Stories from Monday, December 9, 1996

The Small Business of the Year will be recognized during the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce's Annual Meeting/Dinner Dance, to be held at the Show Me Center Jan. 31. The first Small Business of the Year award was presented to Advance Business Systems in 1991. Other award winners are: Bluff City Beer Co. (1992), KBSI Fox 23 TV (1993), Ford Groves Motor Co. (1994) and Hutson Furniture Co. (1995)...

East Perry Lumber Co., a hardwood sawmill operation headquartered at Frohna, has received national recognition as one of only eight companies worldwide to be nominated for the National Hardwood Lumber Association's (NHLA) 1996 Forest Stewardship Award...

ERA Cape Realty, 1409-A, N. Mount Auburn Road, has added a new service -- a 24-hour, interactive, 1-800 Telephone Technology to provide descriptions of the property they may be interested in. The client may call the 800 number which appears on signs, advertisements and direct mailings by ERA Cape Realty to obtain the property description. The client then will have an opportunity to punch in their fax number and receive by fax a complete description of the property...

Many stores offer coupon savings right on the shelves Schnuck's checker Heather Morton, right, added Pam Wrucke's food bill and subtracked $8 for coupons. Wrucke has been using coupons for 10 years. Thousands of Cape Girardeau newspaper subscribers throw their coupon inserts aside with nary a glance...

Copies of Cape Girardeau street maps are available in the customer service department at City Hall, city planner Kent Bratton said. Among the maps are unfolded copies for people who would like to frame or laminate them. A limited number of November 1995 aerial photos of the city and the surrounding area also are available. Bratton said a number of people have purchased the 4-by-4-foot photographs as Christmas presents for people with offices...

Southeast Missouri Hospital's Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit, a component of the Regional Heart Center, has received recognition from three national organizations. The unit was recently awarded the ICU Design Citation, given by the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and the American Institute of Architects Committee on Architecture for Healthcare...

Three Illinois wineries have released new wines for the holiday season. Alto Vineyards, five mile north of Alto Pass, is offering the first release of Porto Di Guido; Owl Creek Vineyard and Winery, near Alto Pass, has issued Owl's Leap Nouveau; and Pomona Winery at Pomona, has released two new wines, Once In A Blue Moon Blueberry Dessert Wine and Peach Dessert Wine...

Tim W. Simmers has been named general manager for Spartech Compounding's Engineer Thermoplastics operation at Cape Girardeau, and its color concentrate facility located at Goddard, Kan. Bradley B. Beuchler, president and chief executive officer of Spartech, headquartered in St. Louis, announced Simmers' appointment recently...

It was a chilly but sunny December day in Caruthersville. The city had been spiffed up, a result of the city's "Operation Face Lift." Many buildings along Ward Street had been renovated, remodeled or repainted. Flags were flying at every location along the street on this Dec. 1, 1976...

Gil.Co Systems, Cape Girardeau, a search program for financial aid for colleges, has added an employment assistance program to its services. "Job Search," an automated computer program and database, provides a list of more than 10 million jobs for businesses, industries, corporations and companies throughout the U.S...

Corporate Express, a Colorado office supply company, has purchased Stiles Office Equipment in Carbondale, Ill. Corporate Express operates more than 500 locations worldwide. Stiles was founded in 1955. The business will be known as Stiles Corporate Express for one year, and will then become Corporate Express...

Missouri Box will open a new warehouse facility at Perryville this month. The company will provide packaging for TG (USA) in Perryville. Initially, manufacturing of packaging will be from Tennessee Corrugate Box Co., at Humboldt, Tenn. Tennessee Corrugated Box and Missouri Box are both divisions of Visy Industries Inc., headquartered at Conyers, Ga...

Playpower, a company that manufactures playground equipment, will expand to Advance. The new industry will employ 35 people initially, and up to 100 over the next two to five years. This is a big boost for a community that has seen the loss of two industries in the past year, said Jim Rainey, vice president of the Advance Improvement Corporation. Both Paramount Headwear and Advance Fabrication have recently closed...

About 30 people met Sunday night at a Mothers Against Drunk Drivers candlelight vigil at the Cape Girardeau Police Department to pray for those they love who had been hurt or killed by drunk drivers. Cape Girardeau Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle was on hand to tell those people how he would like to see DWI laws stiffened in Missouri...

The holidays are not a happy time for Mr. O. It has been three years since his wife died, but he has not been able to end his grieving, and the holidays only add to his depression. This is not good for his health because his depression raises his blood pressure, and when his spirits are down, he does not take his medicine correctly...

"Im Namen des Vaters, und des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes." It was a liturgy well known to the congregation at Hanover Lutheran Church, something they hear their pastor say at each worship service. But they usually hear it in English. Sunday night was different. In its historic building on Perryville Road, the church held a German Christmas service. The songs were sung in German, the sermon was given in German and the program was printed in German -- with English translations, of course...

One mother with five children and four boys in a broken home needs help. The father does not live here, she wrote, and it is really hard to raise five children alone. The father provides very little support each month, she said, and it is not enough for Christmas...

Several dozen intellectuals are meeting today in Philadelphia to try and figure out why Americans are being so darn rude, and how to stop it. You'll notice they're meeting in the City of Brotherly Love, not New York. Tell a New Yorker he's rude and he'll probably shoot you...

ON THE way to work I switched on my car radio expecting to hear some music, but instead I came across a very offensive program on one of our local stations. It was a talk program, but it played a very offensive requested "song." I was shocked to hear such trash coming from a local station at this time of the morning when parents are taking children to school and others are on their way to work. ...

Chances are pretty good that most Missourians alive today don't know the name of the governor of Missouri from 1977 to 1981. His name, for those who are now soccer dads and moms and for those of my generation with increasingly lousy memories, was Joe Teasdale. You'll be glad to know he is alive and living in Kansas City, engaged in the practice of law and considered something of a character by hometown TV viewers...

Security is being stepped up at Missouri's Capitol, just in time to protect legislators from angry taxpayer mobs protesting proposed salary increases. A special transportation committee is studying Missouri's highway needs, which include not running out of money in the middle of 15-year programs...

After exhaustive nationwide searches, Cape Girardeau officials announced last week that they have chosen two men to fill the police chief and fire chief vacancies. Their choices appear to be good ones based upon what officials in the communities the men are leaving had to say about them...

Rewards totaling $4,000 are being offered for information leading to the arrests and convictions of the thieves who have been preying on the Cape Girardeau's elderly residents. No fewer than 16 burglaries have occurred at the homes of older citizens since May, and police are desperately seeking the perpetrators. ...

The county jail is a bad enough place to be over the holidays without having to miss Mom's pumpkin pie, too. In an effort to make jail a little more tolerable during Christmas and Thanksgiving, the Scott County and Cape Girardeau County jails treat their prisoners to ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, rolls and pies for dinner...

The Southeast Missourian asked, "Do you think motorists should be able to have their automobile air bags disconnected when they buy a vehicle?" Donna Lacy, Cape Girardeau "Yes I do because children have been killed. I'm not going to buy a car if it has air bags in it because I know of one woman who got her face all jammed up just from hitting a curb."...

JACKSON -- Jackson swim team home tour chairwoman Dreda McElrath estimates 400 people went through this year's tour, which was helped greatly by Sunday's clear, cool weather. "Everybody that went through loved our tour this year," McElrath said, saying she had talked to a number of people who take the tour every year. "We had two new homes and we had two homes with a lot of history."...

BLOOMFIELD -- Addie Watts, 102, died at the Bloomfield Nursing Center on Nov. 8, 1996. She was born Nov. 22, 1894, at Morley, the daughter of Charley and Mary Scarlet Kynion. She married Obe Watts on June 10, 1910. He died in 1971. Survivors are two sons, Otis and Joe Watts, both of Bloomfield; a daughter, Inez Abner of Bell City; nine grandchildren; 21 great-grandchildren; and six great-great-grandchildren...

ANNA, Ill. -- Irene Caroline Davis, 98, of Anna died Sunday, Dec. 8, 1996, at the City Care Center in Anna. She was born Jan. 4, 1898, in Jonesboro to the late Absolom and Martha Ellen Carter Coleman. She married Lawrence Davis Sr. on March 24, 1914, in Reynoldsville. He preceded her in death...

OLIVE BRANCH, Ill. -- George Edward Poole, 83, of Olive Branch died Sunday Dec. 8, 1996, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Marion, Ill. He was born July 2, 1913, in Tamms, son of Frank and Maude Crite Poole. He married Lorraine Mansfield on April 15, 1939. She survives...

MARBLE HILL -- Lois E. Brown, 64, of Marble Hill died Sunday Dec. 8, 1996, at the family home. She was born Nov. 20, 1932, near Marble Hill, daughter of Thomas S. and Dorothy M. Yount Stevens. She married Roy Brown Jr. on July 29, 1950. He survives...

Gene E. Points, 74, of Cape Girardeau died Sunday, Dec. 8, 1996, at St. Francis Medical Center. Arrangements are incomplete at McCombs Funeral Home in Cape Girardeau.

Aleta Crawford Massey, 79, of Cape Girardeau died Friday, Dec. 6, 1996, at St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. She was born Jan. 18, 1917, near Romance, Ark., daughter of Harvey J. and Eula A. Barnett McDowell. She and Walter Crawford were married Dec. 21, 1958. He died Feb. 14, 1984. She later married Harvey Massey on Aug. 14, 1992...

ADVANCE -- Minnie Buttrey, 85, of Advance died Sunday Dec. 8, 1996, at Bloomfield Nursing Home. She was born Oct. 14, 1911, in Ardeola, daughter of the late John and Flora Kelso Smith. She married Charlie Buttrey in Benton. He died in 1977. She was a homemaker...

ORAN -- Ronald Curtis, 41, of Oran died Sunday, Dec. 8, 1996, at St. Francis Medical Center. Arrangements are incomplete at the Amick-Burnett Funeral Chapel in Chaffee.