This Week in Concord History

Oct. 16, 1975: The Reagan for President campaign opens a headquarters at the New Hampshire Highway Hotel in Concord. Hotel owner Matthew Morton agrees to a temporary replacement of the wording on the huge sign atop the building from “Highway Hotel” to “Reagan for President,” creating an ostentatious precedent for future political candidates.

Oct. 16, 2001: Citing safety concerns relating to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Steeplegate Mall cancels its annual trick-or-treat night.

Oct. 16, 2002: One hundred senior citizens gather for a ground-breaking ceremony for the city’s first senior center.

Oct. 17, 1908: Robert Abial “Red” Rolfe is born in Penacook. He will play baseball with the New York Yankees from 1934 to ‘42 and be hailed by many as the team’s best third baseman ever. His career will bridge those of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio. He will bat .293 lifetime and play in six World Series. After retiring as an active player, he will coach baseball and basketball at Yale, coach professionally in both sports, manage the Detroit Tigers and serve as athletic director at Dartmouth College.

Oct. 17, 1939: David Souter is born in Melrose, Mass. He will attend Concord High and Harvard and eventually rise to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Oct. 17, 1973: Concord officials meet to discuss ways to improve conditions on Concord Heights, after a $25,000 consultant points out: “There’s no village center, no coherence, no meeting place. There’s no there when you get there.”

Oct. 17, 1988: A developer announces plans for a shopping center on the edge of Concord’s South End Marsh, an environmentally sensitive area. The project will not be built; other unsuccessful attempts to develop the area will follow.

Oct. 17, 2002: Jane Berwick, who has volunteered with the Concord Boys and Girls Club, the Capitol Center for the Arts, the United Way and the Kiwanis, among others, is named Citizen of the Year by the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce at the group’s 83rd annual dinner in Concord.

Oct. 18, 1965: Gov. John King urges state lawmakers to approve tearing down a 70-year-old tower atop the state library at the corner of Park and North State streets. He calls it “an architectural monstrosity.”

Oct. 18, 1963: Trailing Barry Goldwater by a 2-1 margin in a Wall Street Journal poll of New Hampshire voters, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller comes to Concord with his wife Happy to say he intends to run a vigorous primary campaign.

Oct. 18, 1988: Attorney Ray D’Amante announces the name of Concord’s soon-to-be-built mall: Steeplegate. Concord, he says, is a city of steeples and they will be incorporated into the mall as a prominent design feature.

Oct. 18, 2001: Nearly 100 people attend a Concord hearing on a proposed zoning ordinance. Residents discuss proposed development in the Penacook Lake watershed and floodplain concerns about commercial development in Penacook.

Oct. 19, 2002: Franklin Pierce Law Center holds the fifth annual Bruce E. Friedman Community Service Day in honor of the late professor. More than 90 students, professors and family members volunteer at the school and throughout the community.

Oct. 20, 1814: The first boat of the Merrimack Boating Co., later the Boston & Concord Boating Co., arrives in Concord. Northbound commercial cargo will include sugar, molasses, rum and finished goods. The boats will carry lumber, firewood, potash (for soap) and granite south to Quincy Market.

Oct. 20, 1897: Hundreds of people gather in Concord for the 90th birthday party of Moses Humphrey, Civil War-era mayor and prime mover of two huge civic projects: the new state prison on its current site and Concord’s trolley lines. He carried out the latter project in 1880, at age 73, “against violent opposition and almost insurmountable obstacles,” the Monitor reports.

Oct. 20, 1908: Forest fires all around Concord fill the streets with smoke. Farmers’ wells are running dry. The temperature rises to 85 degrees.

Oct. 20, 1987: Concord Mayor Jim MacKay tells the Monitor that Gov. John H. Sununu has offered him a deal. Sununu is Vice President George Bush’s main man in New Hampshire. If MacKay will support Bush’s bid for the Republican nomination, Sununu will help the city solve a parking problem near the high school, MacKay says. In the story in the paper the next day, MacKay takes back his comments, characterizing them as offhand and inaccurate.

Oct. 20, 1989: The 57-year-old Johnny Cash fills the Capitol Theatre in Concord for two performances. His humble demeanor and his repertory, heavy on gospel, trains, fisticuffs, simple justice and simple pieties, bring down the house.

Oct. 20, 1991: James Colbert, 39, is talked out of jumping off the Tobin Bridge in Chelsea. He tells the police he has killed his family in Concord. The Concord police find the bodies of his estranged wife and three children dead in their house on Merrimack Street.

Oct. 20, 2002: In high school football the Bow Falcons persist to a 28-20 victory over Bishop Brady’s Green Giants, the Monitor reports. The victory guarantees Bow (5-2) its first winning season, and the loss pretty much ends Brady’s playoff hopes.

Oct. 21, 1894: James Garvey, who served in the Navy during the Civil War, is killed by the caving in of a bank at Contoocook River Park in Penacook.

Oct. 21, 1983: The Monitor reports that Tio Juan’s restaurant has opened, using a logo and menu that brought protests and the threat of lawsuit by Hispanic groups in Connecticut. The logo shows a Mexican with drooping eyelids, wearing a sombrero and serape and holding a margarita. Patrick Gallagher, one of the owners, says no offense is intended. “People jump on all these bandwagons,” he says.

Oct. 21, 2000: Hilda Sargent, 97, attends the opening ceremony for Bow’s newly expanded Baker Free Library. The town’s oldest resident, Sargent says she still reads every day and actually had to put down a novel when her ride came to take her to the event.

Oct. 21, 2001: Concord officials release the city’s updated property assessments, the Monitor reports. Since the last assessment in 1997, the average residential property rose 37 percent in value.

Oct. 21, 2002: Concord City councilors vote to change Concord’s housing policy to support construction of affordable housing projects as well as the rehabilitation of available units. Councilor Bill McGonagle says, “I think approval of this amendment this evening is one small step in the right direction.”

Oct. 22, 1844: The Millerites, one of many cults and sects that have gained popularity in New Hampshire in recent years, believe that the world will end on this date. It doesn’t.

Oct. 22, 1965: J. Herbert Quinn, candidate for mayor of Concord, insists that he is a man of the people. “Contrary to the many rumors which have been circulating throughout the city, I have no millionaires or near-millionaires, either in or out of the city, contributing to my campaign,” he says. Quinn will eventually be elected – and then impeached.

Oct. 22, 1988: Loudmouth talk show host Morton Downey Jr. plays the Capitol Theatre in Concord. “You know what Marilyn Quayle said to Dan on their wedding night? Senator, you’re no JFK,” he says to cheering crowds.

Oct. 22, 2003: Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich demonstrates the emergency drills he had to do as a student during the Cold War in front of 500 students at Concord High. “So some of us had nightmares as kids,” he says. “We had dreams that the missiles were coming in while we were at recess.”

Author: Insider Staff

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