Ledger Looking Back 25 Years: 9/3/1997

September 3, 1997

Work continued on installation and readying the new telecommunications equipment needed to eliminate long-distance charges on calls between customers in Butte, Anaconda, Opportunity, Warm Springs, and Whitehall. As of the middle of September, calls between these communities would be completed as local calls. There would no longer be a need to dial 1-406 before the phone number.

Five new teachers joined the hundreds of students during the first week of school in Whitehall. New to Whitehall were: Rod Stout, a new high school English/history teacher; Teresa Connelly, a high school home economics teacher; Jennifer Buchmann, the new band director; and Luann Jablonski and Christine Turman, both fourth-grade teachers.

New recycling bins called Bin-nies were set up at TG’s IGA in Whitehall and the Cardwell Store. The Bin-nies were part of the Headwaters Cooperative Recycling Project, a nine-county recycling project that included Jefferson County. The Bin-nies in Whitehall provided locations to recycle aluminum, steel, and newspapers.

Whitehall Volunteer of the Week was Carey Gray, the founder of Whitehall’s Coats for Kids program. Coats for Kids was in its fifth year. Carey was also active in the Whitehall Food Pantry, the Paul Clark Home project in Butte, and she helped Santa answer letters at Christmas.