From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for April 3, 1973:

• A jet plane was being scrapped after its ten-year stay in Centennial Park. The plane, a F9F Grumman Couger jet fighter of Korean War vintage, had come to the city as a gift from the Navy in 1963, but today it had been deemed as unsafe as part of the playground. “It’s gotten to the point that it’s a dangerous piece of equipment,” said Wayne Bly, the city’s Superintendent of Parks and Recreation. “There are too many jagged pieces of metal to take care of it any longer. It just had a thin skin of metal and it’s been vandalized so much it’s no longer safe.” City crews were hard at work this week dismantling the plane for the scrap pile.
• Residents were puzzled and grieved at the continuing problem of flowers being stolen from Oak Hill Cemetery. In spite of vigilance by caretakers, the thefts continued, including a recent loss of a display valued at more than $40. “It is shameful if such decorations are destroyed,” a Journal-World article stated today, “and somewhat macabre to think of them today as gracing a local living room table.”