Out of the past: June 28

1992

The Rev. Bob Hill Jr. of McClure, Illinois, has started a new church in Cape Girardeau; American Heritage Baptist Church is holding services each Sunday in Arena Park.

Organizers of a new community-based beautification effort hope to find volunteers to take over the job of keeping the old Saint Francis Hospital grounds mowed and trimmed. City crews worked Friday and will finish cleaning up the grounds Monday to give the group a good start; the city had to bring in heavy equipment, including a brush hog and chain saw, to begin cleaning the location with its waist-high grass and weeds.

1967

From $50,000 to $75,000 in damages will be sought by a group of farmers who have allegedly suffered crop damage from rapidly rising water as the result of a dam built across a drainage ditch south of Cape Girardeau. Earl Schultz, executive secretary for the Little River Drainage District, says as far as he knows, the dam is still standing; he adds the builders of the dam have been told by the district to destroy it, but apparently they have ignored the order.

Airplane dealers representing 13 states attended the first national air auction at the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport yesterday. About 30 airplanes were flown here to be placed on the auction block. The auction is expected to be a monthly event.

1942

Plans have been completed for a continuation of the Catholic mission, sessions of which will be held in a tent beginning tomorrow on the Phelps lot at First and North Main streets in the Red Star suburb. Three priests will give lectures on Catholic beliefs and practices; they are the Revs. J.L. Lilly of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Richard Gieselman of St. Louis and Stephen Courtney of New Orleans.

The Rev. Clarence Howard, a member of the faculty of St. Augustine's Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, begins a week-long mission at Holy Family Catholic Church, a black congregation on South Sprigg Street.

1917

Louis Blattner, son of Charles Blattner, a farmer living on the Gordonville Road a few miles from Cape Girardeau, was stabbed in the arm by a thief caught in his oat field after midnight last night; Blattner, who had noticed someone was harvesting his oats during the night, armed himself with a good club and waited in the field for the midnight harvester; he caught him, but in the melee that resulted, Blattner was stabbed in the fleshy part of the arm and the unidentified thief escaped.

Mayor Will Hirsch has given Mmes. Harry Gaines, George Patton and Ed Massengill his consent to the roping off of South Lorimier Street in front of their homes tomorrow night, to be used as a dance floor; the social is a benefit for the members of the Sixth Regiment.

-- Sharon K. Sanders