Other days
100 YEARS AGO May 2, 1920
TEXARKANA — The J.L. Haynes Plumbing Company, one of the largest plumbing establishments in the city, was placed on the “un-fair” list by the local plumbers’ union, and yesterday all the concern’s journeymen plumbers went on strike. The unions charge that Haynes has done plumbing on nonunion built houses recently and that he has sold supplies to a nonunion shop.
50 YEARS AGO May 2, 1970
■ A frog called Arkie took first place in the jumping frog contest held Friday at the Capitol to find one to represent Arkansas in the traditional Calaveras County (Cal.) Frog Jumping Jubilee. Then somebody remembered that there is a 1945 state law prohibiting the removal of any Arkansas bullfrogs from the state.
25 YEARS AGO May 2, 1995
■ Nobody knew Tony Babydoll Johnson had a bullet hole in his forehead. When emergency workers pulled his charred remains from behind the wheel of his burned-out car late Sunday, they didn’t know he’d been shot. They knew only that his car had struck a tree and burned. “The extent of the trauma he suffered from the fire made it impossible for us to determine the cause of death while we were at the scene,” Pulaski County Coroner Mark Malcolm said Monday. Johnson’s foot remained pressed against the accelerator after his 1981 Cadillac Fleetwood struck a row of trees and shrubs beside Geyer Springs Road. Heat from the tires spinning against asphalt ignited the car, police concluded.
10 YEARS AGO May 2, 2010
■ Hundreds of children who eat breakfast and lunch at city summer camps will be fed by a local church, since Little Rock abandoned plans to operate its own summer food program. The city’s handling of its 2008 summer food program is still under federal investigation, but city officials said the program fell victim this year to budget cuts. “We’re out of the food business,” said Truman Tolefree, director of Parks and Recreation. The city saved $114,052 this year by dismantling its concessions operation, which oversaw the eight-week federal summer food program at 20 sites in the capital city. Although the city received a federal grant each year to pay for the daily meals and more than a dozen summer workers to operate the program, Tolefree said, he and other city officials debated continuing the program. Budget woes played a part and so did the fact that the city has yet to rebuild the Adult Leisure Center, he said. The building was home to the concessions department and burned down last year. The employee in charge of the concessions department was laid off this year after Little Rock cut its budget by more than $6 million. A grant accountant who monitored the summer food program in 2009 also lost his job in the budget cuts.