Gertrude “Trudy” E. Durgans, age 83, died Wednesday, Dec. 2, at Friends Care Community in Yellow Springs. She was born Dec. 7, 1925, in Chicago, Ill., the daughter of the late William Henry Sr., and Cleola Rodgers Durgans.

Playing mostly for the fun of the game in their season opener on Friday, Dec. 4, the Bulldog boys basketball team mowed down the Mechanicsburg Indians 61–48. The home crowd cheered on this year’s team, which includes eight seniors, six of them returning, whose bulk and spirit promise a competitive and entertaining winter on the court.

In many classic children’s stories, seemingly common and mundane entrances disguise the most fantastical places. For Alice, the gateway to Wonderland was through a rabbit hole, while the four Pevensie siblings discovered the bewitching world of Narnia through an old wardrobe. The driveway to Erik and Deirdre Owen’s home is no different. Looking (and feeling) […]

More must be done to address issues in the special education program in the Yellow Springs schools, especially in the upper levels, according to approximately 10 parents who came to a special meeting held on Wednesday, Dec. 2. The meeting was the second convened by school administrators to address the results of the special education parent survey the district conducted last summer.

For each of the several hundred people who attended her memorial service at Bryan Community Center on Saturday, Dec. 5, Deborah Benning meant something unique. But in all her roles as mother, step-mother, partner, friend, Village Council clerk and long-time village resident, she was consistently seen as a supportive leader and a touchstone others could depend on. She served in that way for family and friends as well as for the Village of Yellow Springs, and her death on Nov. 24 is as much a part of local history as the legacy of her family as an early part of the village’s African American community.

The Antioch College Board Pro Tempore announced on Wednesday, Dec. 9, the appointment of Matthew Derr as the college’s interim president. Derr was the chief transition officer who helped lead the two-year effort to win the college’s independence from Antioch University this past summer.

The second stage of the community visioning process kicks off this Saturday morning, Dec. 12, at 10 a.m. in the Yellow Springs High School gym, and it is not a meeting to miss, according to organizers. The 855 ideas generated by community members in the first round of public workshops stand sorted into 14 topic categories. Now, villagers and Miami Township residents are invited to help discern goals from these raw ideas that everyone can agree to move forward with.

Yellow Springs High School students Will Turner and Sady Sparks, left, cut down the last tree of the School Forest camp-out weekend for Sady’s mom, Sarah Strong, on Sunday, Dec. 6. This year’s foresters sold nearly 140 5–9-foot scotch pines and grossed over $4,000, more than the group has ever made on the weekend. The School Forest program started raising evergreen saplings in the spring of 1947 and began selling Christmas trees to the community in the winter of 1948.