Out of the past: June 30

1998

Boxes of Cape Girardeau County probate records have been moved to temporary storage facilities while the County Commission searches for a permanent solution to its storage problem; more records are slated to be moved as a renovation project proceeds at the county prosecutor's office in the Jackson courthouse; records, some more than 100 years old, are being stored in rented storage sheds.

After holding court and dispensing justice for more than 15 years on the Cape Girardeau municipal court bench, Judge Edward Calvin, a man with a reputation for tough sentences, dons his judicial robes for the last time; Calvin announced to the City Council in March that at the end of June he would retire as municipal judge, a position he has held since January 1983.

1973

It is expected to be four or five days before the towboat Mr. R, owned by Missouri Dry Dock and Repair Co. here, is freed from a sunken barge in the Mississippi River south of Blytheville, Arkansas; the boat, with a crew of six, rammed the barge near Mile 808, four miles south of Blytheville at 1:20 Friday morning; the collision damaged the hull, but all crewmen safely boarded one of the four empty cement barges that were in tow.

The Ozark Air Lines terminal at Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport is preparing to resume normal operations Thursday, following yesterday's settlement of a nearly 2 1/2-month mechanics' strike; Robert Hansen, terminal manager, is in the process of contacting the terminal's six ticket agents, all of whom were temporarily laid off in April.

1948

S.M. Mertz, a representatives of the Harland Bartholomew company, is in town to survey available sites for the new physical education and health building; the company has been hired to make a master plan for campus construction, and priority has been given the location of the physical education plant; Mertz surveys the entire campus, as well as property owned by the college, even the College Farm; some off-campus locations are also checked.

Painters have been engaged to repaint the Roman numerals on the clock faces in the courthouse dome in Jackson; over the new white face there will be placed glass frames, which are already on hand, waiting for installation; weather and time have played havoc with the clock faces; the clock mechanism in the tower room is given attention each week.

1923

The Elks Building on Themis Street was constructed in 1906-07 by August Vogelsang. Southeast Missourian archive

A petition asking the appointment of a receiver for the Elks Realty Co., owner of the $25,000 Elks building on Themis Street in Cape Girardeau, and for the foreclosure of a mortgage held by the Southeast Missouri Trust Co. for the full amount of the cost of the building is filed in Common Pleas Court by attorneys representing the local banking institution; Elks Realty Co., an organization formed by the old Elks Lodge to erect the building in 1906, issued bonds to the trust company to the extent of $25,000; according to the petition, the bonds are still outstanding and unpaid, and the petitioner is asking for the appointment of a receiver to liquidate its affairs.

Joseph Hohler, dean of Cape Girardeau shoemakers and for 52 years engaged in that business on Broadway, plans to leave his present location at 629 Broadway and will maintain only a small shop at his home; the building he now occupies is to be replaced by a larger, more modern structure.

-- Sharon K. Sanders