EXHIBIT CAPTURES AREA'S HISTORY

Photographs of Main Street during the flood of 1951, children picking cotton in Missouri's Bootheel and river boats docked along Cape Girardeau's riverfront are all included in an exhibit that opens Friday at the Cape Girardeau Public Library.

The "Garland D. Fronabarger: A Retrospective" exhibit is a collection of photographs taken by one-time Southeast Missourian photographer Garland D. Fronabarger. His career spanned more than half a century, and his photographs capture pieces of Cape Girardeau's and Southeast Missouri's history.

"We want to do things to help celebrate Cape Girardeau's bicentennial," said Rhonda Chamley, the adult services coordinator at the library. "We have an extensive local history and we want to draw attention to it."

The exhibit includes 28 photographs, Chamley said.

Fronabarger was known as "Frony" during his years as a professional photographer. He was working when the technology was first developed to allow newspapers to print photographs in the 1930s.

He was the first to take aerial photographs of Cape Girardeau, and once when taking pictures of the SEMO District Fair from an airplane, he nearly fell out.

Other photographs in the exhibit include one taken in 1952 of then-Sen. Richard Nixon and his wife Pat upon their arrival in Cape Girardeau for a republican fundraiser; a parade down Broadway in 1956; a World War II soldier standing guard on a wintry day near the toll booth at the Cape Girardeau traffic bridge; and a Christmas Eve fire that destroyed the Rust & Martin building in 1950.

Fronabarger retired in 1986.

The exhibit will be on display at the library until the early March.