Sarah Verdone, cherished wife of Tucker Viemeister and mother of Josephine and Louisa, died on March 11 at the age of 45.

Kathie (Trollinger, Duffey) Jackson died Thursday, March 4, at the Greene Oaks Nursing Home in Xenia. She was 58.

Marion S. Meigs, former Yellow Springs resident and retired U.S. Army major, died on Feb. 3 in Chase City, Va. after a battle with cancer. He was 81. Local friends knew Major Meigs as “Marty.”

Every year the local blues fest reminds community members about the roots of contemporary popular music. If gospel can spawn the blues, jazz, reggae and rap, then what can the art of the local community tell us about our own history and roots? African American Cross-Cultural Works and the Tecumseh Land Trust aim to find out when they put on the first ever Roots Fest on Saturday, March 27, at Bryan Community Center. It will be an evening of performances in which villagers use the arts to connect to and share their own stories.

For Jewell Graham, the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s were exhilarating times to live in the village. Having come to Yellow Springs as a young African-American woman with her new husband, Paul, who after graduating from Antioch had been offered a job at Vernay Laboratories, Graham was impressed with the quality of relationships between blacks and whites. Many businesses were integrated in a way unusual for the time, and a passion for the civil rights movement further brought people together. There was considerable socializing between blacks and whites in her world, as well as a sense of shared purpose.

At their meeting on Monday, March 15, Village Council members approved 5–0 the first reading of the Village budget for 2010. After three budget workshops on Feb. 9 and 23 and March 6, Council agreed on a total budget of $13,553,490 for 2010, including $3,671,167 allocated for the general fund; $1,616,810 for the special revenues fund; $126,353 for the debt services fund; $520,500 for the capitol projects fund; and $7,618,660 for the enterprise funds.