Published Sept. 8, 1983, in the Southeast Missourian: Linder Deimund, who turned 87 today, looks out at the Mississippi River which has played a big part of his life. (Mary L. Spell ~ Southeast Missourian archive)...

Cape Girardeau's original city swimming pool in Capaha Park was segregated, with whites using the pool six days a week and blacks one. (G.D. Fronabarger ~ Southeast Missourian archive)...

This week's blog contains the final story in a three-part series on the logging industry in Southeast Missouri in 1944. While the previous articles dealt with the history of logging in the district and the effects of World War II on the industry, the final installment looked to the future timber harvesting in Southeast Missouri...

Continuing where we left off in last week's blog, we were discussing the logging industry in Southeast Missouri. This blog contains the second in the three-part series of articles published in 1944 as the war in Europe seemed to be winding down...

Several years after G.D. "Frony" Fronabarger retired (for the last time) in 1986, he showed up at the Missourian library with several boxes filled with 4-by-5 negatives. A treasure he was gifting the Missourian. Most of the negatives were unlabeled and undated. And Frony didn't have the patience to go through them and help identify them. He had started on a new chapter in his life, and looking at old, dusty negatives wasn't a part of it...

The "No German" hysteria stemming from World War I pressured Fred Kies into changing the name of the Jackson Deutscher Volksfreund newspaper to the Cape County Post in July 1918. (Southeast Missourian archive)...

In last week's blog, I discussed how speaking the German language over the Farmers Mutual Telephone Company's line in Pocahontas caused a huge spat. It seems that in 1919 some subscribers who used German to communicate over the telephone line, knowing it was against the company's rules, were punished for the infractions. They lost their telephone privileges...

As a child, I can remember listening to my mother speaking on the telephone. I wasn't eavesdropping exactly. I couldn't. I didn't understand German, and that's the language Mom typically used when speaking to her sister or older members of her family. This was especially true when she didn't want young ears to understand her conversation...

On July 5, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, the worst fires in circus history struck the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, killing more than 150 people. Among those who witnessed the blaze from the bandstand inside the big top was Jackson native Clarence Lee Bennett, a musician. Clarence was born Oct. 5, 1916, the son of Jesse Lee and Rachel E. Wells Bennett. He attended Jackson High School, where he played on the football team and in the school band...

Major Giboney Houck (from "Official Manual of the State of Missouri, 1919-1920") Major Giboney Houck was the only son of prominent Cape Girardeans Louis and Mary Hunter Giboney Houck. An attorney by training, it appears Houck spent the majority of his time working for the business interests of his family...

Twenty-five years ago, the grave of the only known Revolutionary War soldier buried in Old Lorimier Cemetery in Cape Girardeau was marked with a new military stone thanks to the efforts of former city sextant Terrell Weaver and the Sons of the American Revolution...

The Haas Brothers Saloon was located in Haarig at 637 Good Hope St. (Courtesy of River Heritage Museum; Southeast Missourian archive)...

Charles Eugene "Gene" Ellis was born March 31, 1929, in Harviell, Butler County, Missouri, the son of Kerry Lee and Ethel Mae Yount Ellis. Some time following the death of his mother in 1935, Gene and his father moved to Bollinger County, Missouri. By 1940, they can be found on the federal census living in Whitewater, along with Kerry’s second wife, Della May...

As I pulled together the various elements of this blog in May, I anxiously awaited word of my application to join the Daughters of the Revolution. Big Sis and I filed our applications and supporting documents back in March, and we have just received our official notification of membership...

When my mother passed away in February 2004, I became my family's memory keeper. I inherited the big Tupperware container filled with family photos, the strongbox with various legal and personal documents, and a shoe box containing my Grandma Clara Glaus Stehr's five-year diaries, beginning in 1939 and continuing through her death in the early 1970s...

Almost 10 years after Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton completed his Social History of Missouri mural at the state capitol in Jefferson City, the Neosho native paid a visit to Cape Girardeau in the spring of 1944. The controversial painter lectured to a "well-filled" house in the Little Theater at State College the evening of May 9, and the next morning gave an "assembly talk" at the college...

I decided several weeks ago NOT to write another blog on the Cape Girardeau tornado of May 21, 1949. But I couldn't let the 70th anniversary of that tragedy go by completely unmentioned...

On May 4, 1919, Cape Girardeau was abuzz with plans to welcome home the 140th Regiment. The same citizens, who saw train car after train car of young men depart from Jackson to take up arms in the defense of their country, were preparing to welcome home the soldiers of the 140th, many of them hometown boys...

Louis Houck, in his undated manuscript "Reminiscences," included two more descriptions of Cape Girardeau's residential streets as they appeared when he made this town his home in April 1868. They were published in 1969 by the Southeast Missourian as a way to mark the centennial of Houck's arrival here...

In last week's blog, we noted the arrival of Louis Houck in Cape Girardeau in 1869, 150 years ago. Marking the centennial of the Great Man's arrival here on April 21, the Southeast Missourian began publishing excerpts from his undated manuscript, "The Reminiscences of Louis Houck," on that date in 1969. The daily offerings continued through 52 installments...