5 years ago, 2014
Officers from the Clay County Sheriff’s Of¬fice, Orange Park Police Department, the state office of Parole and Probation, NCIS and the State Attorney’s held a drug sweep that resulted in 35 arrests in three days.

Clay County Spelling Bee champ Aubrey Townsend duked it out for 17 rounds with Gainesville teen Daniel Samraj before she was eliminated from the Florida Times-Union Regional Spelling
Bee. Townsend failed to correctly spell trattoria, a word French and Italian derivation that means restaurant.

For the second year in a row, Clay County Clerk of Court Tara Green made love flow through the air at Spring Park as she hosted a Valentine’s Day wedding ceremony. Fourteen couples received a free wedding with music, cake, photos of the event and flowers, and of course, love.

10 years ago, 2009
Clay County School Superintendent Ben Wortham said the district needed to cut $43 million from its budget, not the original $23 million first reported. The cuts were needed in the wake of state budget cuts.

Magnolia Cove Development LLC unveiled renderings for a 66-unit town home community called Magnolia Cove that would include a 99-slip marina on the St. Johns River in Green Cove Springs.

Fifty-three year-old Frank Justin Paver of Keystone Heights died in a single-vehicle crash on Silver Sands Circle when his pickup truck traveled through an intersection, went airborne and struck a tree.

20 years ago, 1999
Betty Ruby Reynolds, 53, died in a house fire in Lake Asbury and Angela Kenney, 36, was airlifted to Shands Hospital in Gainesville for treatment for smoke inhalation.

Clay County Sheriff Scott Lancaster said seven of 14 employees in the CCSO Records Department came down with a rash that spread on their skin accompanied by flu-like symptoms and required treatment at an urgent care center.

Compass Bank at 536 Blanding Blvd. was robbed on Feb. 11 and NationsBank at the corner of Wells and Blanding was robbed on Feb. 16, but the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said the two heists were unrelated.

30 Years ago, 1989
Eleven-year-old Shane William Zeigler of Lake Asbury received first and second-degree burns on his chest, arms and legs encompassing 70 percent of his body after playing with matches and a can of hairspray.

Headline read: OP bar murder ‘yet’ to be solved in a story focusing on the shooting death of Ralph Anderson whose body was found behind the Village Saloon on Park Avenue on Jan. 13, 1985.

Orange Park Police said teasing about a bad haircut led to an attempted murder charge lodged against Willie B. Bradford for allegedly shooting his barber, Wilbert Carter. Lt. Jim Boivin said Carter teased Bradford after Bradford shaved his head bald to cover up the bad haircut Carter had given him earlier in the week.

40 years ago, 1979
Clay County Clerk of Court and Comptroller George Carlisle said double taxation against municipalities does not exist here despite numerous cries from around the state from cities saying that very thing.

The Clay Board of County Commissioners drafted a proclamation recognizing the Town of Orange Park’s Centennial Celebration and congratulated town council on the landmark occasion.

Michael G. Barkley, 31, of Jacksonville, fell off his water skis near the Black Creek Marina near Green Cove Springs. When he was pulled out of the water, he was talking incoherently and had trouble breathing. He was later pronounced dead at Greater Orange Park Community Hospital.