Growing up, it was my privilege to go to school with the children of Robert and Rosemary Hendrix. While as a youngster I didn't have much interaction with Bob and Rosemary, I remember them attending Sunday Mass with their children. Both of them were also very active in parish life at St. Mary's Cathedral...

Growing up, I attended St. Mary's Grade School on South Sprigg Street, just south of William Street. At times, Mom would bring lunch to my siblings and me. We would sit in the family van parked in front of the school and eat together. I remember those midday meals for the Angelus prayer that started them and for the scenes we enjoyed as we munched sandwiches and chips...

Included in the group in the above photo, made Tuesday, July 23, 1946, at Common Pleas Courthouse, are the first women called to jury service in Cape County. In the front row, from the left, are Sheriff H.K. Sewing, J.B. Griffaw, Edwin Nagel, Paul Stueve, Judge J. ...

Sixteen years before the fiery, fatal crash of the Hindenburg, the giant dirigible ZR-2 -- then the largest airship ever built -- broke apart in the skies above Hull, England, as it was undergoing flight testing and crashed in flames into the Humber Estuary...

In Stephen Robertson's eighth article in his series featuring local towns, he visited Marble Hill in July 1971. He followed that up a couple months later by producing a feature on Marble Hill's resident sculptor, Tom Runnels. Fred Lynch did a blog using that article in 2015...

May Greene School, 1929. (Southeast Missourian archive) Before I moved to downtown Cape Girardeau and began voting at City Hall, I lived in South Cape and cast my ballots in the lobby of May Greene School. I can't ever remember walking beyond the lobby to any other part of the building...

Last week's blog provided the main story published in the Southeast Missourian concerning the fierce electrical and wind storm that blew through Southeast Missouri on July 15, 1971. Mentioned in that article was some of the damage caused by the storm, including the destruction of a World War II hangar at the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport and the unroofing of the historic covered bridge at Burfordville. These stories give more details...

Living in Southeast Missouri, we're used to the occasional summer storms that terrorize our nights and damage our buildings. But an electrical storm in July 1971 is memorable for two things: Strong winds unroofed the historic covered bridge at Bollinger Mill in Burfordville and lightning struck the main hangar at Cape Girardeau Regional (then Municipal) Airport, causing a fire that burned the World War II-vintage building to the ground. ...

My family has deep ties to Scott County, Missouri, specifically to Commerce on Dad's side and New Hamburg and Oran on Mom's. So when the story below popped up as I was doing research, I took a special interest in it. On June 5, 1971, the Southeast Missourian began publishing a weekly series of articles that featured area towns and villages. Stephen Robertson was responsible for both the photos and the stories...

As Judge Marybelle Mueller neared her retirement in October 1994, she sat down with Southeast Missourian managing editor Joni Adams to discuss her career. Adams transformed the interview into one of her "Profiles," published Oct. 18, 1994...

Bartholomew Cousin, secretary of the Cape Girardeau's founder, Louis Lorimier, may be one of the town's greatest mystery men. From his long-missing will, the contents of which were quoted by earlier historians, we know he was born March 18, 1767, three leagues west of Cherbourg, France, to Marin Cousin, a farmer, and Magdaline Pienot, his wife...

Capital View of Cape Girardeau. Color lithograph by Charles Robyn and Co., St. Louis, ca. 1858. (Wikipedia commons)...

Articles about politics in the early Southeast Missourian newspapers frequently referred to "stirrings of the political pot." It meant that people were beginning to think about who would make good candidates for office, as well as speculation about who would throw his hat into the political ring...

Last week's blog focused on a 1914 "Baby Show" held in Cape Girardeau to place orphans from the Missouri Home Finding Society in St. Louis with local families. From the articles published at the time, the show was a great success...

Over the years, I've been asked repeatedly about what happened to orphans throughout Cape Girardeau's history. Parent-less children often were sent to live with relatives. This happened to my great-grandmother, Katherine Bullinger Stehr. Her mother died shortly after Kate's birth, and her father passed on when the child was just 2 years old. ...

What do William H. Escue and White Mule have in common? Not a thing, except for articles about each that appeared in 1921 in consecutive editions of the Southeast Missourian. So, even though there's no real connection between the two, I found both articles interesting enough to share them in a blog...

In what may have been the first instance of jet planes landing at what is now Cape Girardeau Regional Airport, two P-80 jet-propelled Army aircraft landed at former Harris Field on May 24, 1946. The field at the time was being used by the government to sell off retired military airplanes. ...

One of the earliest views of Cape Girardeau is this line drawing, which came from a circa 1870 magazine. It shows Themis Street at the riverfront, with the Common Pleas Courthouse — devoid of its wings, portico and cupola — high on a hill in the background. (Southeast Missourian archive)...

John Sciortino (Elroy Kinder photo ~ Southeast Missourian archive) The section of Cape Girardeau known as Haarig -- the Good Hope Street area -- is historically thought of as being the German section of town...

Did you ever hear the story about the inebriated man who rode a borrowed horse up the south steps of Common Pleas Courthouse Park and then reversed himself and rode the nag down the east steps? I thought of that tale recently when I ran across a photo of some brawny college men pushing and pulling a 1908 Ford automobile up the front steps of Academic Hall in 1946. Here's the story, and I apologize that the image reproduced from microfilm isn't better...