Other days

100 YEARS AGO March 18, 1924

■ Wayne Bevins was arrested yesterday morning by police, Prohibition Agent Satterfield and Deputy United States Marshall Brigsenden on a charge of transporting whiskey. Officers have suspected for a long time that Bevins was bringing white mule whiskey into Jonesboro and selling it. A tip was received that Bevins would come in yesterday with a fair-sized amount, which caused the officers to procure a search warrant for a grip or handbag that might be carried by Bevins. When Bevins was taken to police headquarters and officers opened the grip, it was found to contain eight full quarts of “mule.”

50 YEARS AGO March 18, 1974

■ What a marvelous sight to see, a passenger train running through Arkansas again! With this, the rest of the country will be accessible to us via safe transportation. Besides saving fuel, there are other advantages to train travel: No interstate traffic nerves or noise, being able to enjoy the scenery for a change, arrive at your destination rested and refreshed, always in the city, not miles in the country which requires another trip of 30 minutes, an hour or more to actually reach the destination. Now we can look forward to safe, inexpensive transportation to many of the big sports events and other attractions of interest.

25 YEARS AGO March 18, 1999

■ Rick Elmendorf of Benton, chief of the State Capitol Police since April 1995, was fired Tuesday by his boss, Secretary of State Sharon Priest. Neither of them would say why. Elmendorf worked Tuesday morning but was asked to leave Tuesday afternoon, Priest said. “I regret having to lose him,” she said. Elmendorf said it was “time to move on” and that Priest is a “great lady” and “the best leader I’ve ever worked for.” Sgt. David McKinley will be acting chief until a permanent chief is named. His salary will increase from $34,000 to $40,000 while he is serving as acting chief, Priest said. A New York native, Elmendorf moved to Saline County after 10 years in the Navy. He joined the Saline County sheriff’s office as a deputy in 1979, becoming chief deputy in 1983. In 1987, he became Benton police chief, a job he held until he became Capitol police chief.

10 YEARS AGO March 18, 2014

■ The three Pulaski County school districts, the state and intervening parties representing school employees and Black students settled a 31-year-old federal school-desegregation lawsuit earlier this year. As part of the settlement, the parties set a date to end the $68.3 million a year in state desegregation aid to the Pulaski County Special School District, the Little Rock School District and the North Little Rock School District. On Monday, the speakers urged the advisory board to recommend to Arkansas Department of Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell, who acts as the school board for the district, to hold off on the proposed cuts until they could find another funding solution for the programs. The district, which is in its third year in the state’s fiscal-distress program, remains under state control without a locally elected school board. Beginning next year, students in the third grade and beyond will begin taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College And Careers test, part of which is taken on a computer. “It’s just unbelievable to me … that we would take away programs for technology and speech communication” when they’re so intertwined in new academic standards, said parent Tina Lee. “Why do we want to set up our children to fail?”