This Week in Concord History

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. 7, 2000: After 31 years, WKXL talk-show host Gardner Hill airs his final edition of Party Line. The Concord station's owner has decided to hire a new radio personality. “Nooooooo Gardner,” one woman calls in to say. “This is ridiculous,” another adds. “I can't say that I'm shocked, but I am disgusted.”

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 three-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, 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.

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 mic 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.”

Feb. 9, 2000: Gov. Jeanne Shaheen denies pardon hearings for two convicted murderers who say they have been rehabilitated. The requests by Gary Place and Anne Marie Reynolds are supported by four of the five members of the governor's Executive Council; Shaheen, however, decides their cases are not worthy of pardons.

Feb. 9. 2001: Concord High sophomore Rachel Umberger wins the 300-meter and 1,000-meter runs at the state Indoor Track and Field Championships. As a team, the Tide finishes fifth overall.

Feb. 10, 1992: Concord Mayor Bill Veroneau privately tells embattled City Manager Jim Smith that it is time for Smith to resign. In his latest scrape with councilors and residents, Smith's slowness in sounding the alarm on a property tax shortfall made him a political target in the November election. He will take Veroneau's advice and leave the job after 13 years.

Feb. 11, 2000: A Massachusetts development company is considering building a large shopping center anchored by a supermarket on land in the South End, the Monitor reports. Working through a local real estate agent, the company has approached at least 10 different property owners in a triangular-shaped area between Hall and South Main streets near Exit 13 off Interstate 93.

Feb. 12, 2000: A new school board contract proposal would give Concord teachers annual base salary increases of 3, 3¾ and 4¼ percent, the Monitor reports. In addition, elementary school teachers would get an extra preparation period. In exchange, elementary and middle school teachers would have to agree to add time to the end of their official workday, starting in the year 2001-2002. Contract negotiations have been going on for more than a year.

Feb. 12, 2004: Concord High wins the Division I boys' Nordic skiing state championship classic race, with a combined score of 766 to Keene's 748. The title is the first boys' ski championship since 1992.

Feb. 13, 1788: New Hampshire delegates convene to consider the proposed U.S. Constitution. About two-thirds oppose it, and only after cajoling by Dr. Josiah Bartlett and other supporters do the delegates agree to reconvene in Concord in four months.

Feb. 13, 1847: Thomas “Old Soldier” Haines dies at 87. A Concord man, Haines volunteered in the Patriot cause at the age of 19. He was slightly wounded at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777 and had worse luck near Saratoga. He was shot and lay two days among the dead before being rescued. The ball had passed through both cheeks, nearly severing his tongue. The Bouton History of Concord reported: “His face bore the mutilation till his death.”

Feb. 13, 1974: Gov. Mel Thomson ejects three political activists from the National Caucus of Labor Committees from the State House press room, where they planned a press conference. “You didn't ask me, and I'm the governor,” Thomson says. Attorney General Warren Rudman isn't impressed. “Theoretically the press room is a public room. What the governor has to do with it is beyond me,” he says.

Author: The Concord Insider

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