Pages Past — Nov. 21

On this date ...

1977: Clovis police were on the lookout for a livestock squeeze chute that had been reported stolen. Wayne Thompson told police the chute was taken from the 1700 block of South Howard Street. The loss was valued at $150.

1968: Clovis High School seniors Willie Hall and Rose Mary Jones were named homecoming king and queen. The theme of the coronation was “three coins in a fountain” and the gymnasium was decorated with hedges and a green fountain into which the senior candidates tossed a coin.

1949: Clovis city commissioners issued a “vote of confidence” for Police Chief George Ray. “After investigating the various phases of the police department we find that the department is doing a good job, and therefore give the police chief a vote of confidence,” commissioners said in a prepared statement. Ray was named chief in September 1949 and had dismissed at least six members of the department, while others had resigned, spurring criticisms against him.

Their business

1971: Murphy’s Food Store, a grocery at Grand and Prince streets, was open seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. S&H Green Stamps were issued with every purchase of $2.50 or more. Wednesday was double-stamp day.

Famous from here...

Clovis High School’s Rock Staubus Gym is named for one of the school’s first coaches. When Staubus arrived form Chandler, Oklahoma, in 1924, he was the high school’s only coach, and found a locker room “big enough for two men and two lockers,” the Clovis News-Journal reported. He coached multiple sports, but was best known for his basketball teams, which won 14 consecutive district championships, from 1927 to 1940. They won the state championship in 1930. Staubus died April 12, 1950, at age 51 after suffering a heart attack five months earlier.

Pages Past is compiled by Editor David Stevens. Contact him at:

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