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, 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, 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. 19, 1920: Weeks before the election, Gov. James M. Cox of Ohio, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaks from a platform beneath the Lafayette elm on the State House lawn. Cox, a chief proponent of the League of Nations, assails Warren G. Harding, the Republican nominee, for claiming that France opposes the League. “The facts justify the conclusion that Sen. Harding has stupidly, though deliberately, attempted to deceive the people of the United States,” Cox says.
He blames the Senate for politicizing the issue, saying that until recently Americans saw the League of Nations as “the voice of God speaking to the consciences of the world.” With the Monitor's support, Harding will win the election, easily carrying Concord and New Hampshire.
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, 1957: A thousand people attend the ceremony dedicating Concord's new Rundlett Junior High School in the South End. After a tour, most express satisfaction with the $1.4 million school.
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. 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, 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. 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, 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.”
