Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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If you're on the hunt for a sweetheart this Valentine's week, here's an idea: Visit a local nursing home or senior resident center. Those places are packed with them. Take Sarabel Hall Key, for instance. A couple of months past her 97th birthday, Key lives at the Beehive Home in Portales, where I found her holding court at the piano Saturday morning as she often does. Her good friend Kenny Reed had dropped by with his mandolin. The two of them kept a small, but exceedingly...
Fifty years ago - in the early spring of 1969 - Jackie Cooper Ingle was a freshman at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, an elementary education major from Kenna who happened to be an avid Greyhound basketball fan. She was not alone. "I remember the lines to get into the arena wrapped around the complex," she said. "The gym was packed; every seat was taken with standing room only. You didn't dare go get popcorn or you would lose your seat. The team and the games were...
With basketball season in full swing, it’s also homecoming time for a number of local schools. Dora and Melrose welcome alumni home Friday; Elida follows on Feb. 8. When I hear the word “homecoming,” I’m launched back in time and think of two things: chicken wire and paper napkins. If you do, too, chances are you are my age or older and attended a small school. I’m unsure who deserves the credit for the idea that festive décor could be crafted from chicken wire stapled on...
Two years apart — almost to the day — eastern New Mexico lost two women who might well be the last of their breed. Marie Roberson of Portales died Jan. 14 at age 91; Tillie Shaw of Clovis passed on Jan. 18, 2017, at age 99. Here’s one way I’d heard them described: Roberson was Roosevelt County’s Tillie Shaw, and Shaw was Curry County’s Marie Roberson. Had I been making the journey west 200 years ago, they are two women I’d have wanted on my wagon train. Marie Roberson and Till...
Eastern New Mexico University is preparing to throw a party inspired by the golden anniversary of its 1969 national championship men’s basketball team. And they are reaching out to the community for some help. Before you grab for your wallet, rest easy. They’re not on the hunt for contributions. Rather, they’d like assistance tracking down a few missing players from what they call “the Miller era,” the five years that head basketball coach Harry Miller led the Greyhound...
When a small child has the misfortune of somehow entering the legal system — usually through no fault of their own — sometimes the best friend that child can have is a Court Appointed Special Advocate or CASA volunteer. Unfortunately, that’s a service that has been missing in eastern New Mexico for almost a year, according to Erinn Burch, executive director of the United Way of Eastern New Mexico. She said it was lost when the 9th Judicial District’s Family and Childre...
A favorite book of mine surfaced this week at a perfect time for the annual half-hearted attempt at self-improvement that we all know as New Year’s resolutions. I rarely break a New Year’s resolution, because I rarely make one. But this year, I am making a concerted effort to spend more time reading the written word printed in ink on paper, and less time peering at electronic screens of all sorts. Nancy Pearl’s wonderful book about books called, most appropriately, “Book...
As soon as my brothers and I were old enough to write, we had one hard and fast rule at our house: If we received a gift, we weren’t allowed to use it until a thank-you note was written. On this day after Christmas, I realize I’ve been in violation of that rule for a gift I’ve received in increments for the past quarter century or so. I’m using this column to pen a public thank you, in part because I know many of you have received this same gift. Denise Burnett, this one’s f...
For the cost of a quarter, I picked up a treasure at the most recent used book sale hosted by the Friends of the Portales Public Library: a slim paper-bound stapled volume, 81 photocopied pages long. It’s called “Portales and Roosevelt County NRTA Collection of Education Personalities.” NRTA stands for National Retired Teachers Association. The collection was assembled in honor of our country’s bicentennial in 1976, and contains information and accounts written by a handful...
When Shelden Breshears was introduced on the air this month as the newest member of the KFDA weather team, it came as no surprise to any of us who have known him since he was a tornado-obsessed kindergartener at Dora Consolidated Schools in 2001. Breshears started working with the Amarillo-based CBS affiliate as an intern in the summer of 2016, and currently produces the 6 p.m. nightly news show. He's been a storm chaser - both at heart and in person - since he was just a tot...
Calling all local bakers: The hunt is on for cookies — 10,000 of them, if you’re counting — to sweeten the lives of the young men and women stationed at Cannon Air Force Base this holiday season. Shawna Rai Broussard-Jones’ real job is serving as a first sergeant for the 27th Special Operations Wing Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Cannon, but this week she and the other sergeants have a special mission. It’s all about sugar and butter and eggs. “The Cookie Drop is an annual e...
PORTALES - For his highly visible and well-known collection of windmills, Bill Dalley will long be remembered as Portales' "windmill man." But at his memorial service Thursday at the Portales Methodist Church he helped build, Dalley was also eulogized as a builder of homes, of students, of a family, and of his community. Dalley, 87, died Nov. 25 in Clovis. For most of life, Portales was his home, and for 36 years, he played a role in the lives of countless students as an educa...
I have a love-hate relationship with the telephone, but it wasn’t always that way. Our first phone was part of a party line, a service we shared with seven other families. Each of us had a ring specific to our home, but there was, of course, nothing to prevent others from listening in to an ongoing conversation. (Alas, I was too young to properly take advantage of the rich eavesdropping opportunities available right in my own living room.) Our fellow party-line members i...
Unlike those merry characters in the folk song, “Over the River and Through the Woods,” I’ve never once boarded a sleigh and raced through “white and drifted snow” to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving. The rambling house where I live grew from a core built by my grandparents long years ago. When my parents married, they built on an end for themselves and the two couples lived together but apart for the next few years. My grandmother died a year or so before I came alon...
Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the Armistice signed to end hostilities in World War I, giving our communities an extra reason to pull out all the stops with at least a dozen Veterans Day activities this year. (See the events calendar for a full listing.) One in Portales will be especially poignant for locals with long ties to the area, an evening-long celebration scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Saturday at Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9515, 316 S. Main, Portales. Retired...
I started helping assemble the events calendar for the Eastern New Mexico News this month and it has made me keenly aware of two things. First, it’s crazy how many things there are to do on any given day here on the High Plains. Second, I now never know what day it is. Between cobbling together the calendar a few days ahead of time for each issue of the News, and then promoting events that are up to two weeks down the road, I find myself perpetually confused. But it’s a goo...
It takes Lisa Kia of Clovis both hands now to count the number of times her service dog, Levi, has saved her life. Kia and her team from ArchAngel K-9 Dog Training were at the Peanut Valley Festival in Portales last weekend, demonstrating skills of their four-legged companions and sharing some amazing stories. Kia’s dog, Levi, is an enthusiastic border collie (is there any other kind?) who has been trained to identify gluten and “alert” his owner so she can avoid what is, f...
Cousins of mine visited last month, and on one evening we engaged in a time-honored family tradition. We hauled out our ancient slide projector, set up the wobbly screen, and gathered together for a journey into our collective childhood. In our family, our mother was the designated photographer. Her medium of choice was Kodak film. It came in rolls of 24 or 36 exposures. With rare exception, ours was a 36-exposure family. It might be hard for a smart-phone generation to...
The best part of Eastern New Mexico University’s homecoming is the annual recognition of people who have made significant contributions to the school, their communities, or their professions. It’s extra special when it happens to include folks who have deep roots in our part of the world. Retired physician Lonnie Alexander came to Portales from Espanola in 1972 to study agriculture at ENMU, the first step on an education road that next led him to the University of New Mex...
Occasionally the stars align in eastern New Mexico to make for a perfectly quirky evening. That happens Thursday. Habitat for Humanity of Roosevelt and Curry counties is hosting its annual fundraising meal, and the Eastern New Mexico University Department of Theater and Digital Film-Making opens a comical revue of Shakespeare’s works for the first of five local performances. Poor William Shakespeare probably never got to try a jalapeno bratwurst. More’s the pity. For...
Like many people, I’m a creature resistant to change. On chilly mornings, I still shrug into a sweater that I bought at the Anthony’s store on the Portales square when I was a junior in high school. You’d think in 40 years I might have found a replacement, but no. I like this one. I don’t need anything different. I felt the same way when Eastern New Mexico University announced plans to renovate Golden Library and turn it into a “student success center.” I balked. I whined. I...
I set out in late July collecting information to write about the 50th anniversary of Elbert Muncy's death. It never occurred to me how hard it would be to find a photograph of the beloved Portales pharmacist who was killed on Aug. 18, 1968, at the old B and J Drug on the courthouse square. Images of his wife, Marge — also a well-known Portales figure who spent years teaching first graders at L.L. Brown Elementary and guiding a Sunday School class at First Presbyterian C...
College students often end up with a lot on their plates. Many are living away from home for the first time and adjusting to life in a small space with a perfect (or maybe not so perfect) stranger, while juggling academic challenges, car payments, work and study demands. Unfortunately, food is sometimes the one thing missing on that proverbial plate. I’m delighted that Eastern New Mexico University has unveiled a new program this fall to address that problem. The Greyhound M...
Stephen and Cassie Hardin of Portales are two of those darned millennials. You know the ones I’m talking about — that generation born from 1981-1996 who are often targeted for criticism. Let me tell you what this couple has already done, not once but twice, in the year and a half since they bought their first home in Portales: They have gone door to door passing out invitations and invited all their neighbors over to their front yard for cookouts. Wait a minute. Aren’t mille...
Almost three years ago, I was in a Portales audience for one of the many local presentations done by Melveta Walker, who has been the director of Eastern New Mexico University’s Golden Library for the last 19 years. Walker was pounding the pavement to let people know about the massive renovations that were in store for the facility that anchors the eastern side of the ENMU campus. Many of those looming changes were due to a factor that didn’t exist even in the imaginations of...
