March 27, 1965: Penacook School District voters will have several options before them: creating a cooperative school district with neighboring towns, merging with Concord or going it alone. Eventually, voters will approve creation of the Merrimack Valley School District.
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 28, 1919: Gov. John Bartlett signs a law prohibiting the teaching, advocacy or practice of Bolshevik ideas in New Hampshire. Bartlett issues a statement warning “Bolsheviki” that he has ordered law enforcement “to rake the state with a fine-tooth comb to find evidence of their work. . . . No cost will be spared to suppress the social viper.”
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.
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 30, 2002: Parking at Concord High School has been a problem for as long as anyone can remember, the Monitor reports. Now the city council has decided to do something about the parking dilemma. In its upcoming budget, the city administration plans to earmark about $40,000 to hire an expert to look for solutions.
March 31, 1731: Four years after Concord's settlement begins, townspeople appropriate 10 pounds “for the instruction of the children in reading, etc.” The first teacher is Hannah Abbot, 30. The following year, the town will order the selectmen to “find books for the use of the inhabitants . . . on the town's cost.”
March 31, 1800: Concord residents vote “to accept a bell if one can be obtained by subscription, and cause the same to be rung at such times as the town may think proper.”
March 31, 2002: A Concord man found dead in his Hall Street apartment was murdered, the police announce. Tobby Publicover, a 28-year-old described as a “gentle giant” by his mother, died of a gunshot wound.
April 1, 1830: Meeting on Fast Day at Concord's Old North Church, leading citizens resolve to form the city's first temperance society.
April 1, 1861: Charles J. French is born. He will grow up to be mayor of Concord, serving from 1909 to 1915 and again in 1918-19. “He was a remarkably able vote-getter, winning over many strong men who wished to obtain the coveted position as chief executive of the city,” reports the Granite Monthly magazine. French was also an accomplished wrestler and umpire.
April 1, 1997: In a bout of April Fools weather on baseball's Opening Day, Concord gets 7 inches of snow. Jaffrey gets 27 inches.
April 1, 2000: Concord's Matt Bonner gets a taste of Final Four basketball as a freshman, scoring four points and grabbing two rebounds in 14 minutes of play. His team, the University of Florida, defeats North Carolina, 71-59, to advance to the championship game.
April 2, 1851: Concord's town meeting votes to end the tolling of bells at funerals. The practice, the resolution says, “is productive of no good, and may, in case of the illness of the living, result in evil.”
April 2, 1988: In a Gile concert attended by about 700 people, flutist Jean Pierre Rampal plays Concord's city auditorium. He tells a reporter that he likes to consider the flute not an instrument but an extension of himself. When he plays well, he says, it is as though he has played no instrument at all.
April 2, 2001: Concord High is forced to cancel its first tennis match of the season, and the lacrosse team works out on asphalt at the Everett Arena parking lot. The reason? All the March snow hasn't melted.
