This Week in Concord History

Feb. 2, 1942: Concord’s chief air raid warden, Gladstone Jordan, has signed up 304 wardens to watch the skies over the city. Jordan says 200 more are needed.

Feb. 2, 1996: President Bill Clinton visits Concord’s Walker School and speaks to students at the Capitol Center. He praises Concord schools for innovative use of computers in the classroom.

Feb. 2. 2001: WKXL, Concord’s local radio station, is about to make dramatic changes to its programming, the Monitor reports. Party Line and Coffee Chat, two locally produced call-in and interview shows, will be off the air, replaced by a syndicated talk show hosted by New Yorker Mike Gallagher.

Feb. 2, 2003: Representatives from several parish Voice of the Faithful groups meet in Penacook to discuss plans for the creation of a statewide organization. While many individual parishes have formed their own groups in response to the church’s sexual abuse crisis, no organization has claimed to speak for Catholics across the state.

Feb. 3, 1942: The Concord School Board expels 8-year-old Sylvia Esty from school for failing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Esty, a Jehovah’s Witness, says her religion prohibits it. The board says she may return to school when she is ready to say the pledge each day.

Feb. 3, 1968: In Concord, Richard Nixon opens his presidential campaign with a speech in which he says America is a country with a torn soul, a country that needs a new leader who recognizes its “crisis of the spirit” and can restore “the lift of a driving dream.” He then hosts the press for a party at the Highway Hotel. Special guests: Nixon’s 19-year-old daughter Julie and her fiancee, David Eisenhower.

Feb. 3, 2002: With just seconds left to break the tie, Adam Vinatieri kicks a 48-yard field goal to give the Patriots their first Super Bowl victory in their 42-year history. They beat the St. Louis Rams, 20-17. Rundlett Middle School student Derek Graham, 11, will reflect the next day, “(Tom) Brady’s still my favorite player, but that Adam Vinatieri dude’s coming up. I never really cared about the kicker before, but now I guess I better.”

Feb. 3, 2003: Concord High School running phenom Rachel Umberger accepts a full scholarship offer to Duke University, according to running coach Barbara Higgins.

Feb. 4, 1908: In Concord, the St. Paul’s School ice hockey team defeats the Harvard freshmen, 9-1. Captain Hobey Baker “played a wonderful game,” scoring three goals, the Monitor reports. Baker will later become a college hockey star, and the trophy awarded to the nation’s best male collegiate player each year will one day bear his name.

Feb. 4, 1932: Skating on an outside rink in a preliminary match at the Olympic Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., Douglas Everett of Concord scores the U.S. goal in a 1-1 tie with Canada.

Feb. 4, 1965: Workers pour a concrete floor for the John F. Kennedy Apartments for the elderly on South Main Street in Concord. The 10-story building is expected to cost $1.4 million.

Feb. 4, 1971: The low temperature in Concord is 22 below zero. The day before it was 27 below, and two days before that it was 26 below.

Feb. 4, 1991: In the middle of a three-day heat wave, Concord residents enjoy a high temperature of 61 degrees. It was 59 the day before and will be again tomorrow.

Feb. 4, 2000: Thousands of students got into the act of voting through the Kids Voting New Hampshire program, the Monitor reports. In Concord, 1,589 kids voted alongside their parents and, like their elders, chose John McCain and Al Gore as their favorite candidates.

Feb. 5, 1853: Thomas Francis Meagher, the famed Irish exile and itinerant lecturer for Irish independence, speaks at Concord’s Depot Hall. Among his listeners is President-elect Franklin Pierce.

Feb. 5, 1942: Dudley Orr, the state tax commissioner, is pictured on the front page of the Monitor riding his bicycle to work. In a time of severe gas and tire rationing, he says, it is important for public officials to set a good example. He has no problem getting to work but is not fond of pedaling back up the hill to his home at 125 Centre St.

Feb. 5, 1942: An alert Concord police officer spots the car of a suspected spy on South Main Street near the Capitol Theater. He arrests the man at gunpoint. The chief gives the officer a pat on the back, but no charges are filed against the man. “It was all in error,” authorities say.

Feb. 5, 1968: The Rev. Norman Limoge, the administrator at Bishop Brady High School, sends 18 boys to Ray’s Barber Shop after they defy his warning to come to school with “respectable haircuts.” “We’re all here under protest,” one boy tells a reporter. “We didn’t think he’d do it,” says another. The act will lead to a lively exchange of letters to the editor. “Jesus wore long hair,” a defender of the boys will write. Margaret Savard of Pembroke will respond: “As the parent of one of the boys involved, you have my approval.”

Feb. 5, 1972: Alan Shepard of Derry, a crew member on Apollo 14, sets his left foot on the moon, becoming the fifth American who will leave footprints there. “It’s been a long way, but we’re here,” he says.

Feb. 5, 2000: Concord Coach #425, built at the Abbott-Downing Co. in Concord in 1874, is headed on a new journey, the Monitor reports. The New London Historical Society is sending the coach out for a refurbishing. Unlike its original travels, which were powered by four or five horses, this one is taking place inside a moving van.

Feb. 5, 2001: Up to a foot of snow falls in just a few hours as a true blizzard hits the state. By the time the snow is done the next day, Concord will have about 15 inches of accumulation. Several towns will report more than double that.

Feb. 5, 2002: The preliminary $51.8 million school budget is up nearly one percent from last year and includes provisions for a new roof at Broken Ground School, three new sports teams at Concord High School and a security guard to watch school buildings after the last bell rings, the Monitor reports.

Feb. 6, 1968: Campaigning at the Concord Community Center, Sen. Eugene McCarthy responds to President Lyndon Johnson’s assertion that the United States cannot merely “cut and run” in Vietnam. “It creeps into the language of the administration, figures of speech like ‘cut and run,’ ” McCarthy says. “I am not sure but what cut and run with cattle is a good thing to do if you’re stampeded. I mean, it’s the only way you can get out.” Sen. Tom McIntyre, Johnson’s lead man in New Hampshire, responds that McCarthy “somehow believes we can pack up and quit and still hold our heads high.”

Feb. 6, 1972: Using a makeshift club, astronaut Alan Shepard of Derry whacks a golf ball out of sight on the moon. “It goes miles and miles and miles,” he says.

Feb. 6, 2003: An overnight maintenance worker at the McDonald’s in Penacook is severely beaten by two men in an attempted robbery early in the morning, the police say. After the incident, Dana VanDemark, 48, of Hill, is taken to Concord Hospital where he undergoes surgery for face and head injuries. Two men, Mitchell J. Edward, 20, of Elkins Street, Franklin, and Travis Turcotte, 23, of South State Street, Concord, will be arraigned on several charges related to the robbery.

Feb. 7, 1811: Nathaniel White is born in Lancaster. He will come to Concord to run a hotel and become a successful businessman. He will be a prominent abolitionist, working with William Lloyd Garrison, an early proponent of women’s suffrage and the Prohibition candidate for governor of New Hampshire in 1875. Among many other charitable acts, he will be a prime benefactor of the Centennial Home for the aged, now the Centennial Inn.

Feb. 7, 1984: Democratic presidential contender John Glenn tells a Concord crowd: “I’m proud of the attitude we had back in those space days, the attitude of ‘Why not? Move ahead.’ We set goals. We had objectives, and we moved out to accomplish those objectives.”

Feb. 7, 1986: As a memorial to Christa McAuliffe, the Concord High teacher who died during the Challenger launch, a new state trust fund is formed to allow other teachers to take “journeys of discovery and enlightenment.”

Feb. 8, 1820: George Hough, Concord’s first printer and editor of an 18th century newspaper in the city, dies at the age of 73.

Feb. 8, 1831: Ellen Tucker Emerson of Concord, wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson, dies of tuberculosis in Boston at the age of 19.

Feb. 8, 1847: Franklin Pierce addresses a large meeting called in Concord to advocate “a vigorous and determined prosecution of the war with Mexico.” Pierce will win a brigadier general’s commission, and his war exploits will help propel him to the presidency in 1852.

Feb. 8, 1897: Concord’s first movie plays at White’s Opera House. The show includes bathers at Rahway, N.J., a watermelon-eating contest, a mounted policeman stopping a runaway horse and a 3-minute boxing match featuring Gentleman Jim Corbett. “There is nothing fake about it,” the Monitor reviewer reports, adding that the pictures are “vivid and truthful.”

Feb. 8, 1939: The Monitor reports on the state of the city’s residential real estate: 3,484 single family homes, 1,044 two-family homes, 97 three-family homes, 105 dwellings for four or more families and 16 apartment houses.

Feb. 8, 1943: The crew of nine women running the sawmill at Turkey Pond is forced to shut down the operation until the pond thaws. The women have been working at the mill since October and all vow to return in May. Timber boss Howard E. Ahlskog says the women are more loyal and dependable than the last male crews he hired.

Feb. 8, 1989: Three hundred people crowd into Representatives Hall to debate the creation of a Martin Luther King holiday in New Hampshire. Holiday advocates say support is building. Stay tuned.

Feb. 8, 1996: In a visit to Concord, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas tailors his flat tax mission to New Hampshire. “Live Flat or Die,” Armey says.

Feb. 8, 2001: More than 30 Concord police and state Drug Task Force officers raid an apartment complex in Concord to arrest three men and a woman who the authorities say are involved in a crack ring. The city’s police deployment is one of the largest in recent memory.

Feb. 8, 2003: More than 60 teenagers, one pre-teen and a handful of adults turn out in front of the State House to protest military involvement in Iraq. High school students from Wilton to Milford, Hampton to Hopkinton gather at an open mike session sponsored by a number of youth organizations. “A lot of people say young people are apathetic,” says Luc Schuster, youth organizer with the American Friends Service Committee. “I think this helps prove that’s not the case.”

Author: The Concord Insider

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