From the Morgue: The Central Inn and the two Leos

The Leo's Central Inn/Stag mural on the Wood Building at Independence and Frederick streets was recently restored by Cape Girardeau artist Craig Thomas.Sharon Sanders ~ ssanders@semissourian.com

Recently, after attending a Sunday Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, I walked across the parking lot with my neighbors, John and Cecelia Boos.

I congratulated them on the recently-restored Leo’s Central Inn/Stag mural on the side of their Wood Building at the southwest corner of Independence and Frederick streets. Craig Thomas, whose artistic talents I have long admired, did the work for John and Cece.

As we talked, I told them I had one question: Who was the Leo who figures so prominently in the advertisement?

John replied that there were actually two Leos connected with the building. One was Leo Kohlfeld, who had the Stag distributorship in Cape Girardeau. The other was a former Cape Girardeau police officer: Leo B. Hill.

Kohlfeld passed away in 2010. The Missourian’s Jay Wolz wrote about the Kohlfeld family’s legacy in 2023.

Leo B. Hill, too, is mentioned often in the pages of the Southeast Missourian, mostly for his work with the Cape Girardeau Police Department and mostly as an investigator of automobile accidents.

His 1970 obituary says he was born in 1906 in Grand Rivers, Kentucky, and moved to Cape Girardeau in about 1929. He joined the Cape PD around 1936 and in April 1940 was promoted from patrolman to sergeant.

Two years later, Hill and fellow Cape Girardeau police officer William S. Wickham decided to try their fortunes elsewhere. Together, they resigned their positions here and took jobs as security guards at the Kentucky Ordnance Works at Paducah. But their new careers lasted barely a week. Finding the cost of living too high near the war-production plant, Hill and Wickham quit and came back to their families in Cape Girardeau. Wickham returned to the Cape Girardeau police force immediately, while Hill said he hadn’t decided what his future held.

In August 1947 he re-joined the department, but left again the following month. Once more, in March 1953, he was hired by the Cape Girardeau Police Department. His obituary says he served on the force a total of 10 years.

The only Southeast Missourian article of any length about Hill, aside from his obituary, is one that paints him as a heroic figure, rescuing a child from a driverless automobile.

Published May 31, 1939, in the Southeast Missourian:

Runaway auto in cemetery; child ‘driver’ is rescued

While a number of persons were in the New Lorimier Cemetery Tuesday afternoon for Memorial Day inspection of graves, an automobile with a child playing in it rolled from its parking place and, bounding over graves and drives, finally came to stop more than a block away at the extreme west side of the cemetery.

The 4-year-old boy was saved from likely injury by Leo B. Hill, a police patrolman, who was off duty at the time and happened to be standing nearby. Hill jumped on the running board of the machine and pulled the child out, the car continuing its journey down the incline.

The car belonged to Mrs. C.T. Chrom of Memphis, Tennessee, and the child was her son.

The machine, a 1939 model Oldsmobile coach, had been parked on a sloping drive. The lad was on the front seat when the auto started rolling.

In its trip down the hillside the car ran angling across two of the blocks of graves in which the cemetery is laid out. It missed large tombstones but struck several cement graveside walls and hitting these deflated two tires and bent one tire rim. The car, without overturning, came to a stop against a dirt bank. Virtually no damage was done to graves over which the machine passed, but some metal markers were torn down.

Mrs. Chrom and Mr. Hill and his family and others were at the cemetery to visit graves.

Shining brightly on the north facade of the Wood Building, Independence and Frederick Streets, is the restored Leo's Central Inn/Stag advertisement.Sharon Sanders ~ ssanders@semissourian.com

Leo B. Hill died Sunday, April 26, 1970, in a Columbia hospital. For the last eight years of his life, he operated Leo’s Central Inn.

A month after her husband’s death, Virgie L. Nance Hafele Hill applied for a liquor license to continue to run the saloon. This she did until 1985, selling the business to Mr. and Mrs. James L. Mungle. The following year, Virgie became manager of Corky’s Saloon, 632 Broadway, a year after it opened.

And in July 1987 she was honored at a dinner for her 25 years in the saloon business. Wanting to help her recoup some losses incurred in a robbery, she received one check from the profits of that dinner and another from Leo Kohlfeld, Mike Kohlfeld and Mitch Miller, all of Kohlfeld Distributing Co.

Virgie Hill passed away Friday, Nov. 16, 2001, in Cape Girardeau. She and her husband were both buried at Cape County Memorial Park Cemetery.

Sharon Sanders is the librarian at the Southeast Missourian.