Out of the past: March 20

1998

Parking in Cape Girardeau is cramped and restaurants packed when approximately 4,400 people arrive for the Missouri State Teachers' Association's district meeting, a spring convention of Elks and a Children with Attention Deficit Disorder conference; Mary Miller, director of Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau, says the meeting and conferences are an excellent opportunity for retail shops and eateries.

A new attorney has joined the staff as an assistant public defender in the Southeast Missouri district of the state's public defender system; Dane Roper was added to the staff Monday, filling a vacancy created when Chuck Taylor left the office in February to enter private practice.

1973

A group of concerned Cape Girardeau and Jackson women are determined to do something to fight the rising cost of meat; Mrs. Gary Bomar of rural Jackson has started a campaign encouraging local women to join in a nationwide meat boycott the week of April 1 through 8; Bomar and approximately 20 volunteers are contacting every home in the Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Illmo-Scott City area, asking shoppers to rely on canned fish and fish sticks so "farmers and meat producers can see we really mean business," Bomar said.

Employees of Missouri Utilities and Florsheim Shoe Co. spent yesterday afternoon and today erecting and dismantling a floodgate across Main Street on the Sloan's Creek levee, marking the first time the prefabricated gate had been used since it was constructed in the early 1960s; the work was requested done by the Corps of Engineers as a precautionary measure to determine if the gate would fit in case of emergency; the Mississippi River stands at 40.33 feet at Cape Girardeau, one-tenth of a foot higher than the 40.2-foot crest that occurred Sunday.

1948

Acceptance of the Rev. Lawrence W. Cleland of Liberty, Missouri, of the invitation of First Baptist Church to become its pastor is announced by Professor W.J. Hamilton of the pulpit committee; Cleland, who is professor of Bible at William Jewell College, will come here May 1; former pastor, the Rev. H.H. McGinty, resigned that post Nov. 2, 1947; in the interim, the Rev. S.D. Aubuchon, dean of the Southeast Missouri Baptist Foundation, has been filling the pulpit at First Baptist.

Gerhardt Construction Co. is building a new garage building at the Marquette Cement Mfg. Co. plant, which will be used to house and service the quarry rock trucks, bulldozers and air compressors; the building will be of all reinforced concrete construction.

1923

A recent Southeast Missourian article showed that three Cape Girardeau County dairy cows had earned the distinction of being first of their class in Missouri; now comes a state expert who says Cape County leads all Southeast Missouri counties in egg production and value.

Homer Gehrs, former student of the State Teachers College here, has accepted a position with the Dairy Department of the University of Illinois as an official cow tester; Gehrs is a nephew of Professor John H. Gehrs, teacher in the agriculture department at the Cape Girardeau college; young Gehrs received his training here and is the fourth man to be sent from the local college to do testing work for the Illinois university.

-- Sharon K. Sanders