Other Days: January 24, 2024

10 YEARS AGO JANUARY 22, 2014 As of January 2, there were 259 people from Cleveland County who had signed up to get health insurance under the new 'Private Option' program being administered through the state. In addition, the Department of Human Services reports that more than half of those signing up are under age 40, which the state claims could help lower premiums for others in Arkansas. The program was approved with bi-partisan support during the 2013 legislative session. The program allows the state of Arkansas to use federal Medicaid funding to pay the monthly private health insurance premiums for eligible individuals who make 138 percent or less of the federal poverty level, or about $15,850 a year for an individual. An Arkansas State Trooper is calling Rison High School head football coach Clay Totty 'a hero' after he managed to get his mother and two daughters out of a flipped vehicle before it was consumed by fire early Saturday afternoon along Highway 79 between Kingsland and Fordyce near the airport there. Totty said he and his two daughters, Jacey and Presley, were riding to Fordyce with his mother, Edith Totty, in her Ford Escape, when she apparently lost control of the vehicle that veered off the side of the road, hit a culvert and went airborne, coming to a rest on its nose off the highway. The SUV landed in an almost vertical position with the rear of the vehicle leaning high against a pine tree. He managed to get out, but both of his daughters were suspended in the backseat by their seatbelts and his mother was still in the driver's seat. After getting his mother out, both girls eventually unsnapped their seatbelts and fell to the front of the vehicle. Totty said they managed to get both girls out before the fire began to consume the SUV. No serious injuries were reported. 20 YEARS AGO JANUARY 28, 2004 Governor Mike Huckabee's decision Tuesday to allow a bill to become law without his signature is the latest development to muddy the waters even…