Out of the past: Dec. 9

1999

JEFFERSON CITY – Recent Reform Party convert Pat Buchanan doesn’t intend to run in Missouri’s presidential primary; late last month Buchanan’s campaign sent a letter to Secretary of State Rebecca McDowell Cook, the state’s top election official, informing her that Buchanan doesn’t intend to participate in the primary; filing period for the March 7 primary opened Nov. 22 and runs through Dec. 21.

Cape Girardeau County government pocketed nearly $5 million in sales tax revenue this year; that’s up more than $224,000 or 4.7% from a year ago, says Cape County Auditor H. Weldon Macke; but the revenue growth is less than the 7% increase experienced in 1998 over 1997 figures; Macke worries that growing internet sales will eventual lead to declines in the county’s sales tax revenue.

1974

The Barn, operated for a time as a restaurant and entertainment center following its conversion from a dairy barn on the Schonhoff property, has been sold; the Lighthouse Baptist Church a new congregation in Cape Girardeau, has purchased the property from Charles N. Harris and will remodel the place into church quarters.

Burglars, literally banging a safe to pieces, took approximately $1,300 in bills in a break-in at the VFW Post Home on North Kingshighway early Sunday; checks were left at the scene; Mr. and Mrs. Paul Hohler, who do cleanup work at the hall, discovered the break-in when they reported to work at 4:45 a.m. Sunday; the facility had closed at 1:45 that morning.

1949

The snow or rain forecasts for the weekend may bring to an end one of the longest dry spells in this district in years; with less than one-half of an inch of precipitation in November, the ground has become so dry that farming operations have been hampered, and other work ordinarily allotted to autumn has been delayed.

The new Highway 61 construction project is rapidly taking form with the road “roughed” through from its intersection north of the new Highway 74 junction south to Diversion Channel; fields between the old road and the new construction have been used for borrow to build the fill on which the new route will pass; at the Diversion Channel, concrete piers for the new bridge have been erected; a number of buildings along the right of way and near the road must be removed.

1924

Judge Willis Brown, former judge of the Juvenile Court of Salt Lake City, Utah, and drafter of the juvenile laws for the state of Indiana and at present engaged in drafting a revised set of similar statutes for Missouri, was in Cape Girardeau yesterday; he spent the entire day at Central High School, addressing both the senior and junior high student bodies; Brown is visiting five high schools in Missouri and Illinois, testing the sentiment of high school students toward the founding of a boarding school for destitute orphans of U.S. war veterans.

Paul Haman, a three-year letter man on the Teachers College grid team, is elected captain of the 1925 football squad at a meeting of members of the team; Haman is the unanimous selection of this dates and is given a rousing cheer at the end of the election.

Southeast Missourian librarian Sharon Sanders compiles the information for the daily Out of the Past column. She also writes a weekend column called “From the Morgue” that showcases interesting historical stories from the newspaper.