U.S. REP. BILL EMERSON

Funeral service for Congressman Bill Emerson of Cape Girardeau will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at First Presbyterian Church. Officiating will be Dr. E.C. Brasington, Rev. Charles Dreyer, Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston Archdiocese, and Dr. Jim Ford, chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives. Burial will be in Hillsboro Cemetery at Hillsboro.

Friends may call at Old St. Vincent's Church from 5-8 p.m. Wednesday.

Ford and Sons Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Emerson, 58, died Saturday, June 22, 1996, at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md., of lung cancer.

He was born Jan. 1, 1938, in Hillsboro, son of Norvell Preston and Marie Reinemer Emerson. He and Jo Ann Hermann were married June 21, 1975, at Bethesda.

Emerson received a bachelor of arts degree from Westminster College at Fulton in 1959, and received an LL.B. degree in 1964 from the University of Baltimore. He served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

He has been the congressman of Missouri's Eighth District since first elected in 1980. He was currently serving on the House Committee on Agriculture and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

He was the first Republican to be elected to the Eighth District in 52 years.

Emerson was appointed a Page in the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 15 by the late Congressman Thomas B. Curris. He returned to Washington, D.C., in 1961 as the administrative assistant to Congressman Bob Ellsworth of Kansas, and later as assistant to Congressman/Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland.

From 1970-79 he held executive positions at Fairchild Industries, Interstate Natural Gas Association, the Federal Election Commission, and TRW Inc.

While in Congress he championed issues such as a balanced budget amendment and line-item veto authority for the president; gun owner rights; infrastructure improvements for the district's roads, highways, bridges, ports, rails and airports; "fair" trade and increased trade; reduced government regulation, and property owner rights.

Emerson was a member of First Presbyterian Church in Cape Girardeau, and was serving on the Southeast Missouri Council Associate Board of the Boy Scouts of America.

Survivors include his wife; four daughters, Elizabeth Moir of McLean, Va., Abigail Emerson of Union City, N.J., Victoria and Kathryn Emerson of Cape Girardeau, and his mother, Marie Hahn of Cape Girardeau.

He was preceded in death by his father.