March 25, 2002: The Concord School Board unanimously approves a $50.8 million budget for the 2002-03 school year. The budget represents a 1 percent decrease from last year but does not include pay raises for faculty and staff.
March 25, 1996: In a Concord motel room, Robert Blair kills his girlfriend and her handicapped child with a hammer.
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 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.
