Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Don McAlavy: Local Columist “A ‘baby tornado’ formed in the Claud community, on Saturday, July 5, 1930,” according to a letter received this morning (July 9) from the correspondent of the News-Journal at Claud, 12 miles north of Clovis. “Telephone lines were down and even the rural mail carrier could not make the trip through that community,” said the correspondent in explaining lateness in getting the story into the Clovis Evening News-Journal office. According to the story, W. E. Clarence and Harry Charlton watched the...
The airplane under the active control of Lt. Smarling and Mechanic Johnson left Roswell Monday at exactly 9:30 a.m. and arrived at Portales at 10:30 a.m., the time of leaving Roswell having been wired to the stationmaster here, according to the Portales newspaper on May 12, 1919. The day was an ideal one for the purpose of the Fifth Liberty Loan Drive, and fully 1500 people had gathered on the school section to witness the demonstration for the Fifth Liberty Loan Drive. Lt. Smarling did several interesting and difficult stunt...
Six people were killed and three others critically injured in a head-on collision three miles east of Fort Sumner on Highway 60 on the night of Nov. 16, 1950, the Clovis News Journal reported the next day. Five apparently died instantly and the other was dead on arrival at Clovis Memorial Hospital. The crash telescoped the two vehicles, fatally injuring four of the seven occupants of a station wagon and both occupants of the other car. Positive identification of four of the dead awaited the arrival of Harry Whitmer, business... Full story
Don McAlavy: local columnist Haney Tate of Ranchvale was one of my best friends. He was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and I was a smart-aleck Republican, yet we didn’t let politics get in the way of our historian jobs. Many times he would jump in and do my newspaper column when I was away from Clovis. One time I published a history quiz in the paper, some 25 hard trivia questions. Haney won it. If I needed some information in writing one of my columns, I would go see him out at his farm, or meet him in town. From the day he w... Full story
Wal-Mart broke ground for a store at the North Plains Mall on Jan. 10, 1985. It was the mall’s biggest anchor store. Construction on the Wal-Mart Supercenter at 3728 North Prince St. on the old Charles Sorgen homestead started in 1998. A lake alongside Llano Estacado Boulevard going west from North Prince was named Sorgen Lake. It is just southwest of the Wal-Mart store. Bob Linville, a backup singer for Buddy Holly and Normal Petty, worked in management at the North Plains Mall Wal-Mart. He was often called to business m... Full story
Back in 1973 patrolman Gene Dawson of the Clovis Police Department stumbled into a lost-and-found item no one wanted to claim while cruising down an alley. “Tell them they can have the lumber if they don’t want it,” Dawson said. He found a black wooden coffin, the kind that Count Dracula would have felt at home in. Bill Southard, editor at the Clovis News Journal, in his “Memo From the Editor” wrote the following: “After he read the story in Sunday’s CNJ about a policeman finding a black coffin abandoned in an alley, Don McAl...
Sam Walton was born in Kingfish, Okla., on March 29, 1918. He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1940. From there he began his career by opening the first of several Ben Franklin franchises in Arkansas. Finding that he couldn’t manage these franchises as he thought best, he gave them up and sought greener pastures. In the northwest corner of Arkansas, he opened his first Wal-Mart in the rather small town of Rogers. In his retail store his idea was to charge low prices for his merchandise and that soon became a m... Full story
Don McAlavy : Local Columnist A career in politics began for a young man in 1960. Back in 1960, a young farmer decided he’d run for position as state representative of Curry County, the job held by Frank Foster. Now right there you have to admire this farmer for his courage — Foster was like an institution. He was at one time the superintendent of our county schools and a popular man. Did I tell you Foster was a staunch Democrat? And did I tell you that Hoyt Pattison, the young farmer, was a Republican? Hoyt didn’t want...
Don McAlavy : Local Columnist A friend of mine, Jack Chambliss, and I had the fortunate luck to work with an honest man who would not accept $75 a week pay. This was at the old Clovis Printing Co., at 313 Main, where Chambliss worked in the typewriter shop in the back of the print shop and met this honest man, H. Lee Thompson. Thompson had read an ad in a Dallas paper while in Galveston, Texas, and saw where someone in Clovis was wanting a typewriter repairman. He got on a bus and still had the Dallas paper in his hand when...
Back when this robbery happened, it was the talk of Curry County. The New Mexico State Police were phoned at their headquarters in Clovis at 5:15 p.m., and all law enforcement agencies in the county were quickly alerted. Three armed robbers, unknown and unidentified at the time of the robbery, had driven up and stopped under some trees in midtown St. Vrain. “I saw their car parked across from my Sunshine gas station, and they got out and sat down at the picnic table near the highway. They were probably waiting for my company...
A Grand Ole Opry legend dies; graduated from CHS in 1947 Billy Walker died May 21 in a wreck on an Alabama interstate. He was 77. His wife, Bettie, and two of his band members also died when a van they were riding in ran off Interstate 65 south of Montgomery and overturned. His grandson, Joshna Brooks, 21, was in a critical condition. They were returning home to Hendersonville, Tenn., which is near Nashville. Billy Walker was born in Ralls, Texas, in 1929. He was one of eight children. At age 6 his mother died and his father...
I have never played a game of golf! I play a good game of chess. But my class of CHS 50 athletes has this INZ AND OUTZ Golf Tournament each summer over in Albuquerque. They keep telling me they are the best golfers in New Mexico! You see, it was these two classmates of mine from Clovis High School that came up with the idea they could play golf. They must have been bored with nothing to do but fiddle around with honey-do jobs. I think the wives drove them out of the house as they were getting underfoot. How some of them ever... Full story
“I don’t know when the school began,” said Rowena (Crume) Preuit, “but the Benson School of Commerce was going on in the school year 1943-44 when I was teaching at Vaughn. World War II was going on, and I thought I needed some more business classes, so at the end of the school term at Vaughn I enrolled at the Benson School of Commerce in Clovis. “A few weeks later a lady teacher at Benson’s resigned as her serviceman was transferred to another assignment. Mr. Benson (John Benson was the founder of this school) had seen my...
You’ll never believe this: a route book from Fort Worth, Texas, to Las Vegas, N.M., by way of Clovis, 639.3 miles of dirt roads in 1919. The route book was published by the Board of City Development of Plainview, Texas, and they called this aforementioned road the F.F.F. Highway. They never said what “F.F.F.” stood for. This 4.5- by 7.5-inch book contained 50 pages, and told exactly how many miles to go before turning. An example: Texico to Clovis 10 miles. You have to mind your speedometer as it will tell you exactly how man...
“Bill Ogg was one of the best known of the early-day restaurateurs,” said Tom Pendergrass, Clovis’ first historian. Tom, back in the early 1950s, did a “column” and live broadcast over KICA and KCLV. “Bill Ogg will be remembered as opening more restaurants in Clovis than any half dozen men with the exception of Hamburger King,” said Tom. He was sponsored by Travis Food Market at 123 W. Grand. “Bill Ogg’s first restaurant was opened in the cement block building just north of the Santa Fe passenger depot, in 1908,” he said. ...
Not many people at the air base knew about the WAACs —Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, later known as WACs. The airmen at Clovis Army Air Field in June 10, 1943, had waited patiently for their arrival. At 6 p.m. that day, the first group of the WAACs arrived on the base with an enthusiastic cry, which went the rounds like wildfire: “They’re here, men, they’re here!” Sacrificing none of their femininity or glamour, the nucleus of a larger group of WAACs to arrive later, they looked efficient and soldierly in their crisp khaki...
A crime solved in 1941 by Jack Hull, veteran Clovis newspaper reporter and editor, was dramatized at 8 p.m. MST on Nov. 2, 1941, on the national NBC radio program “The Big Story,” sponsored by the Pall Mall Cigarette Co. The story was called to the attention of the program sponsor several weeks before the program aired by former CNJ reporter, John Nail, who had worked for Jack Hull. The crime was the deaths of two young men, whose mangled bodies were discovered on the Santa Fe Railroad tracks south of Clovis on Aug. 2, 194...
Who was this impersonator? He looked so much like Billy the Kid, there were jokes about digging up the grave at Fort Sumner to be sure the boy Pat Garrett shot was still there. He was none other than Jim Vercelline, a young actor from Clovis and a member of the Gaslite Players of Clovis theatrical group. This was back in 1981. Fort Sumner was gearing up to present its annual “Old Fort Days” to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the killing of Billy the Kid in Old Fort Sumner. The powers that be in Fort Sumner figured the... Full story
Who is this impersonator that looks so much like Billy the Kid that there is talk of digging up the grave at Fort Sumner to be sure the boy that Pat Garrett shot is still there? He was none other than Jim Vercelline, a young actor from Clovis and a member of the Gaslite Players of Clovis theatrical group. This was back in 1981. Fort Sumner was gunning up to present its annual “Old Fort Days” in June of 1981 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the killing of Billy the Kid in Old Fort Sumner. The powers that be in Fort Sum... Full story
William A. Noffsker is to be remembered as a banker and a soldier in the 200th Coast Artillery during World War II, four years of which were in a Japanese prison camp. Returning home to Clovis, he resumed his former position with the Citizens Bank of Clovis and had a distinguished banking career, becoming the senior vice president. Noffsker graduated from Eastern New Mexico Junior College in 1936. At some point, prior to World War II, Noffsker was a fireman with the Clovis Fire Department. Fire Chief R. V. Miller’s daughter,...
Editor’s note: The following column is a story told to Don McAlavy by former Clovis resident Marguerite Sellers about her father Sellers. “My father and grandfather,” said Marguerite Sellers, “sold their property in Oklahoma and Texas and gone to California to establish themselves. But on the way via train they had gone through the bustling new town of Clovis with an offering of free land to those who would prove up claims on the surrounding land. “My grandfather was not happy in California and could not get over the thoug...
The Clovis Woman’s Club was created in 1909, two years after Clovis was founded. Mrs. W. D. McBee was the first president. The purpose of this organization was to “promote higher education, social, moral, and civic conditions,” said Mrs. Olive Frear, a past president. She wrote most of what follows around 1978 for the Curry County history book. “The pioneer organizers of this organization were the cream-of-the-crop of Clovis women, including Mrs. Albert Vohs, Mrs. Fred Dennis, Mrs. Frank Burns, Mrs. Clyn Smith, Mrs. W. H. P...
Henry Crecelius McCowen was 27 when he moved in 1917 to the Elida area. In 1920, he became editor of the Roosevelt County Record, published at Elida. He became known throughout the country as something of an eccentric. He advocated doing away with money! And that is how he became known as “Old Moneyless,” one of the great regional characters. His editorials reached all the way to the East Coast. He published a couple of books, the first one in 1933. I own one of his books, “Moneyless and Prescription,” that should be in the P... Full story
One of the most famous characters at Taiban was “Mac” McMillan. “His real name was Chester C. McMillan, and he had a bar there, a kind of family-like place where his family and neighbors would gather, dance, have a few drinks, play pool and eat Sally’s pimento cheese sandwiches,” said Ben Hall, whose ranch was south of Taiban. “The little kids would have a ball running, playing, dancing and chasing the large yellow cat.” All the kids wanted this cat, and Mac would tell them if they could put it in a box and shut the lid...
Clovis has been home to many good musicians. Here are some tidbits on Gus Nunez and a few more: “A lot of people in Clovis, all musicians, have told me that possibly the best guitar player around Clovis in the old days was Gus Nunez,” said Ken Tucker, a pretty good guitar player himself. “Gus taught me how to ‘bar chord’ on the guitar,” said Tucker, “and I’ll never forget that. Country guitar players use that all the time; makes it sound full. I have played with Victor Carrasco when he played trumpet and Gus Nunez played gu... Full story
