History

Henry Gerecke was known to expect excellence from his officers as chief of police in Cape Girardeau and as provost marshal of military police in Panama and Texas, but he also stood behind his officers even in the face of criticism. "He was like a father figure," Cape Girardeau part-time patrolman Jerry Neels said. "You didn't want to let him down."...

COKER CREEK, Tenn. -- The U.S. Forest Service ripped up a portion of the Trail of Tears in the Appalachian Mountains, reopening wounds for Native Americans who consider sacred the land where thousands of their ancestors died during their forced migration westward...

ST. LOUIS -- Missouri will host a pilot project for an initiative to make radio history available through a national archive. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the Radio Preservation Task Force, overseen by the Library of Congress, is collecting and cataloging radio recordings...

ARLINGTON, Va. -- George Washington's adopted son was a bit of a ne'er-do-well by most accounts, including those of Washington himself, who wrote about his frustrations with the boy they called "Wash." "From his infancy, I have discovered an almost unconquerable disposition to indolence in everything that did not tend to his amusements," the founding father wrote...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- It was a historian's idea: carve gigantic sculptures into the granite pinnacles of the Black Hills of South Dakota, significant Western figures such as Lewis and Clark, Buffalo Bill Cody, Fremont, Red Cloud and Sacagawea. "In the vicinity of Harney Peak ... are opportunities for heroic sculpture of unusual character," South Dakota Department of History superintendent Doane Robinson wrote to a sculptor in Georgia in 1924...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A restored 1904 piano will be the focus at the dedication of a celebrated ragtime pianist's home in Columbia. The Haines Brothers piano was one of the practice pianos for John William "Blind" Boone, The Columbia Missourian reported...

All Ernie Trakas could do was rub his jaw and laugh as Michael Gontesky rattled through the steps to coax the 104-year-old Harley-Davidson to life. Gas, oil, clutch, and the thing started up. Its engine turned over with all the grace of a hand-crank Ford buggy, but it started, and that's what mattered.

Jackson city officials continue to move toward establishing the city’s first historical preservation ordinance in hopes of maintaining the look of important buildings uptown and elsewhere. “We’re going through the process now of understanding what we should include in an ordinance,” said Jackson Mayor Dwain Hahs. “Without speaking for [the rest of the board of aldermen], they are favorable to the idea of having an ordinance.”...

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, the first black U.S. senator from the deep South since Reconstruction, is proposing the site where the Civil War began be raised in status to that of a national park. The Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill creating the Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Park as the nation's 60th national park and second in South Carolina...

NEW YORK -- Behind the barbed wire, the minivan's busted windows and crumpled roof hint at its story. But forklifted to this windblown spot on the John F. Kennedy International Airport tarmac between a decommissioned 727 and an aircraft hangar, it's doubtful passing drivers notice it...

ARLINGTON, Va. -- After flying military planes during World War II, raising a family, visiting all seven continents and bungee-jumping in New Zealand at 83, Elaine Harmon had one final, seemingly simple wish: to be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery...

LITTLE BREWSTER ISLAND, Mass. -- The nation's first and oldest lighthouse station and its unique keeper are celebrating a milestone. Boston Light turns 300 on Sept. 14. The U.S. Coast Guard's last resident lightkeeper, Sally Snowman, is helping with celebrations...

Cape Girardeau will be bursting with history later this month. The inaugural Cape Girardeau Heritage Days will take place from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2.

ST. LOUIS -- Phyllis Schlafly, the outspoken conservative activist who helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and founded the Eagle Forum political group, has died. She was 92. Schlafly died Monday afternoon of cancer at her home in St. Louis, her son John Schlafly said...

The last of three men tried and acquitted in an infamous civil-rights slaying in Alabama has died. Namon O'Neal Hoggle of Selma, Alabama, died Tuesday, according to an obituary released by the funeral home handling arrangements for the family. He was 81. A service was scheduled for Thursday...

WASHINGTON -- Georgetown University will give preference in admissions to the descendants of slaves owned by the Maryland Jesuits as part of its effort to atone for profiting from the sale of enslaved people, the president of the prominent Jesuit university in Washington announced Thursday...

A replica of the Nina ship passes by Cape Girardeau during a trip from Hannibal, Missouri, to its next stop at Grand Rivers, Kentucky. The Columbus Foundation operates two replicas, Nina and Pinta, that were on the Mississippi River on Tuesday.

LOS ANGELES -- Gene Wilder, the frizzy-haired actor who brought his deft comedic touch to such roles as the neurotic accountant in "The Producers" and the mad scientist of "Young Frankenstein," has died. He was 83. Wilder's nephew said Monday the actor and writer died late Sunday at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, of complications from Alzheimer's disease...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Some mistakes are never too late to fix. A Civil War soldier misidentified when he was buried at an Ohio cemetery more than 150 years ago is to get a new headstone. Confederate soldier Augustus Beckmann was wounded fatally in the Battle of Shiloh on April 7, 1862...

LOS ANGELES -- Steven Hill, a versatile character actor in theater, films and television who achieved his greatest success late in life as grumpy District Attorney Adam Schiff on TV's long-running "Law & Order," died Tuesday. He was 94. He died Tuesday morning at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, his wife, Rachel, said. The cause of death was not immediately available, but his wife said he suffered from several ailments...

The American epidemiologist whose unwavering leadership resulted in the eradication nearly 40 years ago of smallpox, one of the world's most feared contagious diseases, has died. Dr. Donald "D.A." Henderson was 87 when he died Friday at a hospice-care facility in Towson, Maryland, from complications after a hip fracture, Johns Hopkins University said in a statement. Henderson was a former dean of the school's Bloomberg School of Public Health...

WASHINGTON -- Lonnie Bunch leans forward to peer inside a slave cabin from Edisto Island, South Carolina. The dark and cramped interior defies his attempts to showcase the small living space its occupants subsisted on. Bunch flips on the flashlight on a borrowed smartphone, illuminating for his guests the craftsmanship, the hard work and the love the cabin's former occupants put into what little they had...

BOISE, Idaho -- A young Hunter S. Thompson went to Idaho to write about Ernest Hemingway and decided to take a piece of his hero home with him -- a set of trophy elk antlers. More than half a century later, the gonzo journalist's wife returned the antlers to Hemingway's house in the mountain town of Ketchum...

NEW YORK -- John McLaughlin, the conservative political commentator and host of the namesake long-running television show that pioneered hollering-heads discussions of Washington politics, has died. He was 89. McLaughlin died Tuesday morning, according to an announcement on the Facebook page of "The McLaughlin Group" series. No cause of death was mentioned, but an ailing McLaughlin had missed the taping for last weekend's show -- his first absence in the series' 34 years...

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Harry Briggs Jr., who as a young boy was at the center of a lawsuit that culminated with the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing segregated public schools, has died. He was 75. Briggs died Aug. 9 at his home in New York City, according to Samuels Funeral Home in Manning, South Carolina. A funeral is scheduled for Friday in a community center that formerly housed the school attended by Briggs, several younger siblings and many of the other students involved in the lawsuit...

BROWNINGTON, Vt. -- A hilltop village near the Canadian border grew to more than double its usual population of about 900 on Monday as people lined up to see dozens of oxen move an old schoolhouse to its original location. The goal of the re-enactment was to move the Orleans County Grammar School, which in recent decades has served as a Grange hall, about a third of a mile to the center of the small hilltop campus where early 19th-century scholar and legislator Alexander Twilight opened it in 1823 and was its schoolmaster. ...

The Cape West Rotary Club is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and members say it's an opportunity to reflect on the good that's been done during that span while looking forward to the next 50 years. J. Derieck Hodges, a financial planner at Anchor Pointe Wealth Management in Cape Girardeau and past president of the club, said, "We're all out there just trying to do something."...

DOWNING, Mo. -- A northeast Missouri man who died in the crash of an Air Force plane in 1952 finally will be laid to rest in his native state. Wayne Dean Jackson of Downing died along with 51 others when their plane crashed into Mount Gannett in Alaska on Nov. 22, 1952...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A cemetery where some of Kansas City's most well-known founders are buried now is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Union Cemetery was founded before the Civil War and may contain the mass graves of people who died in that conflict, The Kansas City Star reported...

EMINENCE, Mo. -- Paddlers on a couple of rivers in southern Missouri may cross paths with wild horses, and a federal law that now is two decades old is being credited for what locals consider a tourist draw. The horses have been roaming freely near the Jacks Fork and Current rivers in Shannon County for more than a century, the Springfield News-Leader reported...

ST. LOUIS -- Years from now, when researchers want to look back at what some are calling the modern civil-rights movement after police killings of black people in Ferguson, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, they could use a tool developed in part by researchers at Washington University...

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- Ten years ago -- no, say, two years ago -- Mike Norman never thought he'd be in the business of reconstructing bison. Not that the field remains crowded with folks wanting to do this. The remains can be found, washed up in various places. Norman looks...

The exterior of 1 N. Main St. in downtown Cape Girardeau has not changed much over the years, but inside there is a history of activity. The 20,000-square-foot property has been home to a five-and-dime, a furniture store, an antique shop and a handful of restaurants...

LONDON -- A U.S. Marine Corps horse who served during some of the bloodiest fighting of the Korean War was decorated posthumously for bravery. Sgt. Reckless was awarded the Dickin Medal during a ceremony Wednesday at the Korean War Memorial in London, the 63rd anniversary of the end of the war...

NEW YORK -- James M. Nederlander, who took over the fledgling Nederlander Organization from his father and built it into one of the largest producers of live entertainment and a dominant national theater chain that includes nine Broadway houses, has died. He was 94...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- An 85-year-old white widow's opening of a replica slave cabin to attract people to her Missouri black history library is drawing the ire of an activist who considers the site an "in-your-face reminder" about slavery. Schools aren't making plans to visit, and civic clubs don't want to hear presentations from Marge Harlan, a retired psychologist and school teacher who used about $175,000 of her own money to build and furnish the library in west-central Missouri's Sedalia in hopes of salving race relations, The Kansas City Star reported.. ...

Circuit Judge Benjamin Lewis upheld the commissioners' awards in a case in which the city of Cape Girardeau is taking land for the widening of Bloomfield Road and construction of a walking trail. The owners of the properties in the condemnation case argued in a hearing last week they should receive greater compensation because of the "heritage value" of the land...

NEW YORK -- Hollywood voice double Marni Nixon, whose singing was heard in place of the leading actresses in such classic movie musicals as "West Side Story," "The King and I" and "My Fair Lady," has died. She was 86. Michael Kirsten, senior vice president of Nixon's talent agency, Harden-Curtis Associates, said she died Sunday of cancer in New York...

LOS ANGELES -- Garry Marshall knew how to tug at moviegoers' heartstrings, whether with unlikely love in "Pretty Woman" or sentimental loss in "Beaches." But it was goofy, crowd-pleasing comedy that endeared the writer and director to generations of TV viewers in hit sitcoms including "Happy Days, "Laverne & Shirley" and "Mork & Mindy." Marshall, who died Tuesday at 81, said in a 1980s interview humor was his necessary path in life...

Owners of land that once was part of a historic estate took issue with the city of Cape Girardeau's plans to widen Bloomfield Road and build a walking trail during a court hearing Tuesday. The hearing before Circuit Judge Benjamin Lewis in Common Pleas Circuit Court involved testimony about everything from historical springs and pond ducks to a Dalhousie golf-cart path...

Dozens of the firearms on display at the Arena Building over the weekend during the Cape Girardeau Gun Show were dated to the 1800s -- providing a tactile connection to the past for collectors who maybe valued provenance over firepower. Guns like the six-shooter on display at Jerry Halley's display. Halley, of Doniphan, Missouri, said the Smith & Wesson American pistol was made between 1872 and 1874...

Every time Kenny Pincksten completes a renovation of a historic building, he promises himself it will be the last. He has yet to keep this promise. Pincksten has a track record of restoring older buildings. Through his development firm, Prestige Development, he renovated the Vasterling building, a two-story, 143-year-old structure at the corner of Broadway and Sprigg Street...

Change may be in the works for uptown Jackson, thanks to a historic preservation ordinance that will be discussed by the Jackson Board of Aldermen during study session Monday night. The board will examine the findings of a preliminary review of the proposed ordinance that would create a local uptown historic district, said building and planning superintendent Janet Sanders...

SHIRLEY, N.Y. -- For many who lost loved ones from TWA Flight 800, the passage of 20 years has helped them carry on. Others said they never will get over the heartache from what remains one of the most hotly debated air disasters in history. Soon after the Paris-bound flight took off from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on July 17, 1996, the Boeing 747 exploded off Long Island, killing all 230 aboard and leaving a fiery crash site on the water...

ST. LOUIS -- For 50 years, an unsolved mystery in St. Louis centered around who piloted the small plane that flew through the legs of the newly completed Gateway Arch in 1966. A suburban St. Louis woman says it was her father. The 630-foot tall monument to westward expansion was newly completed when, on June 22, 1966, a small plane suddenly from the west, made a low pass over the Old Courthouse and flew straight through the Arch legs. ...

About a month ago, some facilities management personnel at Southeast Missouri State University were going through a storage area and made a discovery that would become an intriguing project for Terry Davis. Davis is the student manager of the press area at Catapult Creative House on Broadway in Cape Girardeau. He's also pursuing a bachelor's degree in fine arts with an emphasis on printmaking...

On the first day of September 1939, the Nazis were marching through Poland, and 13-year-old Kenneth Bender was chucking papers onto doorsteps earlier than usual. A call had roused his father — who had in turn roused him — the previous night, summoning Southeast Missourian paperboys to deliver an extra edition with the two-word headline: “WAR BREAKS!” ...

NEW YORK -- Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born Holocaust survivor whose classic "Night" became a landmark testament to the Nazis' crimes and launched Wiesel's long career as one of the world's foremost witnesses and humanitarians, has died at age 87...