40 years ago: Turnpike drivers complain about Howard Johnsons

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Nov. 2, 1972:

  • A search continued this afternoon for the driver of a car that had been involved in a hit-and-run accident the previous day. Kansas Highway Patrol officers reported that a motorist had struck Robert Compton, 29, who had been hurled more than 90 feet at the impact and had died instantly. Compton had stopped to help a another driver at the side of the road and had been walking along the highway at the time he was struck. The accident had occurred on U.S. Hwy. 40 about 25 miles west of Lawrence.
  • The general manager of the Kansas Turnpike Authority today denied that the KTA was “cracking down” on the six Howard Johnson restaurants located along the turnpike. It had been reported earlier that customer complaints on sanitation and health code violations had prompted officials to investigate the restaurants, but Jerry L. Brindle today said that efforts to improve conditions at the restaurants were “nothing more than our normal efforts…. Nothing is going on that we haven’t been striving for continuously.” Steve Rutherford, manager of the Howard Johnson’s just east of Lawrence, had said earlier that the complaints were not justified for the Lawrence location and that the crackdown, as he called it, was “more political than anything else.”