes a lot of people from Huntington.”

By The Paper Staff

The Wabash County Historical Society will meet Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Wabash County Historical Museum.

Sarah Siders will be presenting the program, “Wabash County Connections to the Miami Indians.”

The program is free and open to the public.

Those attending should enter through the doors from the east parking lot.

A North Manchester man was arrested Wednesday night on three counts of child molestation.

By Joseph Slacian

Ever since he was a foreign exchange student at Northfield High School in 1969-70, Ernie Cortabarria made sure to contact his host mother, Mary Schenkel, on her birthday.

This year, to celebrate Mrs. Schenkel’s 86th birthday, Cortabarria gave her a very special present. He and his family – wife, Mariatiela, son, Santiago, and daughter, Matilde – spent four days in Wabash as part of a trip to the United States from their native Uruguay.

On Friday morning, Cortabarria and his family toured Northfield High School. They were joined by Ron Schenkel, who was a Northfield student during Cortabarria’s visit 45 years ago, Tim Grossman, who lived down the road to the Schenkels and befriended Cortabarria, and NHS principal Mike Keaffaber, who is Schenkel’s brother-in-law.

by Eric Stearley

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Harvey Industries following the layoff of 143 workers on Dec. 31. The case was filed with the United States District Court’s Northern Indiana district on Jan. 16.

On Jan. 2, Harvey Industries announced the layoff of two-thirds of its employees due to “unforeseeable business circumstances,” namely the loss of two large contracts with General Motors and Modine, two of the company’s largest clients.

The lawsuit cites Harvey Industries’ failure to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires companies to give workers 60 days notice of an impending mass layoff or plant closing. The plaintiffs, represented by Philip J. Gibbons Jr. of Gibbons Legal Group, P.C., based in Indianapolis, are seeking damages in the amount of 60 days’ pay and Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) benefits, totaling more than $1 million.

By Joseph Slacian

Wabash County Jail was below its capacity of 72 inmates just 13 days in 2014, Sheriff Bob Land reported to the Wabash County Commissioners on Monday morning.

The figures were part of a year-end wrap-up Land presented to both Commissioners and the Wabash County Council on Monday.

By Joseph Slacian

A Liberty Township resident complained to Wabash County Commissioners on Jan. 20 about what he perceives to be a problem with snow removal by the Wabash County Highway Department.

The resident, Dwight Walls, told commissioners that the problem began last January, and continued again this winter.

By Emma Rausch

On Jan. 22, Patrick Sullivan announced his resignation during the Celebration of Progress hosted by Wabash Marketplace, Inc. Jason Callahan, committee president and Wabash City Schools superintendent, presented Sullivan with a plaque that commemorated his efforts as executive director.

Prior to his resignation, Sullivan announced the executive report, stating that, during the 2014 term, the committee was successful in working on some of the large-scale Stellar Communities projects, including Veteran’s Plaza and installation of Gateway Billboards. The committee also secured a $96,000 grant from Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs, which will assist in the development of future projects.

During his recognition speech to Sullivan, Callahan said that he had overheard a conversation someone saying, “Patrick didn’t know anything about historic preservation or Wabash Marketplace, and yet he made it look easy.”