1999

The Cape Girardeau County Commission wants to buy an 11-acre site in Cape Girardeau for a new juvenile justice center; the site on Clark Avenue is a vacant tract sandwiched between the Cape Girardeau Senior Center and the Christian Day for the Young Years; the Notre Dame High School Booster Cub owns the property; while the commission has made an offer on the land, the club hasn’t yet responded.

Bob Miserez, executive director of the Missouri Development Finance Board, announces the board will issue $5 million in state tax credits to corporations and individuals making major donations to Southeast Missouri State University’s River Campus; university and board officials say the 50% tax credits could generate $10 million in private money for the project

1974

Eight percent salary increases are provided for Southeast Missouri State University personnel in the fiscal 1975 budget totaling $11,434,544; the budget, which is $635,072 more than the $10,809,462 earmarked for the current year, provides for a 7% cost-of-living raise and 1% merit raises.

A sharp increase — nearly 700 more — in the number of freshmen has boosted enrollment at Southeast Missouri State University to 7,569 for the fall semester, according to registrar Alton Bray; the head count, made at the end of the first four weeks of the semester, doesn’t include 206 students who enrolled but withdrew prior to the end of the four-week period.

1949

Broadway and Good Hope Street merchants countered a proposal for conversion of Frisco Park on South Main Street into a free parking lot with a recommendation at a Retail Merchants Association meeting yesterday that the City Council secure parking facilities for all three business areas, not just one; the section proposed on Main Street is from the Frisco passenger station south to William Street, a distance of almost two blocks; it is owned by the city and has been maintained by it for a number of years as a public park.

Rent control is lifted on all of Cape Girardeau County, with the exception of the city of Cape Girardeau; the order lifting restrictions as to rentals in Jackson, other towns and in the rural area, comes to Ralph E. Reynolds, area rent director, from T.E. Woods, housing expediter, in Washington, and is effective today; rent controls became effective in the county Nov. 1, 1946, the law establishing restrictions cutting back rents to the Jan. 1, 1946, level; there were no controls during the war proper.

1924

All-day services are held at McLain’s Chapel, a Methodist church west of Neelys Landing, and a basket dinner is served on the grounds; the Rev. A.C. Johnson, presiding elder, preaches in the afternoon and the pastor, the Rev. McDonald, at the morning service; the Rev. Fred Stabler, pastor of Third Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau, attends the meeting and at the afternoon service assists the Junior Choir, which he organized during a revival he held there last summer.

The Rev. J.G.M. Hursch, veteran mission pastor and experienced builder of churches, of Metropolis, Illinois, is the pastor the Board of Home Missions of the United Lutheran Church of America recommends to the new congregation at Cape Girardeau; the church is formally organized at a meeting in the morning in Security Hall.

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.