Last Friday, August 12th, members of the Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission met in the state capitol building to select three finalists from among the eight nominees for induction this cycle to the Nebraska Hall of Fame. The meeting followed three public hearings regarding the nominees held in the state’s three congressional districts last month. This induction cycle, Howard County’s native son, Grover Cleveland Alexander, joined a field of seven other nominees up for the honor: Elzada Urseba Clover, botanist; the Reverend Hiram Hisanori Kano, Japanese-American priest; Ernst H. Herminghaus, landscape artist; Calvin Chapman, supporter of the Nebraska City branch of the Underground Railroad; Howard Hanson, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and musician from Wahoo; Emma Louise Pound, linguist and folklorist; and Malcolm X, human rights activist. Nebraska Hall of Fame Commission Chairman Dr. Ron Hull called the meeting to order at 2:00 in the afternoon before explaining the procedure of the commissioners.

The Howard County Board of Commissioners tackled a full agenda during their regular meeting on Tuesday, August 9th. Some familiar topics and a number of new ones came before the commissioners in a meeting that stretched well into the afternoon.

When St. Paul Elementary School’s longtime guidance counselor Brenda Starkey walked out of school and into retirement last May, she thought that her career in education had come to an end. Little did Brenda know, her retirement would be short-lived. Last Monday night, during the St. Paul Board of Education’s August meeting, members of the board approved a contract to hire Starkey as a parttime elementary guidance counselor, the same position that she had held for the past twenty-four years.

The City of St. Paul is no stranger to purchasing shop buildings, and the municipality’s collection of such structures may possibly grow following a vote by city leaders earlier this month. Last Monday night, at the tail end of the St. Paul City Council’s first meeting of the month of August, members of the council came out of executive session and voted unanimously to offer Howard County $115,000 for the county-owned building located on the northeast corner of Fifth and Elm streets in St. Paul.

A new business is celebrating a month of operation in the St. Paul area this August. In July, Rock Hard Blessings moved into the old St. Paul Development Corporation office at 602 Howard Avenue after the development corporation moved its offices into the St. Paul Civic Center. “On July 1st, we opened our doors,” said Jessica Murphy, who owns and operates the business with support from her husband, Levi Walz. So far, Murphy said, business had been going “absolutely wonderful,” with awareness largely having been spread by word of mouth. “People are just welcoming,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of people come in, and books are filling up with scheduling and clients coming in for sound therapy.”