Daily Five: Halloween Contest; Two Great Stories

1. Today should be sunny, with a high around 55, according to the National Weather Service. Tonight should be mostly clear, with a low around 37, according to the service.

2. Unfortunately, none of the photos submitted in Patch’s won the contest, but we still got many great photos and I thank everybody for participating.

And while it doesn't come with the $1,031 donation to your favorite charity that the grand prize did, Waterford Patch has picked a winner out of the photos we got on this website: 7-year-old Madelyn Knowles, who dressed as a “mummy girl.” Great attention to detail, and a creepy pose to boot. Congratulations Madelyn.

3. I’m not above giving my former employer, The Bulletin of Norwich, credit, and they’ve done two fantastic stories over the past week about Waterford. The first was done by sports editor Marc Allard, who wrote a terrific piece about Katie Schoepfer coming back to help coach the Waterford High School girls’ soccer team. Schoepfer, a Waterford High School graduate, plays in the Women’s Professional Soccer League.

And the second is a beautiful piece by Ray Hackett, about Arnold “Arnie” Holm . Hackett has been writing about Holm for nine years.

“Every story has a beginning and an end,” Hackett writes. “After nearly nine years, this one is coming to its end.”

4. Waterford Police Chief Murray Pendleton was given the J. Stannard Baker Award for Highway Safety last week, a national award given to just one other person, Senior Transporation Planner John Keller of the California Highway Patrol, this year. Pendleton was nominated by the Waterford Police Department Administrative Team, which is composed of all three police lieutenants (David Burton, Brett Mahoney and Jeff Nixon), Police Sgt. Stephen Bellos, Detective Sergeant Joseph DePasqualle, office coordinator Marlena Montgomery and Pendleton’s secretary, Kathy Kent.

Pendleton joined the Waterford Police Department in 1967, after serving as a military police officer in the U.S. Air Force, and has been the chief of the Waterford Police Department since November of 1991. 

5. On this date in 1965, 31-year-old Quaker Norman Morrison sets himself on fire in front of the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam War. And on this date in 1959, Charles Von Doren, a contestant on the game show Twenty One, admits to Congress that he got the answers to questions in the show in advance.

Quote of the Day

“I judge a restaurant by the bread and by the coffee.”

-Burt Lancaster

Trivia of the Day

On this date in 1983, Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law creating what holiday?

Yesterday’s Answer: The first president to live in the Executive Mansion, later renamed the White House, was John Adams.