Out of the past: Feb. 15

2000

John Dennis, 82, who served many years as sheriff of Scott County before becoming a Missouri state senator, dies after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease; Dennis was instrumental in getting funding for the Show Me Center and other buildings on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University, the Missouri Veterans Home where Dennis lived his final years, the Missouri Conservation Department office and nature center at Cape Girardeau County Park, the development of a crime lab in Cape Girardeau and a mental health hospital in Farmington.

A countywide planning and zoning issue won’t be on the April 4 ballot; the Cape Girardeau County Commission has decided to withdraw the issue and put it on the November election ballot; commissioners say the larger turnout for the general election will produce a result more representative of the wishes of the people.

1975

Cape Girardeau County Sheriff Ivan E. McLain takes issue with the County Court’s contention that his department is overstaffed; McLain says his 16-member staff includes only 11 men who actually perform the duties of deputies; all 16 members of McLain’s staff were appointed by a circuit judge.

Rep. Gary Rust, R-Cape Girardeau, and Rep. Marvin Proffer, D-Jackson, both said yesterday education in Missouri is facing serious problems as a result of conflicting views within the General Assembly on just where priorities should fall; both spoke at the junior high school upon the invitation of the Cape Girardeau Community Teachers Association; State Sen. Albert M. Spradling Jr., D-Cape Girardeau, was unable to attend.

1950

Even those who defied high water in previous floods have bundled together their belongings and fled the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway as the Mississippi River rises higher on the front-line levee toward its predicted crest of 56.2 feet; to care partly for this new exodus, but mainly for a new refugee problem caused by surface water outside the spillway, the Red Cross, with National Guard supervision, is establishing a tent city west of East Prairie; 100 tents are being erected there.

The bituminous picture is as black as the coal that isn’t in Cape Girardeau’s bins as harried fuel dealers continue stretching limited supplies to do the most good; one dealer says that, with miners still refusing to work and the supply of coal above ground rapidly disappearing, the government may step in with an order freezing stocks on hand; it would then be “parceled out”, the dealer says.

1925

The Rev. J.H. Taylor, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Cape Girardeau for the past four years, has accepted a place as rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Mission at Overland Park; he’ll leave here before June 1 to assume the new pastorate; Taylor came here in 1920 from Richmond, Virginia; he has been active in all church work and is a former president of the Cape Girardeau Ministerial Alliance, a group he was instrumental in organizing.

A statewide organization to sponsor a bill now in the Missouri Legislature to allow cities with a population of fewer than 50,000 to vote a small tax levy for the maintenance of a municipal band was been formed; Dr. C.E. Schuchert, director of Cape Girardeau’s band for a number of years, is the vice president of the organization.

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.