Out of the past: Feb. 14

2000

​Robert Fornkahl heard the lightning crash near his rural Cape Girardeau home yesterday afternoon, and then saw flames erupt from his combination garage and shed; but the elderly man could do little but watch the metal-roof building burn; the East County Fire Department extinguished the blaze, too late to save Fornkahl’s antique 1960 Corsair Lakewood station wagon, his regular car and a lawn tractor.

Matthew Edward Prince of Cape Girardeau may be the only Southeast Missouri barber who makes house, or office, calls; a third-generation barber, Prince offers his customers a quality haircut, good hair advice and a chat while they sit at their office desk or kitchen chair at home.

1975

​Any decision on where to put the new Cape Girardeau County jail — a hotbed of controversy among county residents — will be further delayed pending the County Court’s approval of attorney A.J. Seier’s request for preparation of an abstract on the present jail site; Seier, county prosecuting attorney, is also the attorney for the county in the jail matter; the court also learns that unless the issue of location of the jail is settled by early May, an appeal by the City of Jackson in an attempt to prevent construction of the new jail outside the county seat will be heard by the Missouri Supreme Court.

The number of Cape Girardeau Board of Education candidates for the April 1 election is back to four with the filing of Hugo J. “Junior” Wunderlich, a business executive; on Wednesday, incumbent Thomas L. Meyers withdrew from the race for one of the two three-year seats open on the board; the other candidates are former board member Charles E. Weber, incumbent Jerry W. Ford and James E. Green.

1950

​Sandbags are being hauled to low places along the Birds Point Floodway levee, and the evacuation of residents continues as the rising Ohio and Mississippi rivers brings the possibility that the dike-bound farm corridor might have to be flooded; the riverside levee is in excellent condition despite the pounding of high water and soaking rains for better than a month; but with the higher river levels expected, sandbagging is necessary in many points along the big bulwark.

The Rev. P.A. Casey, 66, pastor of Grace Methodist Church, died of a heart attack last night at his home; a native of Kentucky, Casey had been in the Methodist ministry 44 years, having been admitted to the Louisville Conference in 1906; he had been pastor at Malden twice, serving 14 years there in all; he came to Cape Girardeau from Malden in October 1946.

1925

​The Rev. Billy Sunday will come to Cape Girardeau next January to hold a six-week evangelistic meeting, if he is assured of the united support of the churches here; that was the answer Sunday gave the Rev. C.H. Morton, sent to Memphis, Tennessee, yesterday by the Southeast Missourian in an effort to get the evangelist to commit to a meeting here.

Stockholders of the Farmers Cooperative Association meeting at the public library here, vote to continue the store operated by the company at 4 S. Spanish St.; the vote — 50 to 20 — follows a stormy session of the stockholders, during which some of the outspoken ones demand that the store be closed and the association dissolved; since the store was moved to Cape Girardeau from Jackson, it has been a paying proposition; the Jackson store always operated at a heavy loss.

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.