Stories from Monday, February 13, 1995

Typically silent on weekends, the halls at Cape Girardeau Area Vocational-Technical School were bustling with activity Sunday as students, teachers and guests filled the building for a special open house. The smell of yeast rolls wafted through the halls when culinary arts students demonstrated cooking. Future nurses checked blood pressures, while prospective architects designed offices by computer...

A New Madrid couple recently made a donation to the Southeast Missouri University Foundation to establish the Welton N. and Louise M. O'Bannon Scholarship Fund. The endowment will be used to fund three scholarships -- two for New Madrid County Central High School graduates and one for a graduate of Portageville High School...

When Venture Stores Inc. with its distinctive black and white striped exterior, opened at West Park Mall in Cape Girardeau, it marked a first for the discount chain headquartered in St. Louis. It was the first of 56 Venture stores to be contiguous to a mall...

Let the taxpayer beware, especially the taxpayer who qualifies for an earned income credit. This year, the Internal Revenue Service is making sure everyone who gets the credit -- usually unmarried heads of household making less than $24,000 -- really qualifies for it. The most tax fraud last year was related to earned income credits...

About 50 area Muslims gathered Sunday to feast on chicken, vegetable and rice dishes featuring the flare of Middle Eastern spices. The gathering at the Johnson Faculty Center House on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University was to observe Ramadan, a month-long Muslim holiday...

The Broadway Community Theatre is homeless. Although it never truly has had a permanent home, for the past four years the company has counted on using the Concord Theatre to mount their productions. A week before BCT was to present its next -- "Life With Father" -- problems arose with the theater's ceiling. The show couldn't go on, and the BCT board searched hurriedly for a new venue...

A corporation official who opposed a five-year, one-half cent transportation sales tax the last time it appeared on a Cape Girardeau ballot says he is willing to consider supporting a similar proposal for the June 6 ballot. "We want to see where it's going," said Ernest Beussink of Six-Thirty Inc. "If we like what we see, we'll support the new proposal. We'll be watching the priorities."...

The Southeast Missourian asked students at Franklin School, "What makes someone a good Valentine?" Erica Trentham: "A person with a good disposition makes a good Valentine. For example, I know someone who is nice to people, fair at games and wants everyone to be happy."...

Teachers and administrators in the region are being invited to learn about the Welsh education system this summer through a program sponsored by Southeast Missouri State University's College of Education. They will depart from St. Louis in mid-June and will return at the end of the month. Participants will stay in Swansea, Wales...

THE EVIL know-nothing team of Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich say the president and Congress have no business interfering in baseball's labor management strike. I wish Ronald Reagan had kept his nose out of the airline traffic controllers strike when he showed his love for big business and fired the striking traffic controllers. What a joke he was...

Ethel Lambert, 84, of 417 S. Ellis died Sunday, Feb. 12, 1995, at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau. Lambert was born Sept. 2, 1910, in Portageville, the daughter of Tate and Mildred Detie Bradshaw. Survivors include two sons, Harold Cheshire of Oklahoma and John Cheshire of Cape Girardeau; three daughters, Katie Toulk of Chaffee and Joanne Kiplinger and Linda Cunningham of Cape Girardeau; 12 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren...

CHAFFEE -- Amil Alfred "John" Moit, 80, of Chaffee died Sunday, Feb. 12, 1995, at Heartland Care Rehab Center in Cape Girardeau. He was born June 1, 1914, in Rockview, the son of William and Arry Goins Moit. He married Julia Litzelfelner on Dec. 23, 1943. She preceded him in death on May 25, 1968...

"We're admonished to 'suffer the little children,' but they're the ones causing the suffering." -- A Missouri legislator. When Missourians read almost daily some of the criminal acts being committed on their streets and in their neighborhoods by young boys no older than 10 or 12, it isn't difficult to agree with the very angry member of the General Assembly. ...

There are broad movements in this country to reassert the sovereignty of the 50 states. These activities pit the sweeping powers of the federal government against the rights of states to regulate and tend to the needs of their citizens. Already in the current session of Congress, key issues have been unfunded mandates and welfare reform. ...

To the editor: We are now in Black History Month. It will be a month of dinners, church rallies, teaching black history, giving awards to people and all of that. I can't help but wonder how much good all of this is doing. I see lots of people around Cape Girardeau who do lots of talking about how unbigoted they are, but I see very little effort being made by either side to really integrate with each other. Lots of rhetoric, but no real action...

When it comes to financing nutritional programs, senior citizens in Southeast Missouri and across the country want their own slice of the pie, and they are calling in their orders to Washington. Senior citizens disagreed when the U.S. Congress began proposed lumping funds for school hot lunches, food stamps, the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and senior citizens nutrition sites into a block grant to be awarded to the states...

Rob Francis, owner of Dr. Soot Chimney Services in Jackson, has been elected to the Missouri State Chimney Sweep Guild board of directors. Francis, who has been in the chimney sweep business nine years, will serve in the areas of public relations and membership...

CLAYTON -- Sabreliner Corp. says it has ended talks to buy an aircraft-engine overhaul business in California. Expansion plans were put on hold after officials failed to reach "a mutually acceptable agreement," Sabreliner officials said Friday. Sabreliner, based in Clayton, had announced in December it had signed a letter of intent to buy National Airmotive Corp. of Oakland, Calif., from an investment group called Triton Group Ltd. of San Diego...

D&K Wholesale Drug Inc., headquartered in St. Louis, announced that net sales for the third quarter of fiscal 1995, ending Dec. 31, increased 54 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Sales increased to $86.389 million up from the $56.054 million of the third quarter of fiscal 1994. Net income for the latest quarter was $432,000, or 16 cents a share on a primary basis, compared to income of $190,000 or 8 cents a share in the previous third quarter...