Out of the past: Feb. 10

1999

Players International Inc., a small casino company that first opened a riverboat operation at Metropolis, Illinois, Feb. 24, 1993, will be sold to Jackson Enterprises Inc., an even smaller company in Las Vegas, Nevada; Players, based in Atlantic City, New Jersey, now also has casinos at Riverport in Maryland Heights in the St. Louis area and at Lake Charles, Louisiana; Jackson agreed to purchase Players for about $424 million in cash, stocks and assumed debts.

St. Paul Lutheran School in Jackson is preparing for enrollment growth by building a multipurpose educational building; construction began on the building in November and is scheduled for completion by the end of the year; it will include 10 classrooms, a music room, office area, cafeteria and a number of meeting rooms.

1974

The Neelys Landing Mission becomes Shepherd Baptist Church of the Southern Baptist Convention in an organization-dedication service at the church; it is located in the former Sheppard School near Neelys Landing and has been supported by First Baptist Church of Jackson since July 1954.

Issues involved in the current controversy at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis are discussed at all services at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau; the Rev. Oscar A. Gerkin, pastor of Trinity and a vice president of the Missouri District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, states he hadn't originally planned to speak about the problem from the pulpit, but that so many questions are being asked by Girardeans that he came to the conclusion that objective information needs to be given at the local level.

1949

C.E. Pritchard, manager of the Ozark 5- and 10-cent store, will officially open tomorrow and Saturday at 721 Broadway, formerly occupied by a Kroger store; the store is one of four owned by W. Wilson of Perryville and Marvin Oakes of De Soto, Missouri; the business will handle numerous household, automobile and miscellaneous items.

Manager Glenn Carroll announces plans for a "Talent Quest" to be sponsored weekly at the Broadway Theatre, with the winner to compete for district honors; the first program on the stage of the theater will be next Thursday night and weekly for four weeks thereafter; in the sixth week, all winning contests from the previous five shows will vie for first-place honors; the local winner will be sent to Mount Vernon, Illinois, for the district contest, and the winner there will advance to finals in Kansas City, Missouri; winner of the division will to go to Hollywood to compete in the final contests, with the winner to get $1,000, plus a movie screen test.

1924

While only one church in Cape Girardeau has a special memorial service for Woodrow Wilson, practically every church in the city observes, in a simple manner, his passing; at Centenary Methodist Church, the Rev. J.R. Spann, the pastor, delivers a sermon on the subject, "In Memory," a talk on the life and work of America's war president.

The Rev. J. Pendleton Scruggs arrived in Cape Girardeau Friday night to take up his duties as pastor of First Baptist Church here; he preached his final sermon in the Franklin, Kentucky, Baptist church last Sunday and opens his work here with sermons in the morning and evening; Scruggs is no stranger to Cape Girardeau; he was pastor of the Baptist church in 1915 and 1916, leaving the pulpit to engage in war work.

-- Sharon K. Sanders