NORTH HAVERHILL—“The vaccine is the thing that will end this,” Grafton County Nursing Home Administrator Craig Labore said in a recent interview with the Journal Opinion.
The first COVID-19 vaccination clinic for GCNH staff and residents came earlier than expected, bookended by positive COVID-19 test results in nearly a dozen staff members.
On Dec. 14, a total of five staff members tested positive for Covid through GCNH’s standing testing practices.
The individuals were all asymptomatic, and Labore said he could not speak to the origin of the transmissions. Upon learning of the results, Labore said they notified the nurse they work with at the NH Department of Health and Human Services and arranged for facility-wide testing for staff and residents. These tests all came back negative. The initial five staff members were able to isolate and return to work once the period of concern was over.

BRADFORD—School officials held an informational meeting on Monday night ahead of the fourth vote on an Oxbow Unified Union School District 2020-2021 budget next week.
Monday night’s meeting—held via Zoom—was sparsely attended.
The budget of $16,780,183 is identical to the one defeated by 15 votes on Nov. 24. Board members unanimously opted to resubmit the same figure for another vote, citing significant cuts to the district’s schools—Bradford Elementary, Newbury Elementary, Oxbow, and River Bend.

TOPSHAM—The committee tasked with the new town garage site evaluation has been dissolved after the selectboard did not support the group’s request to hire professional help.
Selectboard chair Larry Hart has assumed the responsibility and is continuing the committee’s efforts to bring options to the town for a vote.
“We needed people with more expertise but couldn’t get board approval,” said Jim Clark, former chair o

RAMSAU, AUSTRIA—West Fairlee resident Tara Geraghty-Moats realized a childhood dream on Friday when she bested 31 other competitors to win the first ever women’s FIS World Cup Nordic combined meet in Ramsau, Austria.
Geraghty-Moats was sixth after the jumping segment of the competition, but she took the top spot on the World Cup podium by reeling in Norway’s Gyda Westvold Hansen over the 5K cross-country ski race that made up the second part of the event. Considering Geraghty-Moats’ amazing journey to the top of the heap in women’s Nordic combined, two words come to mind: perseverance and dedication.

NORTH HAVERHILL—In terms of volume, Dean Memorial Airport in North Haverhill is no O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
With approximately 3,000 takeoffs and landings per year, Dean Memorial is one of the smallest public airports in New Hampshire. Heck, it’s not even Lebanon Municipal, which has approximately 40,000 takeoffs and landings each year.
So, it should not come as a surprise that at least a few people in North Haverhill were astir last week as news spread that a jet aircraft with its landing gear down approached the sleepy little airport off of Route 116 in what appeared to be an attempted landing.