Dec. 2, 1991: A fire consumes Souther’s Market on Liberty Street.
Dec. 2, 1942: Chuck Douglas is born. He will serve eight years on the New Hampshire Supreme Court, then step down, complaining that the pay is too low. Douglas will be elected to Congress in 1988, then be ousted in 1990 by Democrat Dick Swett.
Dec. 2 1996: The Monitor reports on some good State House advice from former governor Judd Gregg to Gov.-elect Jeanne Shaheen: “When you go to the bathroom, try to avoid the fourth-grade class from Epping being in the bathroom at the same time. We’re a very down-to-earth state here. The governor goes to the bathroom with everybody else. So that’s a big issue.”
Dec. 3, 2002: The Chico Enterprise-Record, a California newspaper, reports that Andrew Mickel’s parents turned him in to the police after he called them and bragged about shooting a Red Bluff, Calif., police officer Nov. 19. Mickel was arrested a week later when he surrendered to the Concord police and FBI agents after a two-and-a-half hour standoff at the Holiday Inn on North Main Street.
Dec. 3, 1991: John Sununu, who left New Hampshire’s corner office three years earlier to become President Bush’s most powerful adviser on domestic politics, resigns as White House chief of staff. Sununu writes that he did not want to become a “political negative” for the president and a “drag” on his reelection chances.
Dec. 3, 1847: For $1,000, Edward H. Rollins buys R.C. Osgood’s drugstore on Main Street opposite the State House. Rollins will become a leading Republican, and the back room of the store will be his political headquarters, where policies are crafted and candidates made.
Dec. 3, 1985: Louis Cartier walks into Concord High School with a loaded shotgun. After Cartier holds a student hostage and the police at bay, a police officer shoots and kills Cartier.
Dec. 5, 1908: Fire Chief William Green sets out for the movies at Phenix Hall, but even though the same show played at the nearby Opera House for more than a year, the Phenix is filled. There are plans to convert yet another building in the Durgin block into a theater. “Verily, the people are moving picture mad,” Mayor Charles Corning writes in his diary.
Dec. 5, 1999: A fire breaks out at South Congregational Church in Concord 45 minutes before a scheduled performance of Handel’s Messiah. After about 80 singers and musicians in formal attire gather on Pleasant Street, they head for nearby St. Paul’s Church, where about 200 people are treated to an impromptu rendition of the oratorio’s most famous section.
Dec. 6, 2001: The New Hampshire Technical Institute has been accredited as a two-year community college by the New England Association of Schools and College’s Commission on Institutions of Higher Learning, the same group that assesses the University of New Hampshire and the state colleges in Keene and Plymouth, the Monitor reports. “This is one of the most significant moments in the history of NHTI,” said President Bill Simonton. “It will probably set the stage for the next 40 years of college.”
Dec. 6, 2000: Gov. Jeanne Shaheen nominates James Duggan to the state Supreme Court. Duggan, 58, is a professor at Franklin Pierce Law Center and a criminal defense lawyer who has argued before the high court many times. Retiring Justice Sherman Horton says he’s pleased with the selection. “The whole court really respects him,” Horton says. “I think he’ll be well-received by my colleagues.”
Dec. 6, 1999: The Concord School Board agrees to increase the salaries of permanent substitute teachers and hire two more for the middle school and high school to share. School officials say that because of the strong economy they’ve had to scramble on occasion to find coverage.
Dec. 6, 1905: Elizabeth Yates is born in Buffalo. Living in Peterborough, she will become a famed author of books for young people, including, in 1951, Amos Fortune, Free Man, winner of the Newbery medal. Her husband, William McGreal, will write of her in 1951: “She has plenty of courage, a strong faith and a native expectancy of good. Living with her is a high adventure.” She will live her later years in Concord and die in the city in 2001.
Dec. 6, 1963: Concord Alderman Eugene C. Struckhoff urges that the city lead the battle against a Boston & Maine Railroad plan to end passenger service to New Hampshire.
Dec. 7, 1999: On the anniversary of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, presidential candidate John McCain warns a Concord audience that the U.S. military is not sufficiently prepared. “The fault lies not with those who serve, nor with their uniformed leadership,” McCain says. “It rests with political leaders on both sides of the aisle.”
Dec. 7, 1941: While dining with U.S. ambassador John G. Winant of Concord, Winston Churchill learns of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The silver lining for Churchill: The United States will at last enter the war.
Dec. 7, 1965: Concord’s new Douglas N. Everett Ice Arena on Loudon Road is dedicated. The opening event: a hockey game between Dartmouth and UNH.
Dec. 7, 1790: The Concord Herald reports: “No Boston post is arrived; all news we believe is frozen up by the cold weather; we have not even a report with which we can serve up a paragraph for our news-hungry customers.”
Dec. 8, 1979: Concord City Manager Jim Smith rescinds the fire department’s ban on live Christmas trees in public buildings.
Dec. 8, 1998: The federal government holds a hearing in Concord to discuss removing the peregrine falcon from the nation’s endangered species list. The raptor has made a remarkable comeback in New Hampshire, which boasts 12 nesting pairs.
