The arrival of summer in Addison County 50 years ago was marked by a flurry of summer weddings — eight alone in one week. Here are some of the top stories that appeared in the June 25, 1970, edition of the Independent:
•  Eight-month-old Heidi Shackett of Shoreham returned home after a successful operation to remove a tumor from her heart. The rare procedure was the first of its kind to be performed at the Medical Center Hospital in Burlington. 
•  Vergennes residents spent a week boiling their tap water for safety after the city water supply became contaminated. The cause of the contamination was traced to a broken chlorinator in the water purification system.
•  A petition circulated around Addison County calling for a stretch of Route 125 in Ripton to be renamed in honor of poet Robert Frost.
•  One week after Donna Marie Parent’s win in the junior category, Mrs. O. D. Anzalone of Whiting was a finalist in the 1970 National Chicken Cooking Contest in Princess Anne, Md. Her prize was $100, an engraved trophy, a “filled spice rack” and a pewter teaspoon.
•  Congregations at the United Methodist Church in Brandon and the Monkton church both held farewell parties for their respective departing pastors, Rev. Donald Ouelette (Brandon) and Rev. James Osborne (Monkton). 
•  The Friends of Art at Middlebury College selected “The Bust of the Greek Slave” as their major purchase for the college’s Johnson Memorial Art Gallery. The sculpture by Hiram Powers, “Vermont’s most distinguished native artist,” is still on display at the Middlebury College Museum of Art in 2020. 
•  Middlebury College prepared for the June 30 arrival of 1,230 language school students as well as 230 students at the Bread Loaf School of English. In 1970, instruction was offered in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. The French school was the largest that year with 347 students, and the newly created Japanese school the smallest with 26.
— Emma Pope McCright