Billy’s Law

Re-Introduced In Congress

Congressman Chris Murphy (left) and Texas Congressman Ted Poe (right) have joined forces to co-sponsor “Billy’s Law”. Murphy said the collaboration on missing person legislation is unusual, as the two men, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, rarely agree on any issue. Janice Smolinski is pictured in the middle. Photo by John Murray

   Last year’s effort to pass Billy’s Law flew through the House of Representatives, but like hundreds of other bills, was gummed up in the United States Senate. Time expired on the bill when the calendar year changed, forcing legislators to re-introduce it in 2011.

Into The Future

Story and Photographs By John Murray

   It’s exactly the sort of deal that many in Waterbury imagined when John Rowland took an influential post at the Waterbury Chamber of Commerce two years ago, and was declared the “economic czar” of Waterbury. Rowland was a three-term Congressman and had been governor of Connecticut for nine years, so clearly the man had contacts in high places.

The River

Column By John Murray

Colored dyes stained rivers throughout the industrial Northeast. By Lynn Cherry

   It was the best day the Naugtauck River has experienced in 100 years. The river received so much attention on February 24th that one could imagine her embarrassed, and blushing red for old time sake. This blush, however, was triggered by admirers gushing at her beauty, not from the red dyes that were pumped into her as industrial waste into a glorified toilet.

Born Again

Story and Photographs
By John Murray

   Back in the 1960s Uniroyal launched an international marketing campaign that asserted Naugahyde was obtained from the skin of an animal called a Nauga. The company, based in Naugatuck, proclaimed that a Nauga shed its skin multiple times a year, so it didn’t have to be slaughtered to collect its hide. The ads stated the Nauga was a squat, horned monster from the jungles of Sumatra, and every customer who purchased a Naugahyde couch from Uniroyal received a small Nauga doll.

   It was brilliant marketing - fun, humorous and effective.

All Aboard?

Story By Chelsea Murray

    Like a fresh Vidalia onion the train fiasco in Waterbury reveals a complexity of layers. In Waterbury, as always, there is more to an issue than meets the eye.

Survivor Leads Way

By Debbie Mitchell McCormack

Pearl Harbor

Did FDR Use It AS Bait?

Column By Jim Szynkiewicz

   Sixty nine years have passed since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Was this a horrendous failure of the Roosevelt administration, or a brilliant political maneuver? The passage of time has not overcome the mystery of that fateful event. I belong to the smaller category of people who believe that FDR masterfully used Pearl Harbor as bait to draw the  Japanese into a military confrontation and justify America’s entry into a war against the Axis Powers. Not everybody in FDR’s administration had been asleep on the dawn of December 7th 1941.

The Search

Column By John Murray

Billy Smolinski was murdered six years ago. The effort to crack the case involves local, state and federal police. The Smolinski Family is now working closely with private investigator Todd Lovejoy, pictured above, tracking down leads.

   Six years is a long time to hold your breath.

The Storyteller

Column By John Murray

Dave Howard after a book talk at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia

   One day before Abraham Lincoln was murdered at the Ford Theater in Washington D.C., a soldier from the Union Army entered the statehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, and swiped one of the 14 original copies of the Bill of Rights. Robert E. Lee had already surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, but word traveled slow, and members of General Sherman’s army continued to plunder the South.