So This Happened…Week of June 17 through June 23, 2024
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA (June 23, 2024) — With the theme “Health and Wellness in the Black Community,” residents came together to celebrate the end of slavery on June 23 at Concord’s Todos Santos Plaza. Pleasant Hill also hosted an event on June 19 on the lawn by City Hall. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed the bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday to mark June 19, 1865, when the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were the last to become free. (Read the full story.)
Fire devastates local theater community: Pittsburg Theatre Company (PTC) launched a fundraising campaign and is planning a July 27 cabaret benefit after countless props, costumes and sets were lost in a blaze at a Pittsburg warehouse on June 9. Because many local companies relied on the inventory, Dianna Schepers of PTC notes: “Our loss is everyone’s, too.” (Read the full story.)
Pride is personal: Ken Carlson was the first openly gay City Councilmember in Pleasant Hill and now the first openly gay member of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors. “When I came out in 2002, I knew that Contra Costa County had come a long way from the conservative community of my youth,” he wrote in his Pioneer column. He added: “It is my responsibility to be the ‘shoulders’ for the next generation.” (Read the full story.)
More stories
Here are some other stories the Pioneer covered recently:
In sports. TERA boys rock at CIF State Swimming Championships, Nine local athletes are spring sports league MVPs and College Park High installs new synthetic turf field.
In the schools. Ygnacio Valley principal Jonathan Pike leaves for position in Oakland.
In local music. They’re a little bit country … and a little bit old blues, too.
In Pleasant Hill. Apply to join police chief’s advisory panel by June 30.
In Clayton. CBCA celebrates 40th anniversary during BBQ and Brews festival, and City Council makes progress on budget, staff consolidation.
In Concord: The latest report from Concord PD.
Read past installments of “So This Happened…”: Click here.
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Bev Britton
Bev Britton graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of North Dakota and moved to the Bay Area with her soon-to-be husband Jim in 1986. She was features editor at the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek before becoming managing editor of the Contra Costa Sun in Lafayette in 1995. She retired from newsrooms in 2001, but an ad for the Clayton Pioneer drew her back in. The family moved to Lake Wildwood in the Gold Country a few years ago - but working at the Pioneer keeps her in touch with her old neighborhoods in Concord and Clayton.