Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 43
A divided school board voted 4-2 Monday night to name defensive line coach Hiawatha Hickman the fourth head football coach in West Orange-Stark High School's 46-year history. West Orange-Cove board members Tricia Stroud and Tommy Wilson voted against hiring the nominee put forward by Superintendent Dr. Rickie Harris. Board member Roderick Robertson was absent. Board member Gina Simar made the motion to hire Hickman and it was seconded by Ruth Hancock. Linda Platt-Bryant,...
Hiawatha Hickman is the nominee to become the fourth Athletic Director/Head Football Coach in West Orange-Stark history. West Orange-Cove school district superintendent Dr. Rickie Harris announced Thursday he will recommend the hiring of Hickman, the Mustangs' defensive line coach and girls' track coach the past six years, at the Monday, Jan. 24 school board meeting. Cornel Thompson, who spent 46 years as a teacher and coach in the West Orange district, retired in December...
Essie Bellfield, a civil rights pioneer and Orange's first Black and first female mayor, died Sunday morning at age 89. A funeral service will be held at Salem United Methodist Church in Orange at 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 5. She served as Mayor of Orange from 1997 through 2000. Nearly two decades after being elected mayor, she rejoined city government as a member of the city council. Bellfield lived an incredible life that included a 1965 civil rights march over the Edmund...
Orange County Judge John Gothia disagreed Thursday with allegations that he and Commissioner Johnny Trahan were at fault for holding private bargaining sessions aimed at a new contract for the county’s deputy sheriffs. Gothia acknowledged Thursday that the Orange County Sheriff’s Employees Association was seeking more pay and the continuation of a “just cause” clause, which allows for arbitration in disciplinary circumstances inside the department. He said the non-pos...
A proposal to bring streetlights to a dark and deadly stretch of road is on the agendas for neighboring Orange County cities. The Texas Department of Transportation will make a presentation for a "MacArthur Drive Illumination Project" at Tuesday's 6 p.m. meeting of the Pinehurst City Council. While no one at Pinehurst was available to talk about the item, Randy Branch, the new mayor in West Orange, said the same item will be on his council's agenda for Monday, June 14. He...
Two-term Orange City Council member Patrick Pullen will get a recount of results of the May 1 election. It will be conducted beginning at 9 a.m. Friday, with results expected by noon, Orange County's Election Administration announced. Pullen, an Orange policeman for 32 years before retiring with the rank of Captain, finished seven votes shy of challenger David C. Bailey in the final ballot count, 145-138, for Orange District 1 representative. In his first election to city coun...
Two-way selection Emma Humplik is among four softball teammates and their coach from Orangefield leading the way among Orange County picks to the All-Star games set for June 16-18. The Southeast Texas Coaching Association announced the players and dates and times for the Sixth Annual CHRISTUS All-Star Classic at a news conference Monday. CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Sports Medicine and Beaumont Bone and Joint Institute are the title sponsors. Rebekah Ragsdale, Orangefield High...
Randy Branch will be Mayor of West Orange after capturing 68.7% of the vote against Jim Whittington in the Spring 2021 election that ended Saturday evening. Misty Songe and Ronnie Herrera face a runoff for the position of Mayor in Vidor, after finishing 1-2 in a three-way race in which no candidate received 50% plus one of the total votes cast. Branch, pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church, will take the place of longtime West Orange mayor Roy McDonald, who earlier this...
Justice took a lunch break in Orange Wednesday to honor the longtime leadership of retiring West Orange Mayor Roy McDonald. No fewer than eight Orange County judges, three county commissioners, one current and one past neighboring mayor and a rando lawyer or two came to Wednesday Lunch Bunch on April 14 to honor retiring West Orange Mayor Roy McDonald. Roy Dunn, owner and publisher of The Record Newspapers, called the first meeting in 13 months for the Lunch Bunch to surprise...
Orange County has joined a five-county Southeast Texas group in an effort to get more COVID-19 vaccines into the arms of its citizens. John Gothia, Orange County judge, said the goal is to establish one or more permanent vaccination hub sites and possibly a mobile vaccine unit for use in Orange, Hardin, Jasper, Newton, and Jefferson Counties. By combining their public health resources and populations, the resulting "consortium" covering a population of nearly a half-million re...
Orange County has published a priority list for its citizens receiving the Covid-19 vaccine. The info sheet posted on the Orange County website (co.orange.tx.us) under a red "Public Health Notice" bar on the bottom left side includes the note "The rollout and allocation of this vaccination program is 100% handled by the State of Texas." It says Phase 1A, vaccinating Healthcare Workers, has not been completed. Phase 1B has six categories and the info sheet indicates they will...
While all four branches of government – Congress, the Supreme Court and both incoming and outgoing Presidencies – should have plenty to do at year-end in Washington, Orange County, Texas waits for somebody along the Potomac River to OK federal assistance after Hurricane Laura. While D.C. dithers, the clock keeps ticking on what figures to be more than a $1.5 million total cost to the county to fix a leaky jail roof. The "dry side" of Hurricane Laura swirled winds as high as...
Pinehurst City Council will hold a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to consider and possibly accept the resignation of Mayor Dan Mohon. Mohon, 80, a Pinehurst alderman for 11 years, was appointed mayor to serve the final 14 months of Pete Runnels' term when Runnels retired for health reasons in 2019. He won election for a full term on Nov. 3 with 64% of the vote against challenger Troy Pierce. Also on the agenda for Tuesday's meeting is to appoint a mayor to serve to...
Hurricane Laura destroyed seven Orange County homes, left 70 with major damage and 1,317 more with minor and light damage, according to the first damage assessments from the Category 4 storm that did its worst damage east of the Sabine River, in Louisiana. Michelle Tubbleville, director of special projects for Orange County, read the list gathered from surveying 1,394 homes negatively impacted by the storm. She presented it at Monday morning's emergency meeting of the Orange...
Due to the lack of need a week after Hurricane Laura came ashore, all of the four Points of Distribution (PODS) sites in Orange County were shut down Thursday afternoon. Before they did, they attracted lines of cars as much as a mile long and members of the Texas National Guard joined volunteers, both local responders from around the state and local communities loaded many truckloads of supplies into residents' cars. This from the Orange County Emergency Management Office's...
With Reporting from Mark Dunn President Donald Trump made a quick 90-minute stop in Orange County Saturday afternoon at the end of a tour of Hurricane Laura storm damage in Louisiana and Texas. The visit was anticipated and predicted by The Record Newspapers website a day earlier, but went unannounced by the White House except to local Republican Party officials and invited key civil and political personnel. His time in Texas' most southeastern city was strictly private,...
Orange County Sheriff Lane Mooney did not mince words. "We dodged a bullet on this one," he said as dawn broke over Southeast Texas Thursday morning a few hours after Hurricane Laura had blown through. "So far, we haven't had to do any rescues." Entergy Texas reported 35,000 power outages in Orange County as of 9 a.m.Orange Mayor Larry Spears Jr., reported a lot of trees down on power lines, blown out glass at restaurants on 16th Street and even some metal roofs blown off....
Lamar State College Orange's first-year fishing team is No. 1 in the national Bass Pro Shops 2020-21 national rankings issued this week. The rankings are based on points awarded for high finishes. The Gators' high standing comes as a result of high finishes in two of the four tournaments held in July, the 2020 FLW Southern held at Fort Gibson Lake in Oklahoma and the 2020 FLW Northern on Lake Erie. "That's not just junior colleges. That's all the two- and four-year schools in...
All Orange County public primary and secondary schools announced Sunday they are closing for this week of Aug. 24-28 because of two tropical weather systems that could come ashore in the next two to four days and seriously impact the county. Lamar State College Orange reported that while “administrators are monitoring Hurricane Marco and Tropical Storm Laura,” that the plans Sunday night were that “the first day of our Fall 2020 semester will begin as scheduled Monda...
Orange County and city officials aren’t getting caught by surprise this time. Orange County joined Jefferson County Monday evening in calling for a mandatory Tuesday evacuation of its residents ahead of the expected landfall Wednesday night of Hurricane Laura. It is tracking to come ashore as a Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane on the Texas-Louisiana border. “We’re trying to be proactive, get in front of this. I’d rather be wrong than have a bunch of people get hurt,...
President Donald Trump said he plans to visit Texas this weekend on a trip to survey damage from Hurricane Laura and he could make a stop in Orange. If so, it will come on the heels of a Thursday flyover tour and Orange City Hall press conference by all the Texas political stars, led by Gov. Greg Abbott and the state's U.S. Senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. They were all in the area to see first-hand the damage in their state caused by Hurricane Laura, which saved its...
After four years of dithering over a repair and just more than a year after it finally got fixed, the Orange County Courthouse has lost its marble again. It's time to check the warranty. Gusts of as much as 100 mph from Hurricane Laura caused a goodly chunk of the $200,000 repair to crash from the top of the three-story facade over the courthouse's main entrance at the end of Orange's Main Street. No one was injured by the falling rock, and not just because Hurricane Laura...
Cars, truck and vans from Orange County hit the road Tuesday morning in response to a mandatory evacuation order to flee the expected path of Hurricane Laura. Traffic was steady heading north to East Texas and west to the Hill Country, but Texas Department of Transportation had logged no reports of major traffic tie-ups as of noon Tuesday. The City of Orange Tuesday morning dispatched seven chartered buses from a debarkation station at Lamar State College Orange. The buses...
County Judge John Gothia has issued a Disaster Declaration for Orange County and joined cities in calling for a voluntary evacuation for Orange County residents in response to the possibility of widespread damage posed by Tropical Storms Marco and Laura. Officials are calling for a mandatory evacuation of the county's nursing homes at this point. Laura, the second of two tropical cyclones active in the Carribean and Gulf of Mexico this week, is causing the most worry. As of mi...
