For several years, explained Coastal AIDS Network Executive Director Mickey Sirota, “we’ve been touting Valentine’s Day as ‘love safely day,’ but this year we decided, rather than just putting up posters and letting people know that, we would just have fun.”

And that is why CAN is inviting the public to attend a Valentine’s dance from 7 to 11 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 14, at the Blue Goose on U.S. Route 1 in Northport.

The event features Mr. Whoopie, which Sirota describes as “an incredible, midcoast dance band that performs everything from blues to rock.”

And because CAN wants to encourage families to attend, admission is $10 per person, $8 for students and free for children up to the age of 12.

“We would really like families to be there,” Sirota said.

“We will have special family activities from 6 to 7 p.m., and we’re taking digital photographs of people.”

Several local businesses have offered “everything from gift certificates to teddy bears” that people have an opportunity to take home, and “we’ll be raffling off several prize packages during the evening,” Sirota said.

Someone will also receive a beautiful bouquet of a dozen roses as a post-Valentine gift.

All proceeds from the event benefit the programs of Coastal AIDS Network.

For more information about this special dance, call Sirota at 338-6330.

The Valentine’s Day celebration at Cortland Rehabilitation Center in Ellsworth will be extra special this year, as residents and visitors join in congratulating residents Charles and Berla Putney, who will be celebrating their 66th wedding anniversary.

Charles, 95, and Berla, 86, were married in Pembroke on Feb. 14, 1936.

The couple have three children.

Barbara Ward lives in Blue Hill, Lydia Johnson in Lake Worth, Fla., and Orville Putney in Pembroke.

Their three grandchildren are Kevin Piper of Blue Hill, Brenda Horton of Surry and Karen Martin of Milford.

The Putneys have three great-grandsons as well.

Barbara Ward said her mother, a homemaker, “was a wonderful cook,” and that many of us have seen and enjoyed the results of her father’s craft.

“Dad was a brick mason who did beautiful work on the Blue Hill Public Library in 1939, a lot of brickwork at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, the Brewer Elementary School and in so many other places,” she said. “We see his work everywhere. He built beautiful fireplaces and chimneys, too.”

Cards and best wishes on this special occasion can be sent to Charles and Berla Putney, Cortland Rehabilitation Center, 42 Bucksport Road, Ellsworth 04605.

Nathan Miller, 13, of Winterport, and 18-year-old Elizabeth Soucy of Jay have been named Maine’s top two youth volunteers for 2002 by The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards.

The nationwide program honoring young people for outstanding acts of volunteerism is now in its seventh year.

Sponsored by Prudential Financial in partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the program received applications from a record 28,000 high school and middle-level students this year.

The state honorees each receive $1,000, an engraved silver medallion and an all-expenses-paid trip in May to our nation’s capital, where they will join the other state and district honorees.

Ten of the state and district honorees will be named America’s top youth volunteers for 2002.

Miller, a seventh-grader at Wagner Middle School, helped organize a community campaign to build a teen skate park.

Following a church work trip to Papua New Guinea, where Soucy met a 15-year-old girl who never owned a pair of shoes, Soucy collected more than 200 pairs of shoes to send to people of that country.

Because a 50th reunion is always such a milestone, it is easy to understand why people planning such events are so concerned when they are unable to locate many of the people they want to attend.

Take the hard-working members of the Reunion Committee for the Bangor High School Class of 1952, for example, who hope as many of their classmates as possible will be able to join them for that 50th reunion beginning at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, July 20, at Pilots Grill in Bangor.

Yovanne Stevenson of Bangor said try as they might, committee members have simply been unable to locate several class members.

“The letters have all come back, and we just can’t find them anywhere,” she explained.

In providing the list of missing classmates, which she hopes you can help with, Stevenson has used the maiden names of the female members of the BHS Class of ’52.

The BHS 50th Reunion Committee is seeking Rose Allen, Richard Anderson, Daniel Andrews, Marilyn Bryce, Marjorie Bubar, Henry Clements, Philip Conley, Marie Cox, Ethel Grossman, Marjorie Dudley and Patricia Ellis.

Also among the missing are William Ellwood, Joyce Everett, Charles Harlow, Ruby Harmon, Gladys Hitchcock, Katherine Irvin, Donna Kennard and Malcolm Kitchen.

Also among the missing are Beverly Lane, Patricia Leahy, Dorothy Levine, Beverly Livingston, Rita McGuire and Annabelle Millett.

The remaining missing BHS ’52 members are Robert Montgomery, Worth Noyes, Wayne Oakes, Alice Ryder, Christina Stuart, Shirley Thornton and Alex Vadarmis.

If you have information about these individuals that you can share with the reunion committee, you are asked to call Stevenson at 945-9507 or Duane Lane of Brewer at 989-3434.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.