Stories from Sunday, June 2, 1996

JACKSON -- Funeral service for Carl J. McCauley will at 1 p.m. today at Cracraft-Miller Funeral Home. The Reverend Dave Griffin will officiate. Burial will follow in New Salem Cemetery in Daisy. McCauley, 94, died Friday, May 31, 1996, at Deal Nursing Home in Jackson. He was a long-time resident of Daisy...

Tuesday's verdicts out of Arkansas were stunning: After days of careful deliberation, 12 jurors declared President Clinton's two business partners and his hand-picked successor as governor to be guilty of 24 out of 30 felony counts. They are headed for the penitentiary for looting a federally guaranteed savings and loan as well as a fund set aside for helping minorities, then sticking the taxpayers with the tab...

Gov. Mel Carnahan began this year trumpeting one major promise to Missourians: An election-year cut of one-quarter cent in the sales tax. The failure of his party's long-dominant legislative majority to deliver -- not just the governor's proposal, but any kind of reduction -- stands out as one of the starkest facts of this or any other year...

The ValuJet tragedy raises an old question. What is our top priority in commercial aviation: cheap fares or passenger safety? From 1938 to 1978, it was safety first and price second. Since then, it's been reversed. In that era a federal regulatory agency called the Civil Aeronautics Board regulated both routes and air fares. ...

Missouri taxpayers who have thus far paid out more than $2.5 billion to desegregate the state's two metropolitan school districts were understandably pleased with the recent news that an end to the nation's most expensive integration program appears to be in sight. ...

Let's see now. How would knowledge of certain facts, disclosed to the world only Tuesday of this week, have affected a certain outcome four years ago? This week's facts in a moment; let's first discuss what we knew then. In 1992, Americans were being wooed by a largely unknown governor of a small southern state in his mid-40s. ...

I WISH the Cape Girardeau School Board would do away with tenure and give out three-year or four-year contracts instead. The superintendent doesn't have tenure in his job. The president at the college doesn't have tenure in his job. They all go under contract...

To the editor: I recently was in the fair city of Sikeston for an education debate. Sen. Peter Kinder and author Peg Luksik faced off against a state school board members and your representative. The reason I am writing this letter is to address what a local school board member said at the end of the meeting. ...

CAIRO, Ill. -- Dr. Robert L. Williams, 82, of Cairo died Saturday, June 1, 1996 at Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, Ky. He was born Aug. 21, 1913 in Decatur, Ill., to Dr. George and Anna Belle Ground Williams. He was an optometrist and practiced in Cairo for 41 years...

JACKSON -- George F. Rouse, 78, of Jackson, died Friday at the Lutheran Home. Rouse was born on Nov. 12, 1917, in Webster Groves, to George and Mary Rouse. He was married Feb. 28, 1948 to Theresa Kaase in Granite City, Ill. Rouse founded the Cape Girardeau County Private Ambulance Service in 1968. He formed the first Missouri State Ambulance Association and served as its first president...

DEXTER -- Beulah Cochran, 82, of Dexter, died Saturday at Dexter Memorial Hospital. She was born Feb. 8, 1936, in Lamar, Ark., to the late Frank Chesser and Ira Volvie Chesser. She was baptized in the Church of Christ. She was survived by her husband, Jack Cochran; three sons, Jim Cochran of Advance and John Cochran and Jerry Cochran of Dexter; and two sisters, Ethel Sanders of Tracy, Calif., and Leona Whithworth of the state of Indiana; 15 grandchildren; and 20 great-grandchildren...

The Cape Girardeau Riverfest committee has announced the details on several activities to be held during this year's annual event, which will take place June 14-15 in dowtown Cape Girardeau. Among the events are the Riverfest Run, the Miss and Mrs. Riverfest Pageants and Turtle Race and Best Dressed Turtle Contest...

BELL CITY -- Sarajean Redman, 55, of Bell City, died Friday at St. Francis Medical Center. She was born June 26, 1940 in Bell City, daughter of the late Joe and Jewell Rhodes Redman. She was a member of the United Methodist Church of Bell City. Survivors include a brother, Milford Redman of Advance, and three sisters: Georgia Bollinger of Advance, Beatrice Stauffer of Bertrand and Melba Cook of Fairfield...

From 1854 until 1929, an estimated 150,000 orphaned and half-orphaned children were shipped by train from Eastern metropolises to farm communities in the Midwest. Some 6,000 of the so-called Orphan Train Riders wound up in Missouri, where they were taken in by childless families or those just looking for help on the farm...

The figures don't lie.People who move into Cape Girardeau County want to live in the country, not the city.Real estate agents fret over the lack of rural homes to show interested buyers. Contractors field call after call from people who want to build on secluded land.In fact, regional planners predict Cape Girardeau Countys population will be 91,000 by the year 2020, with about half the people living outside the city of Cape Girardeau.In their exodus to the rural regions, few homeowners consider what moving will mean in terms of fire protection. ...

With a focus on family entertainment and a slew of new features, Riverfest '96 promises to hold something for everyone, said Laurel Adkisson, Riverfest committee chairmperson. "Mississippi Magic" is the theme for Riverfest '96, to be held June 14 and 15 in downtown Cape Girardeau...

New York was awash with immigrants from Europe during the last half of the 19th century. They came at the rate of 1,000 per day, many large families from Ireland and Germany with promises of free land in their ears. Those who had money could pursue their dreams, those who had none remained in a city where typhus, tuberculosis, yellow fever and other diseases killed and jobs were scarce...

All firefighters risk their lives. All of them work in burning heat and bone-chilling cold. And all of them make sacrifices for their jobs. But some don't get money for it. That's the big difference between rural volunteer fire departments and paid departments in cities...

More than 100 youngsters turned out Saturday to catch fish at the Capaha Park lagoon. But whatever they reeled in was measured and thrown right back as part of the Breakfast Optimist Club's Catch and Release Day, sponsored in conjunction with the Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation Department and the Missouri Department of Conservation...

Dr. Rush Limbaugh? Ted Davis, chairman of the fledgling American Foundation for Conservative Studies, thinks so. Davis, who lives in Plano, Tex., where the foundation is based, calls Limbaugh "an entertainment genius" and "modern day Will Rogers" who has "changed the face of American politics," and he'd like to see Limbaugh awarded an honorary doctorate from Southeast Missouri State University...

Dr. Marcus Bond, assistant professor of chemistry at Southeast Missouri State University, has received a $34,723 Cottrell College Science Award. The award will support Bond's research project on liquid crystals. Bond plans to insert clusters of metals into organic liquid crystals. Bond said he will conduct the research in the summers of 1997 and 1998...

"...And the arctic trails have their secret tales..." or so Robert Service wrote. Southeast Missouri in the summer is definitely not arctic-like as anyone can attest who has spent a summer day in a hay loft, cruising timber, hacking ties or pouring concrete...

In the blockbuster movie "Twister" a team of scientists spends its time studying unpredictable tornadoes, often coming uncomfortably close. In his job as a weather spotter, Gene Jackson of Delta has been pretty uncomfortable himself. "At one point, I was only a quarter-mile from a tornado," he said...

There are three ways of approaching summer -- organized, going with the flow or a mixture of the two. I'm prepared for each but mostly going with the flow. Maybelle Sheppard, one of my high school teachers, loved to instruct us in how to make outlines: how to outline an essay, how to outline our week's work, how to outline and coordinate our wardrobes. ...