ORCHID: To Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge Sean O’Brien for denying death row inmate Andre “Kokomo” Williams’ appeal for relief from the death penalty last week. Williams, who many will recall, murdered 65-year-old George Melnick and brutally beat, blinded and attempted to rape his wife Kathryn Melnick in their Southeast Warren home in the summer of 1988. Once again, Williams was attempting to prove intellectual incapacity as a reason to escape capital punishment. But once again, more than sufficient evidence cited by the judge proved otherwise. We join Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins in praising O’Brien for his thoughtful and thorough 102-page “common-sense” and judicially sound decision.

ORCHID: To Warren-based 7 17 Credit Union for strengthening its community outreach by purchasing the naming rights to the home of the Mahoning Valley Scrappers. Beginning with this upcoming season, the 6,300-seat stadium will be named 7 17 Credit Union Field at Eastwood. The new name extends and fortifies the financial institution’s ties and support to the team that it has provided since the Scrappers’ founding in 1999. 7 17 has sponsored numerous crowd-drawing events to the stadium in those 27 years, such as its Financial Wellness Nights, Dollar Dog Nights and VIP benefit program. The strengthened partnership bodes well for the future of the Major League Baseball draft team and of the growing Valley-based credit union.

ORCHID: To the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for recently awarding about $2.5 million to the Trumbull County Land Bank, managed by the Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, to clean up and clear out five former gas stations in the county that threaten public health and create an embarrassment in blight. Such eyesore nuisances in Warren, (2), Mineral Ridge, Liberty and West Farmington soon will be no more. The value of such brownfield remediation is multifold. It will decrease community exposure to hazardous substances, create safer communities by removing vacant and structurally compromised buildings and potentially generate job growth via new development.

ONION: To school district leaders throughout the state who slyly attempt to skirt Ohio’s open records law by refusing to release public records requested by taxpayers or the press. In a victory for accountability and transparency, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled last week that Xenia Community Schools officials must fork over the list of email recipients it uses to distribute newsletters and other information to the public because it clearly constitutes a public record. The school district argued that the email list was exempt from the Ohio Public Records Act because it included “protected student information” but it failed to provide a copy to the court as ordered for review. Such antics not only fly in the face of the state’s public records act, it also invites cynicism and mistrust among the very people who keep school district operations financially afloat.

ORCHID: To Karen Murphy, the Cortland branch manager of the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library, for giving two full decades of dedicated, creative and helpful service to the throngs of patrons there. Murphy, whose retirement begins this month, also served in a variety of capacities at various libraries in the county system, including technical services librarian, research librarian and teen librarian. Those at her recent retirement celebration emphasized her hard work and devotion to customer service. Clearly her successor in Cortland, Joshua Nauman, will have some mighty big shoes to fill.

OPCHID: To Mineral Ridge junior high school students who won the 2026 Academic Prep Bowl and their coach Alex Roth for besting 16 other teams from throughout Trumbull County at last weekend’s tournament. Prep bowls, in which students have fun and test their extemporaneous display of knowledge in a myriad of topics, have become increasingly popular locally and nationwide. That’s a terrific trend that should only grow. After all, such competitions produce long-term value for students by fostering strong critical thinking skills, boosting self-confidence and promoting academic excellence in a competitive, team-oriented environment. Go Rams!

ONION: To the seemingly growing ranks of social-media fraudsters who use sites such as Facebook as convenient channels to scam victims out of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Last week, a man was swindled out of about $400 for application fees and a security deposit for a nonexistent Boardman apartment. A few days later, a Valley woman reportedly lost $1,930 to a poster posing as a real estate agent for application fees, security deposit, court fees and rent on an apartment. The latter con artist’s insistence that the payments be made with Visa gift cards should have set off alarm bells that the transactions were suspicious. To prevent such callous victimization, avoid doing business with any unfamiliar individuals or companies online.

ORCHID: To the Mahoning Valley congressional delegation for bringing home the bacon to our region by inserting several key projects into the 2026 federal appropriations bill signed earlier this month by President Donald J. Trump. As a result, nearly $8 million in federal funding will flow to the Valley for four critical projects. The lion’s share of that funding, some $5 million, has been earmarked for the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna to finance critically needed major upgrades to its smaller runway. The work is necessary to maintain Federal Aviation Administration standards so that the Western Reserve Port Authority can continue work toward reinstituting commercial passenger air service there and for the continued viability of the adjacent Youngstown Air Reserve Station. The remaining earmarked federal funding will finance critical road, water and other infrastructure projects in Boardman, Struthers and Niles.

ORCHID: To former Youngstown State University Department of History Chair Martha I. Pallante for making the initial contribution last week of more than $12,000 to the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry & Labor endowment fund, the first of its kind in the industrial museum’s 32-year history. The support fund for the West Wood Street landmark will help preserve and promote the history of the once mighty steel industry in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley. The endowment at YHCIL, more commonly referred to as The Steel Museum, will help to ensure our region’s noble industrial heritage will continue to be preserved and appreciated. Now that Pallante has planted the seed, we urge others to step forward to further nourish this praiseworthy endowment through their own donations.