Friday, August 29:
Billy C. Cooper, executive director of the Chattanooga Housing Authority, said residents of the Model Cities area will have opportunity to participate in the planning for those phases of the multi-million dollar Neighborhood Development Program which affect them.
The Chattanooga Bar Association in preferential balloting tabulated Thursday, voted 178 to 140 to recommend attorney Forest Hudson over incumbent City Judge Bennie Harris for judge of the second division of city court. Harris is the only Negro member of the Chattanooga Bar and is filling an interim appointment to the city court’s second division. He seeks to become the first elected Negro judge in Hamilton County. September 18 is the election date.
A three-alarm fire gutted two stores and damaged 24 others in the northwest section of Eastgate Shopping Center early Thursday morning. More than 200 firemen, on duty and off duty, and about 75% of the city’s fire fighting equipment fought the blaze. Coles Drug Co. and the House of Creative Art were completely destroyed.
Saturday, August 30:
The Tyner-Hickory Valley Improvement Committee will decide September 11 whether it is willing to drop its anti-annexation suit in exchange for a delay in annexation by Chattanooga.
The acquisition of about two acres on East 10th Street near the Joseph E. Smith School property was announced by the Good Neighbor Club, Inc. at the 17th anniversary celebration recently. Dr. William Whiteside, co-founder, said plans are being made for a fall campaign to raise capital to build a multi-purpose building on the site.
The Community Action Agency executive committee has received 15 to 20 applications for the position of executive director and will begin interviewing applicants immediately, Mitchell Crawford, CAA president, reported. The post became vacant when Harry McKeldin resigned to become director of compensatory education at UTC. W. Sherrill Milliken, who retired from TVA July 1, has been acting interim agency manager.
Sunday, August 31:
Dr. L. Spires Whitaker, medical director of the school of inhalation therapy at Erlanger Hospital, has been appointed chairman of the 1969 Christmas Seal Campaign in Hamilton County. Richard L. Heffner, president of Hamilton County Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association, announced.
Premiums totaling $18,560 will be offered in the array of competitions ranging from needlework to machine shop activities at this year’s Chattanooga Hamilton County Interstate Fair. The Fair opens September 15 and runs through September 20 at Warner Park.
Monday, September 1:
The Greater Tennessee Finance Corporation plans to purchase the Local Finance & Thrift Co., Inc. and merge the firm’s consumer finance operations into its own. W. G. Smith, GTF president, announced. Robert P. Patterson, formerly manager of Local Finance, has been named manager of GTF’s office here.
Rev. H.H. Wright, who led a second downtown march by Negroes to protest the appointment of Quentin Lane, who is white, as director of the Model Cities program, said that his group will picket the Model Cities office “every day until Lane resigns.’’
Tuesday, September 2:
Alhambra Temple, which has aided more crippled children in the past 15 years that any Shrine organization in North America, held ground-breaking ceremonies Monday on a 14-acre site on East Brainerd Road for the new $400,000 Alhambra Temple. Turning the first spadesful of dirt were O.E. Bacon, Illustrious Potentate; Marvin L. Spector, Oriental guide; John Cotton, high priest and prophet; Howard Sliger, chief rabban; J. Harvey Sweeney, assistant rabban; and Edgar D. Collins, treasurer and sixth vice president of the Southeastern Shrine Associate.
The City Commission passed on first reading Tuesday an ordinance appropriating up to $65,000 to subsidize Southern Coach Lines for the next 10 months. It was suggested that area townships served by the bus company may not want to put up a total of $15,000 among them to bring the subsidy up to $80,000.
David M. Ramsey, associated with the county court clerk’s office for 31 years, began his 32nd year in that office Tuesday. He was appointed successor to the late County Court Clerk Jack Hixson, Sr., in 1960 by County Judge Chester Frost and the quarterly court. In 1962 he ran for the office and was elected and ran again in 1968, also winning re-election.
The City Commission adopted a resolution Tuesday authorizing the city attorney to take appropriate legal action to attempt to nullify an annexation of Chattanooga territory by East Ridge. The East Ridge City Commission plans to start the legal ball rolling tonight to annex a vacant 65-acre tract in Chattanooga and adjoining town of East Ridge.
Thursday, September 4:
Quentin Lane, director of the Model Cities program, accompanied by Mayor A.L. Bender and federal programs coordinator Dr. John Dyer, unlocked the “picket-closed” door of the MCP offices Wednesday morning and went to work. The MCP staff, which had refused to cross Rev. H.H. Wright’s picket line Tuesday, was also back at work.
James W. Hunt, executive vice president of the Greater Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce has been named by the president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States to the board of regents of the Institute for Organization Management, sponsored by the national chamber.
Harry W. McKeldin, director of the institutes of compensatory education at UTC, stated Wednesday he was first offered the job of director of the Model Cities Program but declined in favor of keeping his educational position at UTC. Quentin Lane was subsequently appointed.