Stories from Wednesday, June 10, 1998

To the editor: If I were to ask my heavenly Father, "Lord, what would you want me to know above and beyond anything else," I am certain he would say, "I want you to know how very much I love you." As a father of three children and one grandchild, this would be my answer to them. ...

Cape Girardeau's Airport Advisory Board wants more information before going to the City Council with a recommendation on restaurant operations. Board members agreed Tuesday night to try to put together cost figures on setting up a grill area in the dining room as opposed to using the existing, separate kitchen...

Businesses, individuals and a city were honored over the weekend at the second annual Barrier Freedom Awards banquet sponsored by the SEMO Alliance for Disability Independence. Schnucks in Cape Girardeau received the 1997-98 employer award for the company's efforts to hire people with disabilities. "They seek out people rather than just have them apply," said Miki Gudermuth, SADI's executive director...

Cape Girardeau has narrowed its search for a director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau to five finalists. The city isn't releasing the finalists' names, said city manager Michael G. Miller. "We have some from out of state and some local," he said...

Too many businessmen are worried about material and financial results ... and leave the world of ideas to others ... . It is ideals that determine social trends, that create or destroy social systems and which now threaten our free enterprise and religion-based country of principles. Therefore, the right ideas and the right philosophy should be advocated and spread, or one has little to complain about regarding the decline of moral values in this country...

City residents will pay more for water and trash service in the coming year. Fees are a touchy subject. Many taxpayers get irate about the thought of raising any taxes or fees. All their frustrations about government can crystallize in such an issue. But let's examine the issue...

The Cape Girardeau City Council has approved $500,000 in next year's budget to raze either the old St. Francis Hospital building or the Marquette Hotel. Councilmen hope the money will never be spent. The old St. Francis Hospital has been purchased in recent months, and a group from Texas is looking at the Marquette Hotel...

Southeast Missouri farmers are keeping tuned to the weather this week. With some areas having received up to 6 inches of rain the past week, farmers across the region are waiting to get into their fields to harvest 300,000 acres of wheat and prepare those fields for plantings of soybeans...

The vice president for student affairs at Southeast Missouri State University has resigned effective June 30. Dr. SueAnn Strom told her staff last week that she was resigning from the $94,000-a-year job. She had served in that position since August 1992, having come to Southeast after serving as assistant vice president of student affairs at Mankato State University in Minnesota...

Sounds of construction greet Chuck Martin as he walks through the Easter Seals Early Childhood Center. As regional executive director of Easter Seals, Martin has become accustomed to the noise and the construction dust. But he is looking to August when the remodeling work should be completed and Easter Seals integrates about a dozen handicapped children into the regular classrooms at the day-care center on Broadway...

A severe thunderstorm dumped up to 3 inches of rain, uprooted trees, scattered limbs and left thousands of people without electricity for some period of time Tuesday. Wind gusts were clocked up to 55 mph during the storm. In Southeast Missouri, 11,000 AmerenUE customers lost power. About 7,000 of those were in the Cape Girardeau area...

Never, ever tell me that you don't believe in wearing makeup. Since blaming one's parents for all life's ills is so in vogue these days, I'd like to heap a little guilt on Mom and Dad for passing along their bad-complexion genes to me. Why couldn't I have had the kind of parents who spent their formative years making Neutrogena commercials for a living? Why couldn't they have been the kind of teens who said, "Oh no, a lone pimple! And right before prom night!" instead of the kind who could volunteer their foreheads for a topographical study of the Appalachians?. ...

For nearly 20 years, KFVS-12 sportscaster Randy Ray has been a familiar and friendly face on television screens in Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois, Western Kentucky and Northwestern Tennessee. Now, according to Ray, it's time for him to move behind the scenes...

The fourth annual Capaha Field Committee Baseball Camp will be held June 11-12 at Capaha Park in Cape Girardeau. Ages are 7 through 16. The cost is $50. Times are 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. both days, with lunch served at noon the second day. All campers will also receive a T-shirt...

Southeast Missouri State volleyball has announced the hiring of assistant coach Maile Parker. Parker comes to Southeast from Mankato State where she served as assistant coach the past two seasons. At Mankato, Parker was responsible for recruiting, strength and conditioning, academics and fund-raising activities...

The St. Louis Cardinals will conduct a baseball tryout camp July 20 at Sikeston's VFW Stadium. The camp, for players ages 17 through 20, will begin at 10 a.m. and last until approximately 3 p.m. American Legion players must have a written permission slip from their manager or coach to participate...

The Cape Girardeau Central Booster Club will hold its annual fund-raiser golf tournament July 10 at Bent Creek Golf Course in Jackson. The four-person scramble will feature morning and afternoon tee times, at 8 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. There will be three flights of competition...

The sixth annual Four-Person Scramble will be held June 20 at Cape Jaycees Municipal Golf Course. The tournament will begin with an 8 a.m. shotgun start. Cost is $120 per team. For more information, contact Sabrina Tate at 334-2031 or 335-5421.

The Cape Central Tigers' Baseball Camps will be held this summer in three sessions. Camp I, dealing with pitching, will be June 15-17. Grades 7-10 will meet from 9-11:30 a.m. and grades 3-6 will meet from 1-3:30 p.m. Camp II, dealing with hitting, will be June 29-30 and July 2. Grades 7-9 will meet from 9-11:30 a.m. and grades 3-6 will meet from 1-3:30 p.m...

The 1998 Jackson Coca-Cola Classic Tennis Tournament will be held July 18-19 and July 25-26 at Jackson City Courts. Singles play in eight different classifications will be held July 18-19. Classifications include youth, men and women. Doubles play will be held July 25-26 with men, women and mixed divisions. There will also be a boys 16-and-under and girls 16-and-under divisions in doubles...

The Montreal Expos tryout camp scheduled for Thursday at Capaha Field has been canceled. No rescheduling date has been set.

SIKESTON -- Curtis Handley, 85, of Sikeston died Tuesday, June 9, 1998, at his home. He was born Feb. 9, 1913 in Pine Bluff, Ark., the son of William and Nancy Darrough Handley, and had lived in Missouri since 1993. He was of the Baptist faith. He is survived by five sons, David Handley of Sikeston, William Handley of Clarkston, Mich., Kenneth, Larry and Calvin Smith, all of Malden; a daughter, Lavada S. ...

SIKESTON -- Elizabeth Davis, 88, of Sikeston died Monday, June 8, 1998, at her home. She was born Feb. 14, 1910, in Hernando, Miss., the daughter of Robert and Lucindia Allen, and spent her adult life in Missouri. She married Y.T. Davis on April 25, 1925, and he preceded her in death in 1969...

SIKESTON -- Max S. Harper, 85, of Blytheville, Ark., died Monday, June 8, 1998, at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Blytheville. He was born Sept. 27, 1912, at Dexter, son of George R. and Hattie E. Harper. He and Aura H. Vaughn were married Oct. 30, 1955, at Sikeston...

KELSO -- Albert Diebold, 94, of Kelso died Monday, June 8, 1998, at Fountainbleau Lodge in Cape Girardeau. He was born July 24, 1903, at New Hamburg, son of Charles I. and Therese Leible Diebold. He and Gladys Helen Glueck were married Aug. 13, 1928, at Kelso...

NEW HAMBURG -- Irene Niederkorn, 83, of Aurora, Ill., died Tuesday, June 9, 1998. She was formerly of New Hamburg. Amick-Burnett Funeral Chapel at Benton is in charge of arrangements.

Daughter to Travis and Traci Mobley of Jefferson City, hospital there, Wednesday, April 22, 1998. Name, Darra Leann. Weight, 8 pounds 11 ounces. Second child, first daughter. Mrs. Mobley is the former Traci Winter, daughter of Jerry Winter and Cheri Little of Jefferson City. Mobley is the son of Terry Mobley and Karen Mobley of Jefferson City and formerly of Cape Girardeau. He is employed in the communications department of Missouri Highway Patrol in Jefferson City...

Rosalea Chostner Hall of Cape Girardeau died Monday, June 8, 1998 at St. Francis Medical Center. She was born at Scopus, MO in Bollinger County, the daughter of the late James Monroe and Nancy Elizabeth Nanney Chostner. The family moved to Morley, MO where she graduated from Morley High School. She later graduated from Steimle Business College in Cape Girardeau. In 1938, she married Charles Scott Hall of Media, Pennsylvania. He preceded her in death in 1978...

The Southeast Missourian asked, "What do you like to do at Riverfest?" Dena Petzoldt: "I enjoy how the crafts are set out along the street. The music is good too." Valerie Michelsen: "Our kids like the rides and funnel cakes. We all like to see the fireworks."...

JACKSON -- Earplugs in place, three men squared off Sunday at the edge of a farmer's field. "Pull" said one, and the blasts of shotguns and smell of gunpowder began to fill the air. The competition Sunday afternoons at the Cape County Skeet & Trap Gun Club is very friendly. The only object is to have a good time shooting down clay birds that are flung overhead at 65 mph...

JACKSON -- School board members approved salary schedules and numerous federal programming applications as part of fiscal planning for the 1998-99 school year during the Jackson Board of Education meeting Tuesday night. Pay increases and increases on salary schedules were approved for certified and classified staff during the meeting. ...

Fifteen spots remain in the June 17 Beginners Internet class offered by the Southeast Missourian and Southeast Missouri State University. The class will be held from 1-3 p.m. in the new College of Business in Dempster Hall. The cost is $10. The class is geared to beginners, and will cover an overview of the Internet and how to use a browser. It will also take surfers to a wide range of useful Internet sites. Each person has his/her own computer with high-speed Internet access...

Though Southeast Missouri's muggy summer climate may occasionally test it, I've always held the conviction that there is something special about alfresco dining where, as Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, one of the high priests of gastronomy, put it, the universe is your drawing room and the sun your lamp...