Out of the past: Oct. 4

1997

Marriott International Inc., which provides food services for Lacey's on the Hill Restaurant and Southeast Hospital, and Sodexho Alliance, food service provider at Southeast Missouri State University, have merged their food service and facilities management businesses; the merger created the largest food provider of food and facilities management services in North America.

Cape Girardeau schools superintendent Dr. Dan Tallent updated business leaders on new construction plans during the Chamber of Commerce First Friday Coffee at the Show Me Center; the district will begin taking bids for site work Tuesday for the new elementary school to be built near the Sprigg-Bertling intersection, Tallent said; a ground-breaking ceremony will be held at the site at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

1972

CHARLESTON, Mo. -- The mother of Gov. Warren E. Hearnes, Edna May Eastman Hearnes, 85, dies at a nursing home in Charleston; she had been a resident of Mississippi County 60 years and was in business here 45 years; she was a member of the First Baptist Church.

General Baptist Church in downtown Cape Girardeau, July 1957. G.D. Fronabarger (Southeast Missourian archive)

The desire for an expanded education department facility, more adequate parking space and more room has prompted the congregation of General Baptist Church to offer for sale the downtown landmark at 200 Broadway; the congregation plans to relocate to five acres owned by the church on Cape LaCroix Road; construction will depend upon the sale of the downtown property, but members hope to begin building some time next year; the red brick church, with its tall, distinctive steeple, has stood at the corner of Broadway and Spanish Street for 79 years.

1947

One of two bronze markers to be erected at two more of Cape Girardeau County's historically significant spots was received yesterday by B.C. Hardesty of the Associated Committees of Historic Cape Girardeau; the 14-by-18-inch plaque with an appropriate inscription will be placed at the base of a 9-foot cross at Cape LaCroix Creek, where it intersects Highway 61 northwest of the city; it will preserve the significance of an event in 1699, the planting of a cross at the mouth of the creek by three French missionaries.

The new road from Highway 61, completed by the Cape Township Special Road District, is now in use; it extends from a point near the bridge across what is commonly known as "Three Mile Creek," three miles north and west of Cape Girardeau, to the Williams Creek bridge on the old Bainbridge Road a distance of about four miles; from the Williams bridge the road extends about a half mile to Old McKendree Chapel.

1922

River traffic on the Mississippi is greatly curtailed and is threatened with suspension by the low stage of the water, according to official river reports received here by port warden Irvin Albert; shipping between Cairo, Illinois, and points frther south has been practically discontinued owing to the number of sandbars that are appearing daily in the channel; the river stage at Cape Girardeau at 8 a.m. was 7.2 feet, a drop of more than an inch in 24 hours.

With his son, J.C. Talbot, behind the wheel of a fine big Lincoln car, H.J. Talbot, a member of the Teachers College Board of Regents, drove in to Cape Girardeau late last evening from St. Louis; with them were Lt. Gov. Hiram Lloyd and Guy Study, architect for the new education building now going up on the campus; Lloyd, a contractor in St. Louis, is here to make a personal inspection of the new building for Gov. A.M. Hyde.

-- Sharon K. Sanders