Out of the past: Jan. 27

2000

No one denies problems exist in Cape Girardeau’s south side, but the best source for solving them aren’t city leaders, school officials or business owners; the solution lies with the people who live there; that was the consensus at a Community Leadership Group meeting attended by about 30 persons who met for two hours and 15 minutes last night at the Salvation Army; the meeting was designed to talk about problems and solutions in South Cape Girardeau.

There’s staff to hire, a capital campaign to oversee and a procedures manual to write, and that’s just the beginning of the “to do” list for Harry Louis Schuler, the interim director of the Cape Girardeau Civic Center; Twan Robinson, who improved the image of the center with her work on program development and community contacts, has left the director’s chair to take a new job at the Bootheel Counseling Service in Sikeston.

1975

Although today has been proclaimed National MIA Awareness Day by President Gerald R. Ford, veterans groups and organizations associated with the branches of service in Cape Girardeau have made no plans for any special observations; Awareness Day marks the second anniversary of the signing of the Paris cease-fire agreement; more than 2,400 American are still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, including 900 listed as missing and the others declared dead and their bodies never recovered.

Aside from deciding to send a letter to Cape Girardeau businessman Charles N. Harris thanking him for his offer to donate land for a new county jail, there is little reaction by County Court members to the possibility of the Harris tract serving as the site of the proposed jail; Harris has offered to give the county 5 to 7 acres of land he owns northwest of the Interstate 55-Highway 61 between Cape Girardeau and Jackson.

1950

Evacuees from the Birds Point-New Madrid Spillway appear resigned to a lengthy stay away from their homes in the wake of an Ohio River rise of more than a foot on the gauge at Cairo, Illinois, and a hike of almost a foot for the Mississippi at Cape Girardeau; officials of the U.S. Engineers on flood duty say residents will be notified when it is safe to return to their homes.

Gerhardt Construction Co. of Cape Girardeau has been awarded the contract for the construction of a new elementary school at Dexter, to cost approximately $300,000; the building, designed by William B. Ittner, Inc., of St. Louis, will be of a modern design, incorporating the latest ideas in school construction; it is to be a one-story structure, 246 feet by 268 feet, with brick, stone and terra cotta exterior.

1925

Dr. R.E. Cockrell, president of William Woods College at Fulton and former mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, is the principal speaker at the regular monthly dinner and meeting of the Cape Girardeau Rotary Club at the Hotel Idan-Ha in the evening; his address deals with “Community Building”.

One hundred and fifty leading business and professional men of Cape Girardeau gathered at a dinner at the Hotel Idan-Ha last night; they pledged their support to a move for the establishment of a full-time secretary for the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce; those present pledged to raise $10,000 to carry on the campaign.

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.