1. Bean Blossom landmark closes after 126 years
Around spring 2017, the Dollar General corporation expects to open a new store at the former location of McDonald’s ShopWorth.
The former family-owned grocery story had operated continuously at that spot in Bean Blossom for 126 years before owner Jake Singh closed it in February. Singh began buying the property, store and inventory on contract from the McDonald family in 2014 and sold the property to Standard Morgantown LLC in September.
The new Dollar General will have staples such as milk, eggs and bread, as well as packaged, refrigerated and frozen foods, snacks, health and beauty items, cleaning supplies, basic apparel, housewares and seasonal items.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Watching the store transform into something else was bittersweet for McDonald family member Diana Biddle, who grew up at the store which her father, Jack, rarely left. From birthday parties to prom, almost every McDonald family photo was set at the store.
Yet, looking into the emptiness of the building that was as much at the center of her life as it was Bean Blossom’s, she saw more than the past.
“It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would,” Biddle said. “Because I could see — I could see change. I could see the positive effects of what’s gonna be there.”
2. Nashville Utilities gets grant, loan for water work
By this time next year, Nashville Utilities water customers may be celebrating a year with fewer water outages and boil orders after repairs and other work are done to the town’s water delivery system.
Midyear, the town learned it had been OK’d for a $1.2 million low-interest loan through USDA Rural Development, and in December, it was given a $592,000 Community Development Block Grant from the Office of Community and Rural Affairs. That total is enough to cover the estimated $1.8 million cost of four projects.
Those projects — extending a water main on Freeman Ridge to the town’s system to provide another source of water, replacing about one-third of the meters throughout the system, demolishing an unneeded water tank and booster station at Kirts’ Garage and replacing the booster station in Schooner Valley — should make the water system more reliable.
Work must be done 18 months from when the grant letter is signed. The town council started taking some of those steps during its December meeting.
One project that isn’t funded yet is installing pressure-reducing valves at key points in the Nashville Utilities system. Those will help solve the problem of extremely high water pressure in some areas, according to an engineering firm which studied the system late last fall.
Problems have not been systematically addressed throughout the Nashville Utilities system since much of it was replaced in 1977, the engineering report said.
3. Man convicted, sentenced in murder of IU student
On Sept. 22, family and friends of Indiana University student Hannah Wilson gathered in Brown Circuit Court to look the man accused of her murder in the eyes.
“There’s a hole in my family that can never be filled,” Hannah’s mother, Robin Wilson, told Daniel Messel of Bloomington.
Wilson’s body was found in a vacant lot on Plum Creek Road in April 2015. The 22-year-old was days away from graduating from Indiana University when she disappeared after a night out with friends.
A jury convicted Messel of murder Aug. 10 after a seven-day trial and four-and-a-half hours of deliberation.
During the sentencing, he told the court and Wilson’s family and friends that he didn’t do it.
Judge Judith Stewart sentenced him to 80 years in prison on Sept. 22 — 60 years on the murder sentence and an additional 20 for being found to be a habitual offender.
After his conviction, Messel was charged with an unrelated 2012 attempted rape in Monroe County, using DNA collected during the Brown County murder investigation. He is currently in the maximum-security Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
4. Local man attacks student with hatchet
In February, a Nashville man made national news after he was accused of attacking a Brown County High School foreign exchange student with a hatchet downtown.
Dana Ericson, 60, has not yet gone to trial; his mental competency is still in question.
He is accused of hitting 18-year-old Yue “Z” Zhang in the back while she was taking pictures for a photography class.
He told police he was attempting “ethnic cleansing” and called himself a white supremacist.
Zhang was treated at Columbus Regional Hospital and was released that evening to her host family. She now attends college in New York.
In April, Ericson was found incompetent to stand trial and was committed to the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction. He was found competent in August and was moved back to the Brown County jail. However, in letters to the court, Ericson claims he is being over-medicated and is in need of therapy.
A hearing on his competency is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 17; currently, his jury trial is set for Feb. 15.
5. New superintendent returns home to work
In May, former assistant superintendent Laura Hammack was chosen to succeed eight-year superintendent David Shaffer as the leader of Brown County Schools.
Hammack had been working as assistant superintendent for Beech Grove Schools since July 2009; before that, she was assistant superintendent for Brown County, principal of Helmsburg Elementary and taught at Nashville Elementary.
Retired educators, parents and teachers expressed concern and dissatisfaction over the contract the school board offered her, which included a base salary of $125,000, plus a range of benefits such as annual performance stipends and a nearly $15,000 allowance for health insurance. The school board voted 4-0 to hire her, and she took over July 1.
One of her first promises was to give teachers and staff raises, using money from a referendum that voters approved in the spring. The board approved raises for teachers and for non-certified staff this year in two phases, with teachers being first.
The final phase of raises, for administrators, was approved in December, but that money will not come from the referendum, Hammack said.
Hammack also established a Strategic Planning Team that will help shape the direction of the district for the next five years, along with various other teams that focus on different aspects of the district, such as technology and marketing to potential students.
6. Big Woods Brewing Co. expands again and again
Big Woods will get even bigger in 2017 after announcing the purchase of 90 acres of Firecracker Hill in Nashville.
Company Chairman Jeff McCabe announced the purchase agreement in December. On the wooded hillside just outside town limits, the owners of Big Woods Brewing Co. and Hard Truth Distilling Co. plan to build a new distillery in a “park-like setting.” On a back parcel, they also plan to build a new packaging and storage facility.
A meeting about changing the zoning of the land is tentatively planned for late January.
At the December Nashville Town Council meeting, Town Attorney Andy Szakaly announced that all current owners of the Firecracker Hill parcels being bought had signed a document requesting to be annexed into town — not a waiver of annexation, but a request. The town council will talk about that Thursday, Jan. 19.
McCabe estimated the expansion would add 50 jobs to the about 200 employed among properties in Nashville and three other communities.
Four expansions of the Big Woods/Quaff ON! brands took place this year. In February, the company bought Three Pints Brewing Co. in Martinsville; in May, the owners opened a 7,500-square-foot restaurant in Speedway; and last week, they announced the development of a Big Woods at the Hillview Country Club in Franklin.
7. Chase ends in teenager’s death
A former volunteer Nashville police officer will be appearing in court next year to face misdemeanor charges after chasing a teenager on a motorcycle in Columbus; the teen died shortly after in a crash.
Leonard Burch resigned as a reserve officer for the Nashville Police Department a few days after the Aug. 29 crash that killed Xavier Scrogham, 18, of Hope.
Burch, 25, lives in Columbus. How he came to serve as a Nashville police reserve officer and why he had a marked Nashville Police Department car that night while off-duty in Columbus have not been explained.
He has been charged with false informing and reckless driving, which carry a 60- to 180-day jail sentence and fines up to $1,000.
Investigators determined that Scrogham was going no faster than 70 mph in the 55 mph zone when Burch attempted to pull him over. Burch had said the motorcycle had passed him going 120 mph before he began the pursuit.
Scrogham and Burch flew through stoplights and intersections on U.S. 31 on the east side of Columbus, with Burch’s car appearing to go airborne at times, the investigators said. Scrogham died after he missed a curve in a rural road and ran into a guide wire, which knocked off his helmet.
Investigators also reported finding evidence that Scrogham intended to find a police officer to try to outrun that night, including statements from his friends and a cellphone selfie with the phrase, “Drop the gear and watch them disappear.”
8. Historic Stone Head stolen, still missing
Sometime around Nov. 7, a yet-unknown vandal smashed and stole 165 years of Brown County history.
The Stone Head marker at the junction of State Road 135 South and Bellsville Pike was decapitated from its base with what may have been a sledgehammer. Carved by famed Brown County artist Henry Cross, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was the namesake of the Stone Head community.
“There are no new developments,” Sheriff Scott Southerland said last week. “I wish I had good news to report.”
This was at least the fourth time the marker had been taken — most recently in 1974 — but those times, it was still attached to the base which showed directions and distances to other communities.
“People have dressed it up in hats and coats and ties and that kind of thing over the years, but nothing that actually caused it physical destruction,” said County Historian Diana Biddle. “It’s just horribly, horribly upsetting that someone would do this.”
9. Community rallies to support vandalized church
On Nov. 13, the St. David’s Episcopal Church congregation arrived to find a swastika, an anti-gay slur and “Heil Trump” spray-painted on the building. But it wasn’t long before the community — even across the world — surrounded them with support.
Church members decided to leave the hate speech up for a couple weeks in order to start a conversation in the community, the Rev. Kelsey Hutto said.
On Nov. 30, more than 100 people showed up to help clean it off.
More than 300 messages of support arrived from all over the country and other continents. Hutto even appeared on CNN to discuss the incident. The church also hosted a community concert featuring the band Wholenotes to heal “the divide with love.”
“This message is greater than St. David’s,” Hutto said.
“When the community begins to believe that their neighbors truly are neighbors, and that you have more in common than you don’t, healing will happen.”
10. Andy Rogers sells The Seasons
When investors bought The Seasons Lodge and Convention Center from Andy Rogers in October, Rogers was selling the last of his large hotel holdings in Nashville.
The new owners are planning to restore and update Nashville’s oldest large hotel, said partner Kevin Ault.
Rogers opened the hotel as a Ramada Inn in 1970, and has been the owner since. He still owns several properties around the county and in Nashville. However, with the sale of The Ordinary Restaurant in 2013 and the Brown County Inn in May 2015, the Nashville House restaurant is his only remaining commercial operation.
Rogers said he has no plans to sell the Nashville House.
Ault said the partners, who also own Hotel Nashville, bought The Seasons in part to keep it locally owned. They plan to maintain the unique “Brown County” feel of the hotel.
Honorable mentions
Bill Monroe bluegrass festival celebrates 50 years, gets historical marker
The Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park and Campground received an Indiana historical marker in June, just as the 50th Bill Monroe Memorial Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival was in full swing.
Jim Peva, a friend of Monroe’s and the park historian, compared the annual festivals to a family gathering that reunites members of the bluegrass family from all over the world. “There’ll people that can’t even speak to each other because they can’t speak the same language, but they’re all playin’ the same music,” he said.
The marker commemorates not only Monroe’s contribution to music, but also the musical history that permeates Bean Blossom, a musical destination known around the world, said Ruth Reichmann, president of local historic preservation society Peaceful Valley Heritage.
Local musician Dan Harden said he cut his teeth playing at Bill Monroe’s. “That’s one of the best training grounds in the world,” he said.
“Bean Blossom — you couldn’t find a better place,” Harden said. “I hope it lasts forever.”
Community works to help homeless students
In February, around 60 people from all walks of life and backgrounds gathered to find ways to help homeless youth in Brown County.
But soon that group grew smaller and smaller, with fewer meetings occurring as the year went on.
Momentum built from a collection of stories published in the Brown County Democrat in February about students classified a homeless under the federal definition. Those include children living in shelters, in transitional housing, cars, campgrounds, motels or in the homes of relatives or friends.
At that time, Director of Student Services Al Kosinski said the official number of “significant cases” was about 20.
As of last week, he said that number was three.
Needs still remain, including creating an emergency shelter; establishing a formal communication network to inform people of agencies that can help; and a finding a place to send youth to receive those resources.
In early November, task force co-chairwoman Patricia Krahnke said she was waiting to hear back from the KIC-IT Kids In Crisis Intervention Team out of Johnson County on when they could come speak to the task force about what they do.
The next time the task force meets, it will also accept a donation from Becks Grove Christian Church. Children raised money for homeless students over the summer during vacation Bible school, Krahnke said.
A date for the next meeting has not been scheduled.
