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Ross Gallabrese: Impacting the community

This is a special time for our area. The annual Greek Food Festival held at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church has just completed its three-day run, the city is preparing for this coming week's Dean Martin Festival and communities through the Tri-State Area — and the rest of the United States — are putting the final touches on their Fourth of July celebrations. There are some pretty interesting numbers associated with all three of those events. The Greek festival, for instance, just celebrated its 40th anniversary. The Dean Martin Festival will be returning for its 30th ...

Checking In on the Men Who Always Show Up

Every community has them. They are the men who show up. They coach the little league team after work. They help a neighbor with a home repair. They volunteer at their church. They work long hours to provide for their families. They care for aging parents. They support their children through challenges. They lead businesses, organizations and communities. They are fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, veterans, first responders, teachers, miners, construction workers, healthcare professionals and caregivers. They are often the people others turn to when something goes wrong, but how often ...

Ross Gallabrese: Dates To Remember

The recent string of dry and warm weather we have experienced no doubt has many area residents looking ahead to a summer full of activities and the chance to relax and enjoy time with family and friends. Before we get to that point, though, there are a couple of important anniversaries that need to be noted this weekend. Both have touched the lives of everyone across the region, one happening at the international level and one at the local level. Saturday is the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion, which marked the beginning of the end of World War II. With that landing that took ...

An interesting report

It doesn't happen all that often in our area, but the sad fact is that in 2025, 15,367 children were reported missing in Ohio. That's the number Attorney General David Yost reported in his annual Missing Children Clearinghouse report. The good news to come out of the report, Yost explained, is that 97.8 percent of those children — 15,024 — were recovered by the end of the year. While that's an impressive number, the statistics show that six of the children who had been reported missing were found dead. "My heart weighs heavy over those still unaccounted for," Yost said in ...

Getting close to summer

The temperatures residents of the Tri-State Area had a chance to experience on Monday and Tuesday are a sure sign of what we can expect to see during the next several months. Those numbers that hovered right around 90 served as reminders that summer is almost here. That's something to think about as we prepare to commemorate Memorial Day. Depending on how you look at it, Memorial Day is an important marker for the start of the summer season. But whether you believe summer starts Monday, or one week from Monday — June 1 — which is when meteorological summer will begin — or ...

Inspiration from Hurdle

If the only thing that you know about Clint Hurdle is that he served as manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates for nine years, you are only seeing one part of a man who shares words of wisdom and inspirational stories with thousands of people each day. Hurdle, who was the manager of the Pirates from 2010 through 2019, has been sending those messages since 2009. His book, "Hurdle-isms: Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball," is an extension of that, and offers useful insights into sports and life. He shared that message — and discussed what he described as his Christian obstacle ...