Stories from Sunday, January 15, 1995

JACKSON -- Wilbert (Wib) Sewing, 70, of Jackson, died Saturday, Jan. 14, 1995, at Southeast Missouri Hospital. He was born Jan. 8, 1925, son of Robert H. and Lydia Grossheider Sewing. He married Hunter Jean Call May 29, 1949. She survives. Also surviving are a son, Robert L. ...

Cody Rouse and Blake Ulrich, both of Jackson, get in starting position during a recent practice. Because wrestling exercises all parts of a competior's body, conditioning exercises such as wind springs are an important part of each practice. It is a unique sport with a history that goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It is individually demanding yet has the camaraderie that comes from teamwork...

Lester Maevers, left, speaks with business partner and IGA stores general manager Don Rogers at the start of a recent day of business. Lester Maevers, seventh from left, poses with the staff of Schaper's IGA in a 1953 photograph, about three years after he started in the store's meat department. ...

Schaper's IGA at 528 W. Main St. in Jackson will be providing readers of the Jackson U.S.A. Signal with a sales flier in each week's issue beginning with today's edition. The circular will be distributed in all of the Cape Girardeau County cities and towns served by the Signal...

This photograph of the First Baptist Church was taken in 1918 and shows the Jackson Masonic Hall at far left. Both structures were damaged five years later when a violent windstorm struck the city. The church building suffered sufficient damage to require its replacement. The structure which replaced the windstorm damaged one was recently torn down to make way for the new First Baptist Church education building...

Rose Mary Ruesler uses an electric mixer to whip up a batch of wax for wedding candles. A whipped wax wedding candle, complete with embedded invitation, is a specialty of Rose Mary Ruesler. Animal candles are novelty items that are always popular. They come in every color imaginable...

The Wall Street Journal ran a full-page ad last week with this headline: "Good news or bad news." The ad was placed by Dow Jones & Co., the owner of the venerable business daily and publisher of other business-related publications. The purpose of the ad was to tell readers about the role of a responsible newspaper in presenting all the news, both the good and the bad. Business news, the ad said, "often is a story of success." But the news doesn't stop there...

It's traditional, if hardly sensible, to spend much of the month of January discussing what will happen by the end of the year. The practice is believed to have its origin in the pre-historic dawn of mankind when our earliest ancestors, while sitting around a campfire night after night, became very bored with their existence and began wishing for inventions that would make their life easier and more enjoyable, like Salad Shooters and television. ...

President Bill Clinton had Dr. Joycelyn Elders. House Speaker Newt Gingrich had Christina Jeffrey. Elders wanted masturbation taught in schools. Jeffrey wanted proper attention given to the Nazi and Ku Klux Klan point of view on exterminating Jews. Clinton took two years to dump Elders; Gingrich fired Jeffrey within hours when he learned of her outrageous sense of "educational balance" in the classroom...

There is much talk about raising the minimum wage, currently at $4.25 an hour, but there isn't much agreement so far on how much or when. One trial balloon would jump the minimum wage to $5.25 an hour. President Clinton sent up another balloon last week suggesting the minimum wage should float upward with the cost-of-living index...

The 1995 session of the Missouri General Assembly, which already has several days under its belt, runs through May 13. After the fireworks that dominated the opening days in the House of Representatives, many have predicted a chaotic session in which little of substance will be accomplished. It can be hoped that this prediction will prove unfounded, as many important issues are on the line...

The fact that I am the last one in my long family line of dressing-makers hit me like a ton of bricks. As I realized that the responsibility lay square on my shoulders, I stood in the kitchen in the midst of turkey parts, crumbled corn bread and onion and cried. This was the first time in my life that I fully comprehended my mortality. I will likely be the next female to go. The women behind me have gone, and now it is my turn...

SCOTT COUNTY Donald A. and Lisa R. Rodgers to Donald A. Rodgers; Robert Keith and Betty Jane Lizenbee to Betty Jane Lizenbee; Robert W. and Lorita J. Melton to The 175 Presnell Trust. James G. and Eleanor M. Robbins to Ag-Lands Investment Co.; Nelson Berbling to Harry and Ann Pratt Rentals; Hunter F. and Pauline Moore, and Sterling P. Moore to William G. Fowler...

ADVANCE -- Patricia Mae Shell, 55, of Williamsville, Mo., died Friday, Jan. 13, 1995, at Lucy Lee Hospital in Poplar Bluff. She was born May 4, 1939, at Fredericktown, daughter of Jesse O. Hill and Mae Hill. Survivors include her mother, Mae Hefner of Advance; brothers, Jess Hill and John Hill, both of Advance, and Carl Hill, Bell City; sisters, Corrine Fischer and June Fischer, of Lowndes, Mo., Lorrine Wallace, Advance, and Bethel Cook, Sikeston...

EAST PRAIRIE -- Daniel Eugene True, 45, a resident of Topeka, Kansas, formerly of East Prairie, died Thursday, Jan. 12, 1995, in Topeka. Funeral arrangements are incomplete and will be announced later by Shelby Funeral Home in East Prairie.

PERRYVILLE -- Lilly B. Ehlers, 87, of Perryville, died Saturday, Jan. 14, 1995, at Perry County Memorial Hospital. She was born Dec. 21, 1907, at Farrar, Mo., daughter of Max and Gertrude Muench Fritsche. She marred Arthur Ehlers on Sept. 14, 1930. He survives...

ST. LOUIS -- Benjamin J. Simpher, 79, of St. Louis, formerly of Dutchtown, Mo., died Friday, Jan. 13, 1995, in St. Louis County. He was born March 28, 1915, at Dutchtown, son of Phillip and Anna Behre Simpher. He was an Army veteran and was a Purple Heart recipient. He was a retired chemical worker from Monsanto Co...

Effie E. Starkey, 88, of Cape Girardeau, died Friday, Jan. 13, 1995, at Ratliff Nursing Home. She was born Oct. 7, 1906, at Marquand, daughter of Anderson and Hester McCormick Aslinger. She married Clarence Starkey. He preceded her in death. Survivors include a sister, Lydia Moyers, of Marquand...

WAPPAPELLO -- During a recent year, boaters at Wappapello Lake in Southeast Missouri shared the waters with an unusual visitor -- a brown pelican. Pelicans are considered rare in Missouri, normally living in Florida and other coastal states. But "Pete," as he was called, wound up in landlocked Missouri...

An agreement to purchase St. Vincent's Seminary for $700,000 has been signed by the owners and the Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation. Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III hailed Saturday's announcement as "a real great day for Cape Girardeau," referring to the foundation's plan to transform the seminary into a museum and Civil War interpretive center...

JEFFERSON CITY -- Competing amendments to limit tax increases are among a number of constitutional changes to be debated by the Missouri General Assembly in the current session. Proposed amendments that have been filed, or soon will be, deal with a wide range of subjects...

Developing St. Vincent Seminary as a museum and Civil War interpretive center is key to revitalizing Cape Girardeau, says the man who first envisioned the project. "What the Arch is to St. Louis, I think the seminary will be to Cape," says Earl Norman, a publicity-shunning Cape Girardeau health care executive who also conceived the proposal to build I-66...

As a Fulbright Scholar in Eastern Europe, associate criminal justice professor Dr. Michael Fichter often behaved counter to the laws he teaches his students at Southeast Missouri State to obey. "I had to bribe police in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania to keep them from arresting my son, Kevin," Fichter, who just returned from a teaching stint in Croatia, said. "They had no reason for arresting him, so I took a chance that money would buy us out of serious trouble. I'm thankful it worked."...

Regina's House of Dolls, which plans to open a strip bar on Enterprise Street in Cape Girardeau Feb. 1, has kept out of "major" trouble at Paducah. And, David Rosener, the attorney representing Regina's owner, Regina Capps, said Cape Girardeau can expect the same kind of trouble-free operation...

St. Vincent's Seminary, formerly known as St. Vincent's College, opened in 1843. It operated as a college until 1910, educating most of the Catholic clergy in the West during that period. From 1910 until 1979 the edifice served as a seminary preparing high school boys for the priesthood. When the seminary closed, the building was used for meetings and religious retreats...

Raising hogs wasn't exactly a popular pastime in the Rev. Carl Rockrohr's hometown of Milwaukee. Malaria was not a concern. And hardly anybody worried about getting caught in the middle of a tribal war in which one side was armed with poison arrows...

When a waterfowl hunter pulls the trigger on an incoming bird, he wants maximum whoomp. When he touches off a round, he'd be pleased for the sky to turn red and for windows to rattle in farm house two miles away. Most of all, he'd like to see the object of his gunnery pelted with an instantaneous jolt of death-inducing payload. He wants shocking power, the ballistic equivalent of Thor's hammer, a thunderclap of doom...

So I say to you, my friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed -- we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

So, the cold days finally came. Long has the red stripe on my indoor-outdoor thermometer, denoting the outside temperature, had the upper hand, soaring high above the blue stripe. I suppose there was some time when the two indicators stood even, but I wasn't watching. ...

Carol Keeler-Daniel peered at the Memphis motel balcony where in 1968 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke his last words. Though King's life was ended at age 39 by an assassin's bullet, for many, including Keeler-Daniel, his words live. He would have been 66 today...