History

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -- Ira "Ike" Schab had just showered, put on a clean sailor's uniform and closed his locker aboard the USS Dobbin when he heard a call for a fire rescue party. He went topside to see the USS Utah capsizing and Japanese planes in the air. ...

Southeast Missouri State University has had 18 presidents in its 150-year history, and Art Wallhausen served as assistant to six of them. Wallhausen first came to SEMO in 1984 as the coordinator of the university's News Bureau. He had been the editor of the Enterprise-Courier newspaper in Charleston, Missouri, which was owned by his family...

In the 1950s, the State Historical Society of Missouri began placing roadside markers made of a cast aluminum alloy with an enamel blue finish and 23-karat gold lettering topped by the state seal; the information they conveyed was intended "to give the traveler and the local citizen a feeling of identity with his environment"; to celebrate its centennial, the society has published a book, "Marking Missouri History," that collects the information inscribed on the markers and adds related essays, photographs and drawings.. ...

LOS ANGELES -- Norman Lear, the writer, director and producer who revolutionized prime time television with "All in the Family", "The Jeffersons" and "Maude", propelling political and social turmoil into the once-insulated world of TV sitcoms, has died. He was 101...

Some 900 of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese's 57,439 parishioners will receive tickets to attend the papal Mass on Jan. 27 in St. Louis; the tickets will be distributed by the parish pastors based on the number of members in each parish, the number of tickets alloted for each church ranging from as many as 62 to as few as two...

NEW YORK -- Denny Laine, a British singer, songwriter and guitarist who performed in an early, pop-oriented version of the Moody Blues and was later Paul McCartney's longtime sideman in the ex-Beatle's solo band Wings, has died at age 79. Laine, inducted five years ago into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues, died Tuesday in Naples, Florida. The cause was interstitial lung disease, according to an announcement on Laine's Instagram page by his wife, Elizabeth Hines...

If the people beside the Salvation Army kettles seem to be swinging those bells more briskly than usual this holiday season, perhaps it is because the 1998 Tree of Lights campaign is running behind; the campaign so far has raised $56,512 toward its goal of $200,000; receipts from the kettles are $8,000 behind the $37,000 that had been taken in by this time last year; the campaign is about $3,000 behind in mail donations...

Superintendents at two Missouri school districts have been named finalists for the top school job in Cape Girardeau; Dan Steska, superintendent at Arcadia Valley R-II District in Iron County, and David G. Smith, superintendent at Excelsior Springs District near Kansas City, will be in Cape Girardeau next week to meet with faculty, staff and the public...

Five people were taken into custody Wednesday by the Cape Girardeau Police Department in connection with two shooting incidents in the downtown area earlier in the afternoon; no one was injured in either of the incidents; police say the first incident occurred shortly before 2 p.m. ...

As a sentinel watching over its subjects, the Kage House at 120 Broadway proudly overlooks Spanish Street and old Harmony Street, renamed Broadway around 1900. Most of its residential neighbors are long gone; fortunately it has lovingly been preserved...

A Cape Girardeau man, who gained national attention after allegedly taking a taxi to the scene of one of his crimes, is being sought by law enforcement officials after he failed to show up for his trial in a Cape Girardeau County court yesterday; the 35-year-old man was scheduled to go on trial Tuesday in Circuit Court on five counts of robbery, burglary and stealing, but when the scheduled time for jury selection arrived, he was nowhere to be found...

A Georgia firm -- Williams Environmental Services Inc. of Stone Mountain -- has been hired to clean up the PCB-contaminated soil at the Missouri Electric Works site on South Kingshighway; the actual cleanup work is expected to cost $3 million to $3.5 million, far less than the $17 million the Environmental Protection Agency had estimated; Missouri Electric Works was a motor and transformer repair and sales business that closed its doors six years ago...

Forty years ago, Southeast Missouri State University responded to a nursing shortage in the region by developing the state's first associate degree program; at the end of this semester, again responding to the needs of the region, the university will eliminate the associate degree and focus on advanced academic degrees for nurses...

Grace United Methodist Church holds a Thanksgiving service with music by the Grace Notes handbell choir and the dedication of the choir chimes at its morning services; also holding a community Thanksgiving service is the Jackson Alliance Center; the service is at 2 p.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ, with the Rev. Brian Anderson delivering the sermon...

Fruitland is not a location that pops up in most memories as a high school basketball powerhouse. Nonetheless, the Fruitland High School Greyhounds won the Class B state title in 1932, with the College High Preps taking second. Class B included high schools with fewer than 500 enrolled students...

This Sunday, Nov. 26, will mark the 25th year of the Toybox Run that takes place right before the Parade of Lights through downtown Cape Girardeau. Founded by Kim McDowell in 1998, the 1-mile "fun run or walk" race follows the same route as the Parade of Lights, starting at 4:55 p.m. at the intersection of Broadway and North West End Boulevard and finishing at the intersection of Broadway and Main Street...

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- The Vincentian Catholic order is nationally marketing for sale or development of 611 acres of land surrounding its seminary in Perryville; in June 1997, the Vincentians announced a plan to develop a shopping mall, golf courses, subdivisions and other buildings on the land around St. ...

PARIS -- A faded and cracked felt bicorne hat worn by Napoleon Bonaparte sold for $2.1 million at an auction Sunday of the French emperor's belongings. Yes, $2.1 million. The signature broad, black hat -- one of a handful still in existence that Napoleon wore when he ruled 19th-century France and waged war in Europe -- was initially valued at $650,000-870,000. It was the centerpiece of Sunday's auction in Fontainebleau of memorabilia collected by a French industrialist who died last year...

ATLANTA -- Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, the closest adviser to Jimmy Carter during his one term as U.S. president and their four decades thereafter as global humanitarians, has died at the age of 96. The Carter Center said she died Sunday after living with dementia and suffering many months of declining health. The statement said she "died peacefully, with family by her side" at 2:10 p.m. at her rural Georgia home of Plains...

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon's decision to accept a $6.7 billion tobacco settlement for the state won't halt a lawsuit over Nixon's use of private lawyers in the case; the suit was filed in August in Cole County Circuit Court by state Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau; Kinder's lawyer, Bevis Schock of St. Louis, said Thursday the lawsuit would continue; but Nixon said Kinder's lawsuit is pure politics and that he should "quit wasting the court's time" and drop the lawsuit...

A fourth major department store could be coming to West Park Mall; Westfield Corporation Inc., the Australia-based company which recently acquired the mall, plans to build a two-level, 126,000-square-foot building for the new store at the main entrance on the mall's north side; Westfield declines to name the potential tenant...

Wooden, hand-built and amateur-painted billboards enticed mid-century truckers, car travelers and locals to stop at Eulinberg's Place. The signs boldly clarified -- "Colored and White Served Alike" -- in an era when Black travelers had few options for safe and accommodating stops for food and gasoline...

A coalition of 53 acute-care Missouri hospitals, including Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, has filed suit against the tobacco industry; the hospitals want to recover the costs of treating indigent and Medicaid patients suffering from smoking-related illnesses; plaintiffs also include Dexter Memorial Hospital...

The architectural company designing Jackson's proposed multipurpose building has been asked to scale back its initial drawings; the city committee overseeing the study asked Hastings and Chivetta Architects Inc. to revise the $17 million to $20 million plan recently submitted to the committee to a design that would cost $10 million to $11 million; that figure is based on calculations of the amount the city's sales tax can support; the smaller building still would, among other things, offer a venue for 3,000 to 4,000 people to watch basketball, volleyball and wrestling; it would include a leisure swimming pool, a walking track, meeting rooms and space for exercise and weightlifting.. ...

For 39 years, Myron "Whitey" and Jackie Anderson have been surrounded by books in their small downtown store; that's long enough, they say, and they're ready to turn to a new page in their lives; the Andersons are retiring from their Metro News Bookstore; a book store and news agency has been located at 415 Broadway for more than 60 years...

The Southeast Missourian announces the start of its "Pie in the Sky Bake-off"; the contest goes hand-in-hand with a new reader "Recipe Swap" column that debuts Dec. 2; readers are encouraged to submit their favorite pie recipes; winners in five categories will be announced Dec. 16, along with publication of all the entries...

The Safe House for Women yesterday received a check for $217,500 from the Federal Home Loan Bank to purchase an eight-unit apartment complex in Cape Girardeau; the facility will provide transitional housing for women who are leaving the women's shelter to start new, independent lives...

NEW YORK -- Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge and former president Donald Trump 's oldest sister, has died at age 86 at her home in New York. Until her retirement in 2019, Barry was a senior judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a level below the Supreme Court...

The application deadline for Cape Girardeau superintendent of schools passed yesterday, and some 18 persons have submitted the required paperwork to advance to the next step in the selection process; superintendent Dan Tallent will leave the district's top post June 30, and the school board hopes to offer his job to someone before Christmas...

North County Park's new arboretum will be planted with 144 trees over the winter thanks to a $5,000 grant from the Missouri Department of Conservation; the price tag for trees and labor to install the planting is between $8,000 and $9,000; the Cape Girardeau County Park Board had planned to raise most of that money through donations and gifts, but the grant means plans can now move ahead more quickly...

Veterans Day. "We are in a room full of heroes," Bill Springer, a faculty participant in the Cape Girardeau Central High School Renaissance's Tribute to Veterans, tells students at the school's auditorium; the auditorium is filled to near capacity with Central students, veterans, Gold Star Mothers, Red Cross representatives, the VFW Ladies Auxiliary and others; Springer says, "The finest tribute we can pay veterans today is to insure that coming generations of Americans honor their memory."...

JEFFERSON CITY -- A 15-year state highway plan, hailed in 1992 as Missouri's "economic development program of the decade", is formally dumped as officials call its funding flawed, its timetable unachievable and its sweeping promises impossible to keep; the action isn't a surprise; for four years state officials have warned the plan's math doesn't work, even as the Missouri Department of Transportation edged away from funding the promised projects...

Sesquicentennial celebrations continue at Southeast Missouri State University with Library Week starting Monday, Nov. 13, at Kent Library, 1 University Plaza in Cape Girardeau. The library's Special Collections and Archives will host an open house in the Rare Book Room from 2 to 4 p.m. for SEMO students, faculty and staff and from 5 to 6:30 p.m. for SEMO alumni Tuesday, Nov. 14...

More than 90 camel breeders, trainers and owners attended the first North American Camel Conference at the 5-H Ranch, north of Cape Girardeau, which ended yesterday; camel enthusiasts from 22 states, Canada, Australia and the United Arab Emirates attended the conference, which featured experts in zoological medicine and camel breeding and care...

The Rev. Henry Gieschen is installed as the new pastor of Scriptural Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau during an evening service; a potluck dinner follows; Gieschen has served as pastor for 21 years and had previously pastored in Michigan. The Rev. David V. ...

A 10-member committee has been named to study the feasibility of a new radio system that could serve all emergency response agencies in Cape Girardeau County and whether to set up centralized dispatching for all of them; the committee members were named by the Cape Girardeau County Commission...

Richard "Rick" Murray, director of the Division of Inspection Services for the City of Cape Girardeau since 1993, has accepted a similar position at Fulton, Missouri; Murray will become planning and protective services director there Dec. 1. A new approach to conservation education -- a conservation campus in Cape Girardeau County North Park -- is authorized by the Missouri Conservation Commission; meeting in St. ...

A couple dozen people regularly attend Illmo Baptist Church in Scott City on Sunday mornings, but there were almost 100 in the pews Sunday, Oct. 22. The additional congregants were there to celebrate the church's 100th anniversary. Pastor Mike Shupert's sermon was titled "Roots and Branches" and said many of the people in the sanctuary that morning were branches that had their roots in Illmo Baptist Church...

Cape Girardeau voters split on a two-part ballot measure needed to launch a proposed River Campus project on the site of old St. Vincent's College on Morgan Oak Street; voters yesterday approved a measure that increases the city hotel-motel tax and extends the restaurant tax, but rejected the accompanying measure that would have permitted issuance of $8.9 million in bonds...

More than 80% of respondents to a recent survey support the creation of a Lutheran high school in Southeast Missouri; members from 14 regional Lutheran congregations completed the survey, circulated to judge the interest in developing and funding such a school...

Tax lists for a given locality are often unavailable for every year (one exception being Virginia). Courthouse disasters, poor storage and intentional discarding all resulted in these losses. Accordingly, we often have a fragmentary picture of an ancestor if we rely only on tax lists...

The Cape Girardeau County Historical Society Research Annex has almost 100 years of small manuscripts on almost everything that has happened in Cape County, before Missouri became a state to the present day. The majority of the information we have is historical, but there are articles and stories that fall under the category of folklore. ...

The Cape Girardeau City Council has unanimously approved an agreement with Southeast Missouri State University to jointly develop a visual and performing arts facility on the site of the former St. Vincent's College on Morgan Oak Street; however, the estimated $35.6 million project hinges on passage of two ballot measures by city voters today and future allocation of funds by the State Legislature and private donations...

Southeast Missouri State University has had several mascots in its 150 year history, from a Native American chief to one of SEMO's most recognizable faces, Rowdy the Redhawk. As SEMO's mascot, Rowdy runs, jumps and dances with the cheerleaders, struts along with the marching band and hypes up the crowd at university athletic events...

Three local men, including a current state official, were among seven people inducted Friday, Oct. 27, as the 2023 class of Missouri Veterans Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony was held in the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City...

Dean Campbell is 99 years old and sharp as a tack. He'll be the first to admit he can't see or hear as well as he used to, but his memory is infallible. "It's just luck," he said. "It just happened. Why, I don't know." The same could be said of his experience in World War II. Campbell, a Cape Girardeau resident, flew 35 combat missions over Germany in a B-24 "Liberator" bomber...

When Beth Hall was 9 years old and living in Jackson, her brother, Pete Bertling, went off to war. "I don't really remember anybody saying too much about it," she said. "Everybody was all in the same boat, really. Everyone was waiting for someone." Bertling had volunteered for the U.S. ...

Throughout the nation's history, men and women from Southeast Missouri have answered calls to military service. Many have served without fanfare, but others have gained acclaim or found their way into news accounts of their service. Among those are two men with ties to one of the nation's deadliest peacetime naval accidents and a National Guard unit that at one time was the busiest honor guard (referred to at the time as a "firing squad" because of their rendering rifle volley salutes at funerals) in the country.. ...

About half of Missouri's 3.4 million registered voters won't bother to vote in tomorrow's general election, predicts Secretary of State Bekki Cook; she estimates that 1.7 million Missourians will go to the polls in this non-presidential election. The ribbon was cut over the weekend, opening the new Mr. K's Food Center, a family-owned supermarket, at 254 S. Silver Springs Road; at 60,000 square feet, the facility is the largest supermarket in Cape Girardeau...

Grant Lund sits alone with his paints and brushes on the cold concrete of an isolated entryway to Southeast Missouri State University's Rhodes Hall of Science; Grant was commissioned to paint a mural as part of the university's 125th anniversary celebration, and it should be completed next spring; Lund's mural will depict images of black holes, the swirling mass of a brightly colored nebula and the origin of the universe...