June 1, 2002: At a $100-a-plate gala for Concord Hospital’s cancer treatment center, some 350 donors are surprised to learn that two major contributors recently came forward. Norman and Melinda Payson of Hopkinton donated $2 million and Jim and Marianne Cook donated $1 million. “We must understand that the purpose of this cancer center is to help the people that surround us,” Jim Cook says. “The health and well-being of babies, adults and the growing elderly population is a top priority.”
June 1, 1768: Although New Hampshire has declined to join Massachusetts in protesting royal taxes for the defense of the colonies, its Assembly votes to petition the king on its own. The petition will complain of taxation without representation in Parliament.
June 1, 1852: Convening in Baltimore, the Democrats nominate Franklin Pierce for president. In Concord, a cannon on Sand Hill (Centre Street at Merrimack Street) booms 282 times, once for each vote Pierce received.
June 2, 1819: The State House opens in Concord. The legislative session will be notable for halting the practice of state subsidy for the Congregationalist Church.
June 3, 2003: Daniel Littlefield of Meredith, on trial in Belknap County Superior Court on two counts of negligent homicide, told investigators that he heard a thud the night he ran his father’s Baja powerboat over John Hartman’s motorboat, the Monitor reports. But he said he was so sure he hadn’t hit someone that his larger concern was what his father would say when he returned his Baja to him, damaged.
June 3, 2002: In Manchester a lawyer who has been building a sexual abuse case against the Archdiocese of Boston for nearly a decade turns his attention to New Hampshire’s Bishop John McCormack. Attorney Roderick MacLeish of Boston questions McCormack behind closed doors for 5½ hours about his role handling sexual abuse allegations for Cardinal Bernard Law while working in the archdiocese in the mid-1990s.
June 3, 1902: The New Hampshire State Federation of Labor is organized.
June 3, 1895: A burglar or burglars clean out the State House safe, taking $6,000.
June 4, 2001: The Concord School Board approves a policy prohibiting students on sports teams or in clubs from attending gatherings where other students are using alcohol or drugs. If students are caught – regardless of whether they were drinking or getting high – they, along with a parent or guardian, will have to meet with a school counselor to discuss the risks associated with alcohol and drug abuse.
June 4, 1973: Gov. Mel Thomson establishes a box at the Concord post office where residents are asked to report criminal activities. Senate Vice President Harry Spanos is apoplectic. “What this latest effort does is to make us a state of informers, not unlike some of the totalitarian states of the past and present,” he says.
June 5, 2003: Just 29 hours after they cut holes in razor wire fences to escape from the North State Street prison in Concord, Philip Dick, Kevin Gil and Christopher McNeil at caught at a campground in Plymouth, Mass.
June 6, 1944: At 3:55 on this Tuesday morning, Captain Leo F. Blodgett of the Concord Fire Department sets off Concord’s downtown fire alarm, sounding two “eights.” This is the signal that the Allied invasion of Europe has begun. All over Concord, lights blink on as residents rise to turn on their radios. Gov. Robert O. Blood declares that this is a day for prayer and hope, not for celebration. Special church services throughout the state are widely attended.
