March 25, 2002: The Concord School Board unanimously approves a $50.8 million budget for the 2003-03 school year. The budget represents a 1 percent decrease from last year but does not include pay raises for faculty and staff.
March 25, 2000: Concord High defenseman Joe Garofalo has been named Division I hockey player of the year, the Monitor reports. It is the second year in a row he has won the award, which he shares this year with Bishop Guertin goalie Dave MacDonald.
March 25, 1998: Concord officials propose a change in the city’s policy toward low-income housing. If the council approves, Concord will no longer actively support the construction of low-income housing, but will support only the rehabilitation of existing buildings for low-income housing.
March 25, 1996: In a Concord motel room, Robert Blair kills his girlfriend and her handicapped child with a hammer.
March 26, 2003: Roland Allen of Penacook dies at the age of 82. For more than 60 years, Allen involved himself in nearly every aspect of Penacook life. From running the Penacook Fibre Co. to founding the village community center to serving on the local school board, he seemed to have been everywhere in town at once. In his spare time, he was a prolific songwriter, an amateur inventor and (gasp!) a devoted Yankees fan.
March 26, 2000: Concord’s Matt Bonner and the rest of the Florida Gators defeat Oklahoma State, 77-65, to advance to the Final Four of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
March 26, 1853: Concord elects its first mayor, Joseph Low, a grand-looking man with a gold-headed cane. Before this date, the city was a town, run by selectmen.
March 26, 1947: State Sen. Arthur Bean asks the Legislature to allow Concord and Bow to create a man-made lake on the Turkey River, to be called Concord Lake. The lake would be used for recreation and as a backup city water supply. It would be the state’s 10th largest, after Winnipesaukee, Squam, Winnisquam, Newfound, Ossipee, Wentworth, First Connecticut and Massabesic. The Legislature will approve the plan, but city voters will ultimately turn it down.
March 27, 2002: The Capitol Center for the Arts lifted the curtain this month on an ambitious $3 million capital campaign to give the city a sleeker, more functional and attractive focal point, the Monitor reports. If successful, supporters say the project will cement the center’s future as the premier cultural arts venue in northern New England.
March 27, 1998: Is it summer already? Concord residents enjoy a high temperature of 76 degrees.
March 27, 1965: Penacook school district voters will have several options before them: creating a cooperative school district with neighboring towns, merging with Concord or going it alone. Eventually, voters will approve creation of the Merrimack Valley School District.
March 28, 2003: The Concord Monitor is named New England Newspaper of the Year by the New England Newspaper Association. It is the 13th time the daily Monitor has won the award since the contest debuted 20 years ago.
March 29, 2003: Parents whose children attend Concord’s Dewey School are disappointed with the proposal to move the school’s first graders to Kimball school, the Monitor reports. “Dewey has an outstanding school culture,” said Mary Carter, whose daughter already went through the school and whose two younger children will head there in the next few years. “From my experience, schools are mysterious places in terms of what makes them exceptional, what makes them places that sit in children’s minds as golden places.”
March 29, 1945: The Monitor reports that Sgt. Walter Carlson, missing in action since Dec. 21, is now known to be a POW in Germany. Carlson, a Concord police sergeant before the war, will remain in a prison camp for 71 days before being liberated. After the war, he will be Concord’s longtime police chief.
March 29, 1909: George Foster, a real estate man and investor, takes over the Abbot and Downing Co., once again saving it from collapse. Foster will bail out just over two years later, and yet another new owner will try his hand.
March 30, 2002: Parking at Concord High School has been a problem for as long as anyone can remember, the Monitor reports. Now the city council has decided to do something about the parking dilemma. In its upcoming budget, the city administration plans to earmark about $40,000 to hire an expert to look for solutions.
March 31, 2002: A Concord man found dead in his Hall Street apartment was murdered, the police announce. Tobby Publicover, a 28-year-old described as a “gentle giant” by his mother, died of a gunshot wound.
March 31, 1731: Four years after Concord’s settlement begins, townspeople appropriate 10 pounds “for the instruction of the children in reading, etc.” The first teacher is Hannah Abbot, 30. The following year, the town will order the selectmen to “find books for the use of the inhabitants . . . on the town’s cost.”
March 31, 1791: David George, a Concord tailor, advertises his new prices: $3 for a genteel suit of superfine broadcloth; $2 for an ordinary suit of course cloth.
March 31, 1800: Concord residents vote “to accept a bell if one can be obtained by subscription, and cause the same to be rung at such times as the town may think proper.”
