Out of the past: Jan. 4

2000

Cape Girardeau school board members, school administrators, teachers and district patrons will travel to Troy, Illinois, on Saturday to tour recently-built Triad High School; Triad, which cost about $25 million to build and furnish, will be the fourth school toured by school officials, as the district prepares to advance its plans for construction of a new high school in Cape Girardeau.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission has hired Sides Construction Co. to build an archives center at a cost of $489,333; the new center will be constructed at 112 E. Washington in Jackson, just north of the County Administration Building; County Clerk Rodney Miller says the center should be completed and in operation by next fall; it will allow the county to better preserve and centralize its tax records and other historic documents.

1975

Stan Ray, a 6-foot-almost-10-inch post man who played for the Cape Girardeau Tigers in his high school days, is becoming one of Coach Norm Stewart’s “known” players; following the University of Missouri Tigers freshman’s performance in the Big Eight holiday tournament, the name of Stan Ray hit the national wire-service reports; against Kansas City, in the semifinals of the tourney, Ray hit on seven of 14 field goal attempts and added a pair of counters from the line for 16 points; even more impressive, in working against senior Carl Gerlach, K-State’s 6-10 center, Ray grabbed 18 rebounds.

David L. Little has purchased Cape Central Airways, fixed-base operator at Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport from John T. Seesing; Seesing and his associates began the business 26 years ago with one plane and one student; it now owns 13 planes and has an average of 80 students in all phases of flight training at all times.

1950

Climaxing a hodgepodge of weather that saw thunder and lightning, spring-like temperatures, wind of near tornadic proportions, torrential rain and then sleet and ice, winter’s first real blizzard strikes Cape Girardeau, at once making streets slippery and highway travel hazardous and endangering electric and telephone lines; overnight rainfall brought the total for the first four days of the year, which has yet to see sunshine, to 5.07 inches at Cape Girardeau.

Jackson has been visited by 6.46 inches of rain since Monday, Jan. 2; in last night’s downpour, which started at about 5 p.m. with a thunderstorm, 4.65 inches fell, flooding all creeks in the area and causing much damage to streets within the city that aren’t paved; East Mary Street, a gravel bed, washed the surface onto Highway 25, leaving mud on the sloping street and depositing the gravel to 6 or 8 inches deep on the highway.

1925

Big plans are in the works at Cape Girardeau churches for the new year; plans are being discussed for at least five new church buildings — some of which are absolutely needed to serve growing memberships.

Henry O. Kestner, assistant cashier of a bank at Illmo, and Lela Roach of the same place have a narrow escape in the evening, when a volley of shots is fired at their automobile on Kingshighway, five miles south of Cape Girardeau; neither is wounded, but several bullets pass through the rear glass of the Ford roadster and go out through the top, missing their heads by inches.

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.