Other days

100 YEARS AGO April 3, 1914

MENA - When the Arkansas legislature convenes in Little Rock next January a smiling youngster named Ernest Hatley will represent Polk county. Hatley is said to be the youngest person ever elected to an Arkansas legislature. He is 24 years of age and virtually fiddled his way into the legislative halls. When the campaign opened last January, the candidates as usual joined the county tax collector and held meetings in towns where the farmers came to pay their taxes. Among the number was young Hatley, who brought with him a well worn fiddle case containing a fast little fiddle. Every time Hatley attended a political gathering, he played a few selections before he spoke. His fame as a fiddler soon spread throughout the county. If he spoke last the crowed remained until his final word, and if he spoke first, many of the audience left when he concluded.

50 YEARS AGO April 3, 1964

Supt. Floyd Parsons today urged parents of pupils in the Little Rock School District not to join the scheduled boycott but to send their children to school Monday. He notified school principals and parents in writing that all schools will be open with full teaching, custodial and cafeteria staffs on duty and that order and discipline within the schools would be maintained. He expressed the hope that “no pupil in our schools will participate in the boycott” called for Monday by the Council on Community Affairs and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

25 YEARS AGO April 3, 1989

HOT SPRINGS - No pickets. No demonstrations. No swarms of locusts. The only scourge on the first day of Sunday racing at Oaklawn Park was an off-and-on drizzle, but from the track’s standpoint, the day was otherwise a rousing success. Everyone got in free, and the final attendance count was 28,960, lower than Saturday’s 35,113 but more than twice the size of a usual weekday turnout.

10 YEARS AGO April 3, 2004

HOT SPRINGS - Tuition at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville for undergraduate, in-state students this fall will jump by 8 percent, and in return professors will see larger paychecks. After nearly two hours of discussion, the system’s board of trustees agreed to the recommendation Chancellor John A. White proposed at what trustees said was a record-long meeting. The tuition increase is the largest in seven years.