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www.SunCommunityNews.com
In SPORTS | pg. 15
Local ladies named all stars First Enterprise-Journal girls team
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In opinion | pg. 6
Medicaid disbursement There is no quick fix in sight
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In other | pg. 2
North Creek Earth Day Youth Committee to host event
North Creek paramedics travel to Iraq
By Mike Corey
news@suncommunitynews.com
NORTH CREEK — Spending two weeks in war zone is not like serving as a paramedic in North Creek. Just ask Joe Connelly and Thomas Ordway Jr., two North Creek residents who recently returned from Iraq. For over five months, the Iraqi military, with the backing of U.S.-led coalition military forces, has been battling the Islamic State in Mosul, the nation’s second largest city. Connelly works fulltime as a paramedic with the Johnsburg and Newcomb rescue squads; Ordway, with the Glens Falls Fire Department. Both have seen the carnage firsthand. The pair worked under the protection of Iraqi special forces units at scattered Trauma Stabilization Points, or triage areas designed to stabilize wounded soldiers (and sometimes civilians) before dispatching them to hospitals as far as an hour away. The job entailed placing tourniquets, packing wounds, establishing IVs and administering painkillers.
“War is different. It has all the chaos of a major natural disaster, but with much greater danger from people who are determined to kill you.”
—Joe Connelly
Joe Connelly traveled to Mosul, Iraq in February with NYC Medics, a nonprofit that dispatches medical professionals to disaster areas and warzones. Connelly, left, is pictured here bringing in a wounded soldier on a stretcher. Photo provided
>> See MEDICS | pg. 5
MinervaÕ sÊ 200thÊ anniversaryÊ laudedÊ atÊ county Town has full spate of events planned for 200th birthday By Pete DeMola
pete@suncommunitynews.com
ELIZABETHTOWN — The Old County Courthouse was speckled with glittery green novelty hats on Monday. No, it wasn’t a belated St. Patrick’s Day celebration, but rather to honor the most recent Essex County town to cross the 200-year finish line. Minerva reached the milestone last month.
A delegation of Minerva residents attended the brief ceremony ahead of the Essex County Board of Supervisors’ full board meeting, including four former supervisors and the town’s historian. “Contrary to what people believe, Minerva is not in Warren County — it’s in Essex County,” quipped County Manager Dan Palmer, himself a Minerva resident and former supervisor. The town was established when it split off from Schroon on March 7, 1817, forming a strange polygon shape. The first town meeting was held at a schoolhouse in Schroon, where attendees resolved to divvy up goods between the two to ensure the poor in each community received some
degree of support. Town Historian Teresa Brannon Haley gave lawmakers a refresher course on the town that holds its Irish roots close to its heart. Despite some well-established facts, much of the town’s history is cloaked in mystery, including the origins of its name. One account says the first supervisor named the settlement after Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom. A second tale says the town was named after the first woman who walked by a town meeting, and a third account stems from a resident who reportedly knocked on a door to find the female occupant was named Minerva. >> See 200TH | pg. 5