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. 6, 1963: Dr. Thomas Ritzman, a Concord obstetrician and a backer of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, tries to undo the damage he did the day before with a statement to an Associated Press reporter. Ritzman told the reporter that President Lyndon Johnson had a heart attack on the day of the Kennedy assassination. He based the claim on a photograph of LBJ gripping his left arm at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Now Ritzman tells a Monitor reporter he was misquoted. “I have no idea if President Johnson was suffering an attack of angina,” he says. “I certainly hope he was not.” The AP stands by its story.
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. 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. 7, 1941: The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, forcing the United States into the Second World War. By war’s end in 1945, nearly 60,000 New Hampshire citizens will have worn the uniform. Battle deaths from the state will total 1,599.
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, 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. 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.
Dec. 9, 1979: Concord School Superintendent Calvin Cleveland says a group of Gideons will not be allowed to distribute Bibles in the schools, saying it would open the “floodgate” to all religions.
Dec. 10, 1993: Barry Stem’s 967 acres on Concord’s Broken Ground, proposed over the years as a site for a golf course, a luxury housing project, a hotel and conference center and an office park, are sold at a foreclosure auction for $286,501.
Dec. 10, 2001: For the first time in the state’s history, a group of Concord-area agencies is trying to cooperate on transportation, the Monitor reports. After nearly two years of talks, CAT and some members of the Community Providers Network of Central New Hampshire, a group of 23 human service agencies, are on the brink of pooling their assets.
Dec. 11, 1989: Two hundred people crowd into the State House to protest a proposed takeover of PSNH by Northeast Utilities.
Dec. 11, 1999: Two Catholic priests whose recent marriages disqualify them from clerical service in the Roman Catholic Church become Episcopal priests in a liturgy at St. Paul’s Church in Concord. The service marks one of the first such clerical conversions in the state’s religious history.
Dec. 11, 2003: The Army National Guard’s Hillsboro-based 744th Transportation Company holds a deployment ceremony at the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord. The 140 members of the Guard unit will be gone for more than a year.
Dec. 12, 1999: Concord residents aren’t bashful about buying Christmas trees, the Monitor reports, even though the city has announced that when the holidays end, it won’t be picking up trees with the regular garbage collection. “Last year, an ice storm froze all the trees to the ground, and we were picking up trees until well into March,” says Vanessa Ghiden of the city’s General Services Department.
Dec. 12, 2000: About 100 Concord residents voice concerns about a retail development proposed for the city’s South End. For two hours, the crowd fires off questions about traffic, the demolition of old buildings and the impact on the neighborhood’s quality of life. In coming months, the proposal will be revised and then rejected by the planning board.
Dec. 12, 2001: After a community outpouring of support, bringing the project from being broke to a $25,000 surplus in less than two weeks, Operation Santa Claus concludes a successful season. The State Employees Association, which runs the charitable project, ships 3,281 bags of gifts to needy kids.
Dec. 12, 2002: Concord city officials announce that they’re entering into exclusive, six-month negotiations with a Portsmouth developer, Michael Simckik of One Hundred Market Group Ltd., to draw up plans for the Sears block site. A Concord builder – Tom Avallone’s Cobb Hill Construction – will partner with Simchik for those conversations.
