Out of the past: March 26

1991

The Missouri Department of Mental Health's Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse has awarded an $880,000 contract to the Family Counseling Center of Cape Girardeau; the money will be used to operate an alcohol and drug abuse treatment facility for women here.

The crab apple trees that have been growing in the grassy strip east of Water Street, between Themis and Independence, since the 1960s are being removed to make way for new pear trees; the old trees along the floodwall were dying out; the change in landscaping is being done at the direction of the Main Street Levee District.

1966

The 58th annual convention of the Southeast Missouri Retail Lumber Dealers Association is held at the Colonial Restaurant; speaking to a group of about 40 area lumber retailers, jobbers, manufacturers and manufacturers' representatives is C.S. Lorimer, customer consultant for United States Gypsum Co. of Chicago.

Mrs. Lillie Lutes of Cape Girardeau is honored on her 90th birthday by her Sunday School class from First Baptist Church, the DOW Class; Mrs. Lutes was born Lillie Jameson March 26, 1876, at Bloomington, Indiana; she came to Missouri with her family in a covered wagon.

1941

Two ponderous steel giants furnish a thrill for scores of spectators just before noon as they literally walk over the Illinois highway at the traffic bridge so as to get to the Mississippi River levee north of the road to rebuild the dike; the machines, huge 165-ton drag lines of they Bucyrus-Monigan type, are being used by Badgett Construction Co. under its contract to rebuild 11 1/2 miles of the river levee from Gale, Illinois, north to a point near McClure, Illinois.

With voting heavy, dissolution of the Delta Special Road District was approved by a majority of 28 in a special election yesterday; the vote was 224 in favor of dissolution and 196 against.

1916

The Rev. Dr. W. Sanford Gee of Dexter, Missouri, preaches the morning sermon at the Baptist Church, presumably on trial to become that congregation's pastor; Gee was formerly president of a Baptist college and is well grounded in religion.

The West End Sunday School of the Presbyterian Church reopens in the afternoon, after suspending operations during the cold winter months; the school is conducted in the old Harley shoe factory.

-- Sharon K. Sanders