Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
On this date ...
1973: “Tucumcari will fly again,” declared Mayor King Aitken.
The U.S. Navy hydrofoil boat bearing the city’s name will be repaired and will “fly again” in about six months.
Aitken was informed of the forthcoming repairs on the craft by Navy Lt. Cmdr. John L. Sams.
The USS Tucumcari was damaged on a reef in the Caribbean in November. Lt. Sams told Aitken at the time the damage was so great, it was unlikely the boat would be repaired and put back into service.
Aitken immediately wrote to New Mexico’s U.S. senators and U.S. Rep. Manuel Lujan, urging the Tucumcari be fixed due to the publicity the city and state had received all over the world due to the hydrofoil boat’s name.
— More than 500 people attended the Tucumcari/Quay County Chamber of Commerce banquet at the Recreation Center. The keynote speaker was Dr. G. Ward Fenley, writer of the “Action Line” at the Albuquerque Journal.
— The Rev. Johnny Lee and his family moved from Spade, Texas, to Tucumcari to become the new pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church.
— The Odeon Theatre was showing a drama about the last tsars of Russia, “Nicholas and Alexandra,” which won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. The theater was scheduled to screen the Woody Allen comedy “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).”