Monday, Dec. 22, 1958 --

• Salisbury’s Santa Claus at Courthouse Square was stricken and rushed to Peninsula General Hospital. Officials reported that Leo Feeney, 72, of 712 Smith St., was admitted with a severe ulcer. Francis Gordy of Priscilla Street has been pressed into service as St. Nick until Christmas.
• Police Chief William Chatham saluted two Salisbury men for their help in capturing two alleged murderers. Roland Davis, 21, and Howard Williams, 19, pursued two New York City teenagers eight miles until the fugitives’ car skidded on ice and crashed. Davis and Williams had witnessed the men shooting Sgt. Eldridge Hayman at a traffic stop on Salisbury Boulevard. During the local chase, the New York teens shot and hit two local officers, who received minor injuries. They also shot at Davis and Williams. The New York teens were wanted in the murder of a New Jersey prosecutor.
• Salisbury Mayor Jeremiah Valliant blasted the City Council’s last minute decision to cut the city’s 1959 budget by $41,250. The budget is 7 percent smaller than the $1.46 million plan presented by the mayor. The council sat in silence as the mayor criticized the cuts, saying the council’s refusal to fund bond costs will only make the 1960 much harder.
• Salisbury Exchange Club members are asking for an accounting on their donation to the Salisbury Zoo. The group donated $810 last year for a new fence around the deer exhibit, but no fence has ever been built. Mayor Jeremiah Valliant said the city had encountered other problems and didn’t have total funding for the zoo project. Councilman Harry Fullbrook said the money would be held until the city could decide what to do.
• Salisbury residents have just one more day to enter the Christmas Yule Tide Lighting Contest, sponsored by the Retail Merchants Association and the Salisbury Chamber of Commerce. Judging will be conducted on Dec. 26, 27 and 28. The first-place winner will receive $75, with second getting $50 and third, $25.
• Edgar Williams, who operates a farm on Pemberton Road, was named winner of the Wicomico County Soybean Improvement Program for 1958. Williams’s yield was a remarkable 51.7 bushels per acre. Program Chairman Milton Hearne presented to award of recognition. Williams said he planted 32-inch-wide rows and the field grew tomatoes last year.