Tragedy inspired campaign

Springfield School Committee candidate Sirdeaner L. Walker, 44, responded to a personal tragedy in her family with a decision to run for public office.

Walker sought election for the District 2 seat in the wake of the death of her son, Carl J. Walker-Hoover, a sixth-grader from New Leadership Charter School who hanged himself in April. The boy had complained of persistent bullying by school mates before his death, according to his mother.

"Safety is one of the main issues in the schools," said Walker, who lost in her bid for office. "We need to build a community of teachers, parents, administrators and churches so that bullying is not seen as a rite of passage."

Lights out, vote's still on: A power outage on Tuesday morning affected two polling locations in Forest Park and East Forest Park for approximately an hour, but did not stop the vote, election program coordinator Gladys Oyola said.

The outage at approximately 10 a.m., affected the Springfield Wesleyan Church, 98 White St., Ward 3H and 6E, and the YWCA, 1 Clough St., Ward 6G and H. The voting machines have memory packs, retaining all votes leading up to the outage, Oyola said.

Thereafter, ballots were placed in an emergency bin, until the power came back on, overseen by the police officers on duty. "It was not really much of a problem," Oyola said. "Initially, they were a little worried."

A sign of his future: Whether it was a premonition or not, Ward 4 City Council candidate E. Henry Twiggs was seen marking a hand-made thank-you sign with a red felt marker at 7:15 p.m. outside the Masonic Temple polling site on Tyler Street.

Twiggs, chairman of the Springfield Democratic City Committee, bested Norman Oliver in the final results.

Passing the torch: Holyoke Mayor Michael J. Sullivan is already helping his successor. At his request, city department heads have prepared briefings about their departments' needs and goals so Sullivan can hand the information to the mayor-elect later this week to help with the transition.

Sullivan, who did not seek re-election, made a point of requiring that department heads submit the briefings before the election and before the mayor-elect's identity was known, to avoid having the election results affect an objective look at the department, Sullivan said on Monday.

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