Out of the past: June 24

1993

The owners of St. Vincent's College in Cape Girardeau have rejected a sales offer by the Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation, but further negotiations for sale of the historic campus are continuing.

Members of the Housing Assistance Task Force met for the first time Wednesday and wasted no time framing the scope of the debate; many task force members said they want the City of Cape Girardeau to provide temporary, emergency shelter for people with no housing and transitional housing to enable low-income tenants to save to buy a home.

1968

The Cape Girardeau County Court approved a trial program for working county prisoners on county roads; the decision came after several weeks of discussion and an unsatisfactory trial with working prisoners in the courthouse.

The Cape Girardeau Airport Board made arrangements to permanently station the airport fire truck at the airport; the city purchased the truck last summer, but has kept it at the city garage on North Fountain Street awaiting airport garage space and training of personnel.

1943

The Mississippi River reached the crest of its present rise at a stage of 36 feet at Cape Girardeau and will probably hold stationary for the next several days; water is over the sidewalk on the west side of Water Street between Themis and Independence streets and on a part of the walk at the south end of the block between Broadway and Themis; virtually all of the Smelterville suburb east of the railroad tracks is again covered, but the dwellings haven't been re-occupied since the record May flood.

County and city school superintendents and principals from over Southeast Missouri held an annual conference in the Little Theater, Kent Library, at the Teachers College; among topics covered was the teacher shortage.

1918

George Brucher, who volunteered for military service in May to take the place of a farmer boy who was badly needed at home, sent word to Cape Girardeau he has been transferred from the infantry at Camp Funston, Kansas, to Washington, D.C., where he will enter the chemical service in the gas division.

The Common Pleas courtroom is packed in the evening to hear Louis Houck speak against the proposition to bond the Cape Special Road District in the sum of $200,000 for building bridges and improving roads; Houck ridiculed the assistant state highway engineer, the county engineer, the district commissioners and the merchants of Cape Girardeau and scoffed at the idea of spending $100,000 for bridges across the drainage ditches on the Rock Levee Road when temporary wooden bridges that would stand for 20 years could be built for a few thousand dollars.

-- Sharon K. Sanders