Pages past, Feb. 3: No nude models at ENMU art class

On this date ...

1971: Regents at Eastern New Mexico University had voted 3-2 against the use of nude models in an upper division art class on the campus.

ENMU President Charles W. Meister and Academic Dean Gail Shannon had "strongly recommended" approval of the practice. Regents Margie Beck and Donald Anderson supported the recommendation.

"You can't draw the human figure clothed unless you first draw it in the nude, said Anderson, himself an artist in Roswell. He said he was surprised live nude models were not already being used in the class.

But Regents Ernest Wheeler, Howard Martin and Eugene Brockman voted against the proposal.

"The publicity would do more harm than good," Wheeler said. "I would favor closing the art department rather than to have this."

1971: Army Capt. Gus Garcia of Portales had been honored for "gallantry in action in Vietnam," the Portales News-Tribune reported.

Garcia's citations, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star, were in response to his personal bravery under fire in two encounters with the enemy - one in Dong Xuan District of the Phu Yen province, the other in the Tuy An District of Phu Yen.

Capt. Garcia had been wounded in one of the battles.

1976: A Muleshoe woman had been arrested in connection with an armed abduction of a baby from an Albuquerque home.

FBI agents said they were led to Muleshoe after a group of church women and their minister questioned the local woman's reported pregnancy.

Bailey County Sheriff Dee Clements said a Muleshoe judge had ordered the woman's husband to pay $150 in monthly child support. "She kept coming to church and getting bigger and bigger. She sure looked pregnant," Clements said.

But her church family became suspicious when the woman left town, returned with a baby, and said she was refused services at the local hospital and had to travel to Oklahoma City for a premature birth.

Minister Royce Clay told the sheriff "the women in his church didn't think the baby looked like it was only four pounds and six days old as she said it was," The Associated Press reported.

The woman's father-in-law also expressed concerns after reading a newspaper story about the Albuquerque abduction.

FBI officials arrested the woman after she told them the baby was born at an Oklahoma City hospital that did not exist and after she was unable to produce a birth certificate.

'Hounds go down ...

1961: Pasadena College of California used "unrelenting rebounding" to drop Eastern New Mexico University, 97-86, in a college basketball encounter in Portales. Ralph Cannon led the Greyhounds in scoring with a season-high 32 points.

According to the Portales News-Tribune: "The biggest crowd of the season was present. Eastern's Greyhound mascot even changed gender, appearing as a curvaceous coed."

A time to dance ...

1971: Wanda Jackson and her Country Division band were scheduled to perform at the La Vista Ballroom in Clovis.

Dancing was planned for 9 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Admission was $2.50 per person.

Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens. Contact:

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