Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date ...
1944: A four-engined bomber from Clovis Army Air Base crashed into a plowed field nine miles north of Clovis on a routine training flight.
All nine men on board were killed.
Rancher A.J. Kemp saw the crash and rushed to the scene. He said bodies were strewn over a wide area and wreckage was scattered for about a half mile.
1952: The 4 Lane Drive-In movie theater on East Mabry Drive outside Clovis was preparing for its “gala opening.”
The first two shows were “Best of the Badmen” and “The Boy with Green Hair.”
1963: A front-page article in the Clovis News-Journal warned that “more and more cases of fume sniffing” were turning up in the Clovis area with officials pinning the blame on “a ten-cent item which can be purchased by anyone at any time during daylight hours.”
Odell Parrish, Curry County juvenile officer, warned that sniffing the toxic fumes of glue could weaken brain cells.
He called on parents.
“Parents have to help out in this matter,” he said. “If the parents assume the responsibilities of child training, this menace could be better controlled.”
1966: Clovis attorney Dee Blythe had been appointed Ninth Judicial District judge by Gov. Jack Campbell.
Blythe would succeed E. T. Hensley Jr. of Portales who had resigned effective March 31 to accept a post on the state appeals court.
Blythe, a Democrat like Hensley, had filed as the only opponent to Hensley in the May primary election.
1969: First Assembly of God Church in Clovis was preparing to host The Singing Meeks Family of Houston for two nights.
The Saturday night program offered a “special youth emphasis,” a promotional advertisement reported.
1969: Curry County Sheriff’s Office was investigating a burglary at the Hi Plains Distributing Co. north of Clovis.
Intruders stole a pickup truck and $5,000 worth of weed killer, the Clovis News-Journal reported.
Sheriff Nelson Worley said the weed killer — called Treflan — had been stolen in a series of recent thefts around the region.
The Treflan taken in the Clovis break-in was kept in 5-gallon and 1-gallon cans. Worley said he believed the pickup was taken to haul the cans of chemical.
The sheriff said a similar burglary had occurred just days earlier in Morton, Texas.
1975: The government’s peanut subsidy, which had cost more than $600 million to help farmers in the past 20 years, was about to cost taxpayers another $140 million — to dispose of surplus peanuts, The Associated Press reported.
The Agriculture Department had a policy that it would not sell surplus peanuts at prices less than it guaranteed growers.
1976: Art Koshkorian had been elected student government president at the Clovis campus of Eastern New Mexico University.
He defeated four other candidates, drawing 63 votes.
William Burkey had been elected vice-president.
1983: Robert L. Matheny was named president of Eastern New Mexico University, effective July 1, to replace Warren Armstrong only a week after Armstrong had been selected as the new president of Wichita State University in Wichita, Kan.
“It’s a real honor and privilege to be named president of Eastern New Mexico University,” Matheny said.
Matheny, 50, had been executive vice president for academic affairs at ENMU since 1981. From 1976 to 1980, he was provost for ENMU’s Clovis campus, and from 1980 to 1981, he was dean of continuing education at Fort Hayes State University in Hayes, Kan.
He was a faculty member in the ENMU history department from 1968 to 1976.
1987: The 37th Floyd Jamboree had kicked off its annual three-day celebration.
“For 362 days of the year, Floyd is a quiet little community tucked in between Melrose and Portales, consisting of mostly hard-working farmers and ranchers,” Joe Kusek wrote for the Clovis News-Journal.
“But for three days every spring, Floyd becomes the center of the musical universe for the Eastern Plains of New Mexico. It becomes a showcase for some of the sweetest singing and playing this side of the state.
“From farmers’ wives to preachers’ daughters, from accountants to college students, singers and musicians descend on Floyd to play in the annual Floyd Jamboree.”
1995: Actor Paul Brinegar, perhaps best known as the trail-drive cook Wishbone in the TV series “Rawhide,” died in Los Angeles.
He was 77.
Brinegar was born in Tucumcari in 1917, though the family moved to Alamogordo when he was a boy.
He appeared in more than 100 television shows and movies, mostly as a cowboy in westerns.
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens and Betty Williamson. Contact:
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