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Bob Baird, local columnist for The Journal News in Rockland County, has worked for the newspaper since 1972, spending many of those years editing or commenting on the news in the county he calls home. From 1976 to 1984, Bob was news editor, managing editor and executive editor in Rockland. During that time, the newspaper was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and twice won The Associated Press Managing Editors Association’s national community service award.
Bob had been honored for his editorials by the New York State Bar Association, for his columns by the New York State Associated Press Association and for his feature writing in the Best of Gannett Competition. Bob also worked in a variety of editing roles in Westchester before becoming Rockland’s local columnist. As local columnist, he has been honored by the Rockland County Association for the Learning Disabled as its “Humanitarian of The Year�? in 2001 and by HOGAR in 2003 for his efforts to highlight the need for affordable housing in Rockland. In 2004, he received the County Executive Arts Award from the Arts Council of Rockland in the “Literary Artist�? category.
Bob, who now lives in Nanuet, raised his three grown children in Suffern, where he lived for almost 30 years. He devotes his spare time to making it possible for people with disabilities to enjoy the game he loves — baseball. In 1993 he was a founder of the Rockland County Challenger Little League, for children with a wide range of special needs. In 2002, he founded Touching Bases, a similar league for 200 adults with disabilities, which now has affiliates in Buffalo, N.Y. and Richmond, Va., with others in the planning stages.
E-mail Bob Baird at rbaird@lohud.com
Haverstraw has made it to the championship game of the Journal News Little League Tournament of Champions 22 times and Stony point has made 14 appearances.
But only twice, in the tournament’s first year in 1961 and again in 1964, have they faced each other.
It happens again tomorrow, when Stony Point’s Giants face the Haverstraw Cardinals [...]
Credit the Greater Haverstraw Chamber of commerce for a good idea—a good way to get village residents face-to-face with their mayors.
They’ve sensed that people may be reluctant to just waltz into their respective village halls to meet the mayor, so the chamber has come up with a more low-key, constituent-friendly approach.
Residents can have a buffet [...]
These are tough times for Rockland financially, so it’s natural enough for there to be concern about spending, especially dipping into money set aside for emergencies.
But it’s also tough to turn away veteran groups that ask for money for parades, Memorial Day or Veterans Day observances or to fund their efforts to reach out and [...]
You’ve gotta love young, fertile minds.
It was a pretty cool idea to use just about every desk students could get their hands on to spell out 2008 on the Nyack High School football field.
But from what we hear, they got more than the whole nine yards.
Seems someone came up with a way to create a [...]
The folks at Mirant, the energy company that has bedeviled north Rockland taxpayers with their tax challenges, is upset that Stony Point isn’t content to depend on New York State to set the standards for an environmental cleanup at the company’s Lovett generating station.
Tisk, Tisk.
Seems like the tight shoe taxpayers have been forced to wear [...]
Dr. Michael F. Kelly was the orthodontist for a generation of Suffern kids. Before his death April 29 at 71, Kelly treated the children of his first patients and watched his own children catch his passion for his profession.
Between 1998 and 2004, his daughters Kathleen and Christine and son, Michael W., not only joined his [...]
The other day the children of Sal and Catherine Marasa of New City hosted a surprise birthday party for their parents who are turning 80 and 75 respectively within the space of a few weeks.
Two of their daughters sifted through more than 56 years of the memories of their parents’ marriage and created a little [...]
Nyack recently paid more than $400,000 to install a new parking meter system in the village and now they’re boosting parking fines, more than doubling them from $12 to $25.
If you’re quick to pay—in two days or less—you get a discount to $15, still more than before.
It’s fine to boost fines and it’s fine to [...]
My Tuesday column was devoted to the problem of suicides from the Tappan Zee Bridge.
For a decade, the average number of suicides from the TZ has been three a year.
We’ve matched that in less than three weeks this month alone. We came close to surpassing it this week, but for the quick, heroic action of [...]
Holding off on revaluation of Rockland real estate parcels now, when the market is volatile, makes sense.
But there’s another, primary reason town supervisors hold off on updating the assessed values of properties for decades.
Doing an update to be sure all property owners are paying their fair share is a political nightmare, sometimes a political career-breaker.
Phil [...]
Copyright ©2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties in New York.
