Shepherdstown

Jim Price, Shepherdstown's official historian laureate, has self-published a book titled “And so I did stories of Shepherdstown.” It comes out Nov. 11. Jim Price, Shepherdstown's official historian laureate, finally finished his book after years of being encouraged to do so by his wife and son, now both deceased. “I promised my wife and son that I would write it one day, and now, I did,” he said of his book, titled “And So I Did Stories of Shepherdstown.” For years, Price, 82, because of his passion for storytelling, writing and researching local history about people, places and events, has been the resource residents, newcomers, amateur historians, genealogists and journalists turn to for obscure or long-forgotten bits of town history or lore.

As it has done for many years, the Shepherdstown (W.Va.)  Rotary Club provided free dictionaries and thesauruses to students at elementary schools in the northeastern half of Jefferson County, W.Va.: C.W. Shipley, North Jefferson, Shepherdstown and T.A. Lowery elementary schools. The books are purchased with club funds. The dictionaries are given to all third-graders at the schools, and the thesauruses are given to all the fifth-graders. This year, the books were distributed by teams of Rotary members during the third week of October.

The Irish Session Lads will be in concert Friday, Nov. 16, at 8 p.m. at Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church. Cleek Schrey anchors the band with fiddle and piano accompaniment, Sean McComiskey drives the rhythm with the button accordion and Stuart Jackson plays the Irish uilleann pipes. Tickets cost $18 for adults, $15 for seniors, $12 for members and $8 for children/students. Shepherd University students get in free with their Rambler ID.   For more information, call 304-263-2531 or go to http://smad.us/concerts .

In 1980, Shepherdstown opened its first public sewage treatment plant, and for the first time in the town's history, it stopped dumping raw sewage into the Potomac River. The town reached another milestone Friday, when it dedicated a new ultramodern, high-tech $10.1 million sewage treatment plant that doubles the capacity of the old plant to 800,000 gallons per day as well as meets new federal mandates to protect the Chesapeake Bay. West Virginia's eight easternmost counties are under the same mandate.

Audrey Rebecca Sloat Egle, 95, of Shepherdstown, W.Va., died Monday, Oct. 22, 2012, at Augusta Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville, Pa. There will be no visitation. A memorial service will be Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, at 11 a.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church in Shepherdstown. The Rev. G.T. Schramm will officiate. Burial will be in Elmwood Cemetery in Shepherdstown. Arrangements are by Melvin T. Strider Colonial Funeral Home in Charles Town, W.Va.

Devan Whitacre is the rare individual who gets to do for work what he loves. As director of Young Actors Theater Lab in Shepherdstown, he is responsible for leading workshops and preparing productions featuring child and teen actors in the Eastern Panhandle. This job is a dream for Whitacre, 23, who has been involved in theater for almost two decades. But the real joy for him is working with the kids. “They're geniuses. Their hopes and dreams haven't been squashed yet. They're willing to share, be bold,” Whitacre said.

Joe Manchin had help rebuffing repeated assertions Tuesday night by Republican John Raese that West Virginia's junior Democratic senator was on the wrong political team in Washington. Mountain Party candidate Bob Henry Baber said Raese's linking of Manchin to President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's positions on the regulation of the state's coal industry amounted to a “bald faced lie,” saying Manchin was “too close to coal.” In closing remarks, Baber said he sometimes felt as if he was the only Democrat on stage at Shepherd University's Reynolds Hall for the debate, which lasted about 75 minutes.

 John T. "Jack" Geary, 89, of Washington, D.C., and formerly of Shepherdstown, W.Va., died Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012, in Baltimore. Visitation will be Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at St. Agnes Chapel, Shepherdstown. A rosary will be prayed at 5:45 p.m. The Funeral Mass will be celebrated Thursday at 11 a.m. at the chapel. Burial will follow in Elmwood Cemetery. Arrangements are by Brown Funeral Home, Martinsburg, W.Va.

Ernest Fuss of Shepherdstown, W.Va., has mild arthritis in his hips and uses a cane, but that did not stop him from making the three-mile walk from Sharpsburg to Shepherdstown Sunday to commemorate the soldiers who died or were wounded in the Battle of Antietam. “It's important to remember how terrible war is,” said Fuss, 63. “People can't imagine what it's like.” The walk was meant to honor those who fought in the battle, and the residents of both towns who assisted wounded and dying soldiers from it. The day after the battle,  thousands of wounded soldiers walked or were carried from the battlefield to Shepherdstown to be treated in houses, according to Sue Kennedy, a member of the Shepherdstown 250 committee who assisted in publicizing the event Sunday.

Helen Price Foutz, 96, of Shepherdstown, W.Va., died  Monday, Sept. 10, 2012, at Canterbury Center in Shepherdstown. A graveside service will be at 11 a.m. Friday at Elmwood Cemetery in Shepherdstown with the Rev. Parker Hinzman officiating. Arrangements are by Brown Funeral Home in Martinsburg, W.Va.