March 17, 2003: Former governor Howard Dean, riding a wave of liberal dissent over the looming war against Iraq, offers local voters an alternative to both President Bush and to much of the ever-expanding field of Democratic presidential candidates. Invading Iraq will be the “wrong war at the wrong time” Dean tells a cheering crowd that packs Concord Auditorium at noontime.
March 17, 2000: The attorney general announces a breakthrough in the 1981 murder of Concord resident Yvonne Fine. Joseph Whittey, who’s been in prison on an unrelated attempted murder conviction since 1990, is now charged with first-degree murder in the death of the 81-year-old woman.
March 18, 2001: The college basketball season for Concord’s Matt Bonner and his Florida teammates comes to an abrupt end when the Gators, a No. 3 seed, are routed by No. 11 Temple in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Bonner, a sophomore, scores 13 points and grabs 11 rebounds in the loss.
March 18, 1949: Concord native Edward H. Brooks wins promotion to lieutenant general in the U.S. Army. From a second lieutenant of cavalry during World War I through his post-World War II service in the Caribbean, Brooks has had a distinguished military career. He won the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism in World War I and the Silver Star, Bronze Star and French Croix de Guerre, among other decorations, during World War II.
March 18, 1852: George G. Fogg, Concord editor, Free Soil leader and temperance man, puts the best face on his party’s election loss to the Democrats. “The men who have carried this state by rum this year must take the responsibility for it next year,” he writes. “The wedge they have so successfully used to pide and conquer their opponents will, ere long, be found severing the joints and marrow of their organization.”
March 19, 2002: In Concord after less than three hours of deliberation, jurors decide that Dwayne Thompson murdered his longtime roommate Robert Provencher, the man known by Main Street regulars as “Cigar Bob” for his ever-present smokes of choice.
March 19, 1967: The calendar says spring is about to start, but few believe it. The low temperature in Concord falls to 16 below zero, tying the record for the coldest March day in the 20th century. This follows a reading of 13 below the day before and 10 below the day before that.
March 21, 2003: As the war accelerates in Iraq, residents throughout New Hampshire react. “I have really mixed feelings about it,” says Debbie Heckman, as she gets her hair cut at Headlines in Concord. “I support the soldiers and sailors 100 percent, but I just wish it hadn’t come to this.”
March 21, 1820: An editorial in Concord’s New Hampshire Patriot says the Missouri compromise, while disappointing on the whole, “succeeded in rescuing from slavery a vast tract of country, which would otherwise have been expos’d to this dreadful curse.”
March 21, 1996: Concord City Manger Julia Griffin says she will resign. She will take a job as Hanover’s town manager.
March 22, 1851: Former New Hampshire governor and U.S. senator Isaac Hill dies at the age of 63. Hill was once editor of Concord’s New Hampshire Patriot and served in President Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet.”
March 22, 1965: The Monitor reports growing disapproval of a bill to impose a $5,000 minimum pay law for teachers. Towns would have to foot the bill and leaders say it would infringe on local control. The bill will be defeated.
March 23, 2001: Concord was New Hampshire’s fastest-growing city in the 1990s, the U.S. Census Bureau announces. The official 2000 population is listed as 40,687.
March 23, 1867: Forty-two years after becoming Concord’s Congregationalist minister, the Rev. Nathaniel Bouton resigns. During his tenure, Bouton became a trustee of Dartmouth College and, in 1856, published a history of Concord. Seven months before leaving the pulpit, he was named state historian.
March 23, 1986: Congressman Bob Smith visits the state prison in Concord to tell veterans jailed there of his efforts to find Americans missing in Southeast Asia. Smith says the inmates seem to identify with American servicemen missing in action and held as prisoners of war.
