Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date …
1940: Texico farmer Eddie Hudson, 26, held serial number 158 — the first draft number drawn by the secretary of war.
“I think the draft is a good thing and I am for President Roosevelt all the way,” he told a reporter.
1941: New Mexico’s attorney general ruled that all pinball machines were illegal gambling devices.
E. P. Chase issued the ruling following a request from Valencia County Sheriff Joseph Tondre.
“By the word ‘all,’ I mean all pinball machines which compensate the player either in amusement, United States coin, slugs or tokens, or in ‘free games,’” Chase said.
1951: A Clovis restaurant owner was killed in a single-vehicle crash west of Fort Sumner.
Stan E. Durkee, owner of The Aristocrat at 521 W. Seventh, was alone in his 1947 model car, apparently going too fast and failed to make a turn, police said.
News accounts did not explain how Durkee died; officials said he was alive when placed in a Julian Mortuary ambulance, but dead on arrival at the Fort Sumner hospital.
He was 49.
1962: New Mexico officially had 250 radiological monitoring sites to measure potential nuclear fallout, including eight in Curry County, five in Quay County, and three in Roosevelt County.
Maj. Richard B. Laing, the governor’s agent for civil defense, said the network had been developing since 1961.
Each station, he explained, was manned by two or more trained operators and was equipped with “a Geiger counter for measuring beta and gamma rays, a medium range gamma survey meter, a high range beta gamma survey meter, two dosimeters to measure accumulated radiation, and a charge for dosimeters.”
1963: Drs. Hoy McClintock and Bettie McClintock, both of Clovis, had been selected as fellows of the American Academy of Pediatrics. About 80 pediatricians in New Mexico were affiliated with the professional group.
1970: R.C. Hoiles, founder of Freedom Communications, which ultimately owned the Clovis News-Journal, Portales News-Tribune and about three dozen other daily papers across the country, died at age 91.
Hoiles’ newspapers were among the few that criticized the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
His papers’ editorial boards also advocated abolishing public schools and championed individually liberty.
“Government should exist only to try to protect the rights of every individual,” he told The New York Times in a 1964 interview.
1972: Clovis High School English teacher Lois Jones was named the city’s Teacher of the Year in the first award of its kind given by the Clovis Association of Classroom Teachers.
Jones started teaching English at CHS in 1958, but had earlier taught at Clovis Junior High for 2 1/2 years before taking some time off for her young family.
“I have faith in students,” Jones told the Clovis News-Journal. “The so-called ‘generation gap’ could be lessened if each generation group would just listen to the other. So I try to listen to my students.”
“Far too many people get hung up or concerned about things that are not important,” she added. “I’m not going to say length of hair, but that’s what I mean.”
1974: Eastern New Mexico University regents had approved a $5 increase in student fees for health services. Projections showed student health services would cost $76,000 next year; raising student fees from $8.50 to $13.50 would push projected revenue to $79,137.
1974: Curly Cook and his Country Company were back for a week-long engagement at Boothill in Clovis. Performances were set for 8:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. nightly at the nightclub.
1975: Clovis had received 40 “refuse collection boxes” for its new “containerization” garbage collection system.
The new trash containers would service four residences, replacing the system in which each residence received one trash can, the Clovis News-Journal reported.
The city spent $78,750 for 450 of the new trash containers.
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens and Betty Williamson. Contact:
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