Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date …
1955: Two Clovis Baptist pastors had announced they were resigning their positions to take other church leadership roles.
Rev. Joseph Underwood said he would resign as pastor at First Baptist Church on Jan. 1 to become secretary of the Department of Evangelism for the Baptist Convention of New Mexico.
Rev. W.E. King was resigning as pastor at Central Baptist Church to return to Maywood Baptist in Kansas City, where he previously had served.
Underwood had been in Clovis 26 months. King led Central Baptist for six years.
1955: Farwell High School dedicated its new gymnasium with a doubleheader basketball game against Texico.
1960: Benson School of Commerce reported you could learn shorthand in six weeks with its speedwriting course.
Benson’s was at 315 Connelly.
1960: Southwestern Kansas, hitting 59% of its shots from the floor, overcame a 3-point halftime deficit to beat Eastern New Mexico University, 73-59, in college basketball.
It was the Greyhounds’ season opener.
Ralph Cannon led ENMU with 10 points.
1964: Six area men — two from Clovis and four from Portales — were in jail after a series of weekend raids by the federal alcohol and tobacco tax unit. All were held on $1,000 bond, charged with illegal sale of alcohol to undercover state police officers.
1966: A pedestrian struck and killed by a car west of Cannon Air Force Base may have suffered a seizure before she died, an autopsy showed.
District Attorney Morris Stagner said the autopsy showed the Wyoming woman may have been unconscious when she was struck by the car, which was driven by a Santa Rosa man.
1968: Dexter Todd, the owner of Steed-Todd Funeral Home, announced he had acquired the building that formerly housed Chapel of Memories Mortuary at Prince and Manana. He said a move to the new quarters was planned that weekend. The familiar white building at Commerce and Gidding streets, which housed the funeral home for 28 years, would close. “We have become cramped through the years and parking is a problem in our present building,” Todd said.
1970: Turner’s of Clovis reminded customers it carried “TV specials,” including the Veg-O-Matic ($7.77) and Miracle Brush ($2.99).
Turner’s also offered a two-year guarantee on electric blankets.
1970: Ron Bingham of Portales was among eight Eastern New Mexico University students recently initiated into Kappa Upsilon cast of Alpha Psi Omega, national honorary dramatics fraternity.
Bingham was elected vice president.
Among projects the group had planned: publishing programs for each drama production at ENMU.
1971: The Clovis High School band was selling fruitcake as a fundraiser.
Other paid advertisements:
n Orchid Figurette at 516 Mitchell St. in Clovis was celebrating its second anniversary with $10 wig discounts and free body wraps.
n Lucille’s in Clovis’ Hilltop Plaza said it could “solve your figure problems.”
1972: Ila Mae Doyal was officially appointed postmaster of the Elida post office by the United States Postal Service.
Doyal, who started working for the postal service in 1948, had previously been officer in charge at Elida.
She and her husband, Leo, lived in Elida with their five children.
Her promotion was received under the merit selection basis established for the postal service in legislation that had been recently passed by Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon.
1975: A case containing about $20,000 worth of jewelry was taken from an unlocked car parked in the K-mart parking lot at 21st and Prince in Clovis.
The owner of the jewelry told police he thought his brother had moved the case to his pickup and realized too late that it remained in the car’s floor board in the back seat.
1975: The clouds over the High Plains promised more moisture than they delivered, but wind took folks’ minds off the breach of promise, the Clovis News-Journal reported.
The blustery weather provided just .12 of an inch of rain in Clovis, boosting the year’s total to 13.84.
More noteworthy: winds gusting to 40 mph, which caused brief power outages in Clovis and Texico and destroyed a tin barn near Muleshoe.
1976: Temperatures were in the single digits across the region.
Hillcrest Park Lake in Clovis was frozen, though the Clovis News-Journal warned it wasn’t strong enough to support ice skaters.
“It is strong enough to keep the fowls out and their source of food in. Most of the birds simply pecked at the ice in bewilderment,” the newspaper reported.
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens and Betty Williamson. Contact:
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