Newspaper reviewed the year’s top stories

Twenty-five years ago this week, newspaper’s staff shared its look at the top stories of the year.

The Dec. 30, 2000, edition of The Commercial Review reviewed the top 10 stories of the year, ranging from embezzlement from Jay School Corporation to the construction and opening of Arts Place.

The newspaper’s annual top 10 — intended more as a review of the events of the year than as a judgment of importance — led with a story about a financial scandal with Jay School Corporation that saw Ray Dunn of Southern School Building’s Inc. arrested and charged with four felony counts of theft. Dunn had failed to forward four of the school corporation’s payments totaling about $1.6 million to Allstate Insurance Company, which held the loan that had paid for building Jay County High School. He committed suicide before signing a plea agreement that would have reduced the charges.

The Arts Place construction was the No. 4 story on the list that year, with groundbreaking early in the year and completion in December. The project included a new theater, gallery, workshop space, music practice rooms and the ceramic tile mural of Jay County landscape by Cleveland artist Rhonda Franklin along the south wall of Goodrich Hall.

Other items in the top 10 that year included:

•Tim McAbee and Bob Brumett, both of Portland, being sentenced to 85 and 55 years, respectively, for murder and robbery with a deadly weapon, who killed 21-year-old Tony R. Thompson of Florence, Kentucky.

•Fundraising and groundbreaking for West Jay Community Center in Dunkirk. Leo Glogas and Chuck Huffman led the capital campaign.

•Barry and Elizabeth Hudson’s donation of land to Portland Park Board for the construction of a new park to include a pond and amphitheater. (Eleven years later, that vision was realized with the completion of Hudson Family Park.)

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Editor’s note: The Commercial Review’s staff will share its list of the top 10 stories of 2025 in Wednesday’s newspaper.