April 29, 2003: The former Blue Cross-Blue Shield building may not be vacant much longer, the Monitor reports. Local developer Steve Duprey purchased an option on the property this winter and now has several interested tenants, including the College of Lifelong Learning. The college wants to consolidate its administrative offices and local classrooms somewhere in Concord. The chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire also may relocate his office there.
April 30, 2003: After six months of haggling, the city reaches a tentative deal to buy the former Penacook tannery. The city plans to pay Dana Willis $143,000 for the condemned, contaminated tannery and 2.5 acres of land. The deal means the end of 15 years of uncertainty for Penacook residents.
April 30, 2001: Warren Doane coaches his final baseball game. Concord High’s coach since 1973, Doane has been diagnosed with cancer.
April 30, 2000: Tito Santana and other professional wrestlers perform at Bishop Brady High School in a charity event in memory of slain Epsom police officer Jeremy Charron. The proceeds go to a new scholarship fund, and Concord Mayor Bill Veroneau presents the Charron family with a plaque proclaiming the day Jeremy Charron Day.
April 30, 1697: In Penacook along the Merrimack River, Hannah Dustin and two other captives turn on the Indians who kidnapped them and killed Dustin’s newborn child in March. They catch all the Indians asleep, kill 10 of them and return home to Haverhill, Mass. For the 10 scalps they bring with them, they collect a bounty of 50 pounds.
April 30, 1965: Gov. John King cuts the ribbon at the grand opening of the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord. Tuition for state residents will be $300 a year. Out-of-staters will pay $800.
May 1, 2003: A Merrimack County judge sentences Mark Haskins, 33, and Edward MacDonald, 46, to prison for killing Rose Yeaton almost five years ago. The house-bound 91-year-old was brutally beaten to death in her Fisherville Road home. Judge Edward Fitzgerald gives Haskins 40 years to life and MacDonald 20 years to life.
May 1, 1891: By custom, Concord’s May Horn ushers in a day of celebrating the final escape from winter. The horn is peculiar to Concord. “The ‘oldest inhabitant’ cannot recall a first day of May in his boyhood when the din of the horn did not reverberate in some wee hour,” the Monitor reports.
May 1, 1903: After 48 years of Prohibition, New Hampshire begins issuing licenses for liquor sales.
May 1, 1975: Gov. Mel Thomson engages in a shouting match with 100 welfare recipients protesting a 25 percent cut in benefits. “Does anyone here want a job?” he asks, pointing to a Department of Employment Security van across from the State House. “We want your job and your pay,” they shout back.
May 1, 1925: The Granite Monthly magazine reports approvingly that Concord, Hillsboro, Goffstown, Peterborough and Milford are all planning new high schools. “If we are to believe what some people say, that the young folks of today are headed nowhere in particular and in a hurry to get there, we are at least glad to know they are to be educated on the way.”
May 2, 2003: The state Supreme Court upholds the conviction of Joseph Whittey, meaning that the 42-year-old who strangled Yvonne Fine of Concord 22 years ago will spend the rest of his life in prison. Whittey had asked the Supreme Court for a new trial, arguing that the DNA technology used to convict him of first-degree murder had not been sufficiently tested. In addition, he said that the trial judge should have removed herself from the case because she had been a prosecutor in the attorney general’s office during the 19-year investigation.
May 2, 2001: The temperature in Concord hits 91 degrees, the hottest it’s been on this date since 1930.
May 2, 1939: The news in New York and around the world of baseball is that Lou Gehrig, after playing 2,130 consecutive games for the Yankees, has sat one out. Without Gehrig, the Yankees clobber Detroit 22-2. In a nine-run seventh inning, Yankees third baseman Red Rolfe, the Pride of Penacook, hits two doubles and drives in three runs.
May 2, 1977: Two hundred seventy-seven of the 1,414 anti-nuclear demonstrators arrested at Seabrook on April 30 are moved to the armory on Concord Heights.
May 2, 1966: Former vice president Richard Nixon lands at Concord Airport for a speech at the Highway Hotel. Of the situation in Vietnam, he says: “We cannot tolerate the administration’s apparent resignation to a five to 10-year war in South Vietnam because this will eventually mean an American defeat.”
May 3, 1967: Concord High School bars the press from covering Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s appearance at the school. Referring to a recent incident in which he was prohibited from speaking at Yale University, Wallace says: “I am glad they are barred – and not me – this time.” After the CHS speech, Wallace heads for Dartmouth, where screaming, jeering students force him from the speaker’s platform and surround his car after he has left. They pound the car with their fists for 10 minutes amid signs that read “Wallace is a racist.”
May 3, 1943: Because of rampant juvenile delinquency, Concord churches ask the city to impose a 9 p.m. curfew on teenagers. Police Chief Arthur McIsaac says he’ll consider the request.
May 4, 1943: The Concord police say they have solved hundreds of thefts with the arrest of 16 high school and junior high school boys. For the most part, the crimes involve objects taken from cars and houses. The boys range in age from 13 to 16.
May 4, 1944: Fire kills 2,000 chickens at Harold Ford’s farm on Loudon Road.
May 5, 1945: Maj. Gen. Edward H. Brooks, a Concord native, accepts the battlefield surrender of the German 19th Army. Brooks is commander of the Sixth Corps.
May 5, 1944: An epidemic of German measles in Concord has driven the absentee list at city schools above 100.
