Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 399
I have known Lucille Bradburn of Clovis for 30 or 40 years, give or take a few years. She was born Jan. 27, 1929, two years older than this columnist. She has always been busy writing to people, emailing to people across the country, and I have helped her get into the Pintores. She is a member and past president of Clovis-Portales Art Council, and for several years Co-Chairman with retired Eastern New Mexico University Art Professor Dale Hamlett of the Council’s International Art Shows. At Grand Junction High School, L...
He began playing music for cowboy dances at age 12. Oh, I forgot, I’m talking about Wayne Crume, who was born in 1924 in Kenna. Wayne’s mother, Helen Crume, was an accomplished piano player, and she tried to teach Wayne to play piano, but she finally gave up and let him play his own way. He can’t read a note of music, but he learned many old songs, when he was 6 years of age, by listening to his mother play. He also plays the guitar, sometimes playing the French harp along with his guitar. A cowboy friend from Kenna taugh...
No, Nicholas Mufli is not a common name in Clovis. But the name Muffley is know all over Clovis and respected. The history and story of Russell L. Muffley is one to remember. The history of his ancestor goes back to 1737, but ... this is Russell’s history. Russell L. Muffley was born Sept. 25, 1947 in Galion, Ohio, to C. F. and Evelyn Loeffel Muffley, and lived in Mount Gilead, Ohio; Fort Recovery, Ohio; and Logansport, Ind., prior to moving to New Mexico when he was 16 years old. Russell is a 1965 graduate of Las Cruces H...
A brief article in the Clovis News of Dec 23, 1920, said, “Boy Scouts organized in Clovis by Rev. Polston at the Christian Church. Sixteen boys are meeting regular.” This troop was evidently short lived as nothing else was found about it. Clovis was active in helping organize the Council in 1924. For the first year of operation (1925) they had pledged $1,000 toward the budget. One former troop was reactivated immediately and soon they had four troops. There was no opposition to raising money for the budget but the com...
How great were the days of yesteryear and how filled with the promise of those ahead for the youngsters who follow in Scouting and the various Council programs. Thanks to the author who started it all. General Douglas McArthur’s farewell address to the Congress of the United States was a most stirring reminder of one’s “Duty, Honor, Country”. The rankest Tenderfoot learned the Scout Oath, the Scout Laws, and the Second Class Scout, the First Class Scout, the Star Scout, the Life Scout, and the Eagle Scout and all the newer d...
Clovis newspaper boy Morris Callwell, spent a lot of his spare time with horses raising them when he wasn’t bringing the paper to your door at age 13, same age as ye old timer me, Don McAlavy, who was throwing newspapers on Clovis porches. Morris Callwell and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. T.M. Callwell lived at 812 Lee St. when he was delivering papers. I was in the same boat, living with my mother, brother and sister Mary Lou on 719 Wallace, and delivering papers and sometimes my sister, two years younger than I, helped me d... Full story
It was Frank A. Foster, superintendent of Curry County schools, that woke me up to become an artist when I was only in the 6th grade in the old Claud school. I’ve said this before, but I’ve told many in my columns about Frank Foster visiting my country school and showing his guns to my class. I was in the back row and I drew a picture at my desk of his beautiful rifle. My lovely lady teacher said, “Don”, “why aren’t you paying attention to Mr. Foster. Come up front with your paper!” I came up and showed the teacher and Mr. Fo...
Lois Leslie, formerly from Melrose, now living in Clovis, has asked me to kick-up the tourist business in Clovis by way of telling more drama about the Clovis Man Site that was found in Blackwater Draw in 1929, by Ridge Whiteman of Portales and Clovis, the father of my wife, Kathy. The December 2000 issue of National Geographic magazine tells of Ridge Whiteman writing a letter to the Smithsonian Institution in 1929 announcing his finding of fluted points in the Blackwater Draw. Ridge said he also found “elephant bones”, whi...
In 1991 Bruce DeFoor, teacher-artist, at CCC, wrote the following words: “Norris McPherson,’Big Mac,’ has long ago attained legendary stature as one of the greatest musicians in Clovis history, a former employee of the Clovis school system, he retired in 1987 with a life threatening illness, still today his jazz performances stir the hearts of all who her or remember his art.” DeFoor painted an 18 by 18 portrait of Big Mac. Norris N. McPherson, was born Dec. 26, 1926, to Lige and Rhoda (Walker) McPherson, in Clarksville, Texa... Full story
“Bluegrass Music is coming back!” said bearded Jack Jackson in 1983 and more musicians with fiddles, mandolins, banjos, guitars are playing songs like “Arkansas Traveler,” “Boil the Cabbage Down,” and stompin’ music made by the great Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, Mac Wiseman and other old timers that took up the fiddle. ‘Course country music was more popular in Clovis. I was out at Jack Jackson’s house on the south side of Clovis back then where a few pickers were sitting around in the kitchen with their fiddles, mandolin...
It has been a long time since I was in Phil Williams’ “Clovis Depot Model Train Museum.” The old Clovis Santa Fe Passenger Depot now houses Phil’s museum which has been restored. Phil’s museum, to be exact, is at 221 West First St. in Clovis, south of U.S. 60/80 on the BNSF Railroad. You can’t miss it! Don’t miss it! On July 17, 1995, Phil Williams and his wife bought the old depot. The depot was restored to its condition in the 1950-1960 era and has displays of historic documents and pictures covering its use since it was bu...
I have book cases that are full of old history books. One of the books fell out of the case yesterday. The book was titled “My Life in the Mountains and on the Plains” and the man who wrote the book was that old New Mexico governor. David Meriwether, Virginia-Kentucky frontiersman, mountain man in the American Far West, plainsman, and territorial governor of New Mexico, enjoyed a career matched by few of his time in the first sixty years of the 19th century. His activities as governor of New Mexico Territory area are a mat...
I grew up to be 16 on a small farm, driving a tractor, pulling a one-way and plowed all day and dreamed of being a cowboy. My hero was none other than Zane Grey and yet not a cowboy, but the best writer of the west. Recently I’ve had time to look up old Zane Grey books, hadn’t read one in years until this week down here in Florida and found two old Zane Grey books in a library here. Grey was a prolific and popular author of novels about the wild west of the U.S., best known for his 1912 novel “Riders of the Purple Sage....
A light went out in Clovis Wednesday morning, May 23, 1984 for William W. Southard, whom we called “Bill Southard.” He was a friend to many and a special inspiration to me, he died succumbing after a long and heroic struggle against that insidious and dreaded killer we call cancer. He and I were the same age. In 1982, Bill Southard, as editor of the Clovis News Journal, called me and told me I’d have a bigger audience if I came over to his newspaper. I had been writing a column for the Curry County Times for five years. I did...
In 1949 at the groundbreaking ceremonies for the new Clovis High School, Cash Ramey was called on to make a few remarks. These are his words: “Way back yonder, 48 years ago this month, I came to Clovis. Clovis was a town about 100 people. “As I look over this audience here today I see my old friend, Dr. Clyn Smith, my old friend, Mr. A. W. Skarda, Mr. Witherspoon, and several others who did their best to do all they could to make Clovis what it is today. “Way back yonder when this was first created, this town of Clovi...
“I was born in Clovis, the only child of Charles Wesley and Edna Merle Allyn,” said Charlyne Allyn Sisler. My family settled in west Texas and both of my pioneer families settled around Sweetwater and Abilene as early as 1866. “My father was a telegrapher and came to Clovis in 1917 to work for the Santa Fe Telegraph and Cable office. The Santa Fe Railroad and the men who ran it were the most important and dominant aspect of Clovis when I was a child. I loved watching the coming and going of the trains, plus the social atmos...
Six-year-old Matthew Roberts, son of Debbie and Geoff Roberts of 500 W. Christopher in Clovis, went missing on May 8, 1990. His disappearance sparked a massive search by residents and law enforcement officials that included approximately 5,000 people. The disappearance was given national television attention, massive media coverage and national exposure by a missing children’s organization. Police said the entire city was covered at least four times in the search on the night he disappeared. The boy disappeared after his m...
Here I am in 2009 at age 77, still kicking and writing columns for the Clovis News Journal. Last week I found some old obituaries and they were all from 1977. Now why is that? I’m 77 and they all died in ’77? There was Ross P. Almoney, 62, born June 1, 1914, in Lancaster County, Pa. He had come to the Clovis area with the military when he was assigned to Clovis Army Airfield in 1943. He was a veteran of World War II. Ross was associated with the Clovis News Journal for 31 years in the photo-engraving department as was Chi... Full story
Norvil Howell, Clovis schools music coordinator for many, many years, was selected the New Mexico Music Educators Association Music Educator of the Year in 1987....
Do you remember the two...
Oscar Klein and his wife moved to a dugout home about 15 miles northwest of Clovis. Soon the family moved into Clovis around 1909. They had two daughters, Elizabeth, born in 1911, and Virginia, born in 1913. Oscar Klein bought the three houses on the northwest corner of Main and 4th Street on Jan. 5, 1918, from Joseph Strouvelle. (Later to become George Sasser’s drug-store and soda-fountain, one of the busiest corners on Main Street.) After buying that corner, Oscar established his Klein Grocery Co. and soon had one of the f...
“And what a happy Diane I am after receiving your wonderful e-mail! I was so surprised and very, very pleased. Thank you for writing. (I had written her in May of 2004 and she had written me right back). “Well, here I sit with egg on my face after reading your story about the painting you did and receiving a $100 award at the show in Hotel Clovis. It’s good to know that Joe Fahnert, owner of City Printing, had the painting for safe keeping. Joe, and the whole Fahnert family, was a special part of my life there in Clovi... Full story
William D. McBee, full name William Dalton McBee. He was important in that he helped in the development of Melrose, Clovis and Curry County: “I was born just forty years after the Battle of San Jacinto, at Austin, Texas. My first impressions were saturated with Texas history: the massacre at the Alamo with the usual Thermopylae had its messengers of death, the Alamo had none quote; the massacre of Goliad and then, within a short time, the Battle of San Jacinto, where fewer than 1,000 raw young Texans destroyed the Mexican arm...
Back in 1994 when Harold Kilmer, Ike Stanford, and I were searching old cemeteries in Curry County, Sis Simmons, the local radio personality, who grew up as Alma Willoughby near Field, told me there was a cemetery we had missed out there. As a young girl she witnessed a 13-year-old boy buried in that little cemetery after he was fatally bit by a rattlesnake. Other people, Anna Wyatt, Clifford Skeen, Dale Lewis, Tiny Burchett, and Eulus Hudspeth confirmed that there was a cemetery out there and it was about one and a half...
In 1955 at the ground-breaking ceremonies for the new Clovis High School Mr. Cash Ramey was called on to make a few remarks: “Ladies and Gentlemen. Way back yonder, 48 years ago this month, I came to Clovis. Clovis was a town about 100 people. “As I look over this audience here today and see my old friend, Dr. Clyn Smith, my old friend, Mr. A.W. Skarda, Mr. Witherspoon, and several other who did their best to do all they could to make Clovis what it is today. “Way back yonder when this was first created, this town of Clovi...
