Jan. 23, 1924: Carl Sandburg appears at the Concord City Auditorium. He reads his poems, plays his guitar and sings ballads and songs. According to the Monitor, Sandburg calls modern poetry “free” since it is “not marked off into measures and cadences.” He also remarks on the ships and railroads of the modern world, saying that because “the earth today is belted with steel, there is much an interweaving of cultures as has never before been known. Acceleration, the chaos of life today, is reflected in the poetry.”
Jan. 23, 2000: Concord’s Tara Mounsey is named one of two defensemen on the Hockey News All-World Team of the 1990s. Mounsey’s Olympic teammate Cammi Granato is the other American in the starting six; they are joined by three Canadians and a Finn.
Jan. 23, 2003: Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, after a visit to Pleasant View Retirement center in Concord, accuses his Democratic presidential primary opponents of trying to run against the very Republican policies they’d supported in Congress. “I think our party is suffering because we keep nominating people who will say anything they have to say to get elected,” he says.
Jan. 24, 1901: Wilbur Sweatt, 22, of Penacook, is accidentally stabbed in the chest by his friend, Fred Carr, while playing with a knife. Sweatt dies Feb. 6, and an autopsy will show that the knife pierced the lung and cut a half inch into his heart. It was considered a wonderful case that he could have lived so long with such a wound, a local history reports.
Jan. 24, 1988: City leaders unveil plans for a new district courthouse to be built on Clinton Street. The cost: $3.5 million. “We realized 10 years ago that the present court is not adequate. It has not been an easy process,” says Mayor Elizabeth Hager.
Jan. 24, 1992: Speaking to students at St. Paul’s School, Democratic presidential candidate Paul Tsongas is asked to assess another candidate, Republican Pat Buchanan. “Pat Buchanan,” he answers. “America first. Drives a Mercedes. Don’t you think at some point he would have said to himself, ‘Hey . . .’
Jan. 24, 2002: The Concord Police Department announces that George Pregent of Concord has been arrested and charged with four felony-level counts of possession with intent to distribute marijuana. The police found 78 pounds of the drug, the largest recovery of marijuana in the department’s history.
Jan. 25, 2000: Concord receives nearly 9 inches of snow, hardly an extraordinary occurrence for late January; however, it is the first significant snowstorm of the season, and for that to come in late Jan. is unusual.
Jan. 25, 2003: At the state Democratic Party’s annual convention in Concord, both U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt and former Vermont governor Howard Dean promise to do away with tax cuts for the wealthy, provide universal health insurance and fight terrorism through energy policy. They rouse the crowd with a vow to make the world safe for liberals again.
Jan. 26, 1839: In Concord, rain falls for 24 hours straight. The Merrimack rises 15 feet in 15 hours. Several bridges are destroyed.
Jan. 26, 1968: U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy brings his presidential campaign to Concord. He meets with Gov. John King, who is leading President Johnson’s campaign in the state, and says of New Hampshire: “It looks like Minnesota.”
Jan. 27, 1943: An anonymous Webster man applies to the Concord War and Price Rationing Board for 600 pounds of sugar. “I make alky mash and need sugar to make it ferment and taste right,” he writes. The board rejects his request.
Jan. 27, 1965: Concord Electric Company asks permission of the Federal Power Commission to close down its only generating plant, located at Sewalls Falls on the Merrimack River.
Jan. 27, 1983: Concord native John Bluto makes a brief TV appearance on an episode of Cheers. He plays an insurance salesman, a role he played in real life in Concord for more than 10 years.
Jan. 27, 2001: John Dowd is elected chairman of the state Republican Party. He replaces Steve Duprey of Concord.
Jan. 27, 2003: The Concord City Council votes to take the historic Rolfe barn through eminent domain, stopping Ken Epworth, the barn’s owner, from dismantling the building and selling the parts to an unnamed client. The Penacook Historical Society asked the city to step in so it can use the barn as a museum and community center.
Jan. 28, 1942: John G. Winant of Concord, the U.S. ambassador to England, tells a national defense luncheon in London that the United States will recruit an army of 7 million men. “Idleness has not been part of our national life,” he says. “That is not America.”
Jan. 28, 1986: The space shuttle Challenger explodes 72 seconds after liftoff, killing all aboard, including Concord High teacher Christa McAuliffe.
Jan. 28, 2000: Mel Bolden, the charismatic portraitist and political activist who became a friend to people of all ages around the Concord area, dies on his 81st birthday. Bolden, whose artistic career spanned six decades, gained particular notoriety for his portraits of Concord teacher Christa McAuliffe, who died on the same day in 1986 in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. One of the portraits hangs in the National Air and Space Museum.
Jan. 28, 2002: Convicted killer and Monitor columnist Ray Barham, 72, dies from cancer in the state prison infirmary. He was convicted in 1983 of first-degree murder after shooting his estranged wife’s boyfriend, and started writing for the paper’s editorial page in 1987. Editor Mike Pride will remember him by writing, “Ray joked about wanting to win the Pulitzer Prize. He said it was the only way to change the headline on his obituary. In fact, for many years it was his writing, not the killing, that defined him. He could not outlast the sentence he had brought upon himself, but his pen bore him through it.”
Jan. 29, 2001: Jerry Madden, a 21-year veteran of the Concord Police Department, is promoted to chief.
Jan. 29, 2002: Citing a lack of evidence, a Merrimack County Superior Court judge sends Richmond Co.’s supermarket and shopping center proposal back to the Concord planning board, overturning the board’s unanimous decision against the Massachusetts company and upsetting some South End residents.
