Salisbury History: Nov. 13, 1968

Wednesday, Nov. 13, 1968

• A committee was organized to build a memorial to Wicomico Hotel builder Fred P. Adkins. Preliminary plans called for a 30-foot-high cement obelisk-like sculpture with a reflecting pool to be placed at the intersection of St. Peter’s and West Main Street. Ernest O. Wheatley was named committee chairman. Adkins, president of E.S. Adkins Co., died in 1963.
• City Police Chief Leslie Payne was personally leading the search for robbers suspected in a string violent armed robberies throughout the city. The bandits struck twice the previous night, committing separate armed robberies at the Towne House Motel on North Salisbury Boulevard and later at the home of Albert Disharoon on East Church Street. The Motel clerk was robbed of $245; Disharoon had $810 stolen from his wallet. Previously robbed was pharmacist Charles Bennett at Bennett’s Drug Store and two other city residents in separate incidents.
• The Hecht Co. in Salisbury Mall was offering a Zenith Color television with “295-square-inches of viewing surface” for $599.99. (That would be $4,104 in 2014 money.)
• Daily Times Editor Dick Moore, in his popular “Scratch Pad” column, reported that Woody Fields and Don Huber went fishing on Veterans Day on Johnson’s Lake with hopes of just matching their record catch of Veterans Day 1967. Last year they caught 18 bass, this year they caught 20. The fishermen were happy to reveal their secret spot: “Right off New York Avenue,” Fields declared.
• The state Department of Health & Mental Hygiene announced that Salisbury -- not Cambridge -- was its preferred site for a 250-bed “Mental Retardation Center” to serve children under 18. The facility would employ 300 people and cost $5 million to build. Some state officials were still pushing to have the center built on the grounds of Eastern Shore State Hospital in Dorchester County.
• Salisbury Mayor Dallas Truitt and the City Council agreed to officially ask Congressman Rogers C.B. Morton to secure $250,000 in federal money to help develop an industrial park off Northwood Drive. The federal money would go for water and sewer lines to the newly annexed tracks north of the city.