Stories from Monday, September 25, 2000

A Missouri Quality Award panel will visit the Dana Corp. in Cape Girardeau to evaluate the company's activities. The local Dana facility -- the Spicer Light Vehicle Axle Division at 2075 Corporate Circle -- was selected by the MQA as one of eight applicants for the Missouri Quality Award, which will be announced in early November...

Avon Products, which has sold its products mostly door-to-door through the years, will start selling a new line of products net year, through retail outlets at Sears Roebuck and Co., and JCPenney's. The move, announced last week, is intended to enable Avon to reach out to new customers the company is not now serving, said Andrea Jung, president and chief executive...

Magna-Tel, Inc. of Cape Girardeau recently received an Award of Excellence and an Award of Merit in the 2000 Business Promotion Awards Competition, sponsored by Screenprinting & Graphic Imaging Association International. Magna-Tel's Award of Excellence was for its "Link 2000" mail piece. The promotion contained a discount coupon sheet, flyer, thank-you card, cover letter and the new Sacajawea gold dollar coin placed in a binder, along with a sample board catalog...

This "Financial Focus" column is prepared by Edward Jones Investments, headquartered in St. Louis. Jones includes branches throughout the nation, including Cape Girardeau and Jackson. Technology has been the word for some investors over the past couple of years. But when tech stocks short-circuited in the spring of 2000, investors whose portfolios weren't well-diversified learned a hard lesson...

Burch Food Services of Sikeston, Mo., has expanded. The company, owned by Bill M. Burch, a former chairman of the board for the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA), recently signed a franchise agreement with Canteen Vending Services, of Compass Group, North American Division, Charlotte, N.C...

Lynda Gant is the new owner of Sandy's, a women's sportswear store, at #2 The Crossroads, Independence and Kingshighway in Cape Gir-ardeau. The business has a wide selection of women's sportswear and accessories, including Sigrid Olsen, Sharon Young, Michael Simon, Telluride and Garfield & Marx...

Eddie Adams has joined the Missouri University Delta Research Center as a specialist in testing crop varieties He will evaluate new crop varieties and management strategies. He will concentrate primarily on corn, soybeans and grain sorghum. Adams is a graduate of Murray State University, receiving his bachelor of science degree in agronomy. ...

Randal D. Friend has received a 25-year service award from the U.S. Department of Agricultural-Rural Development. Friend started his career as an assistant emergency loan supervisor in Scott and Mississippi counties. He has served as manager of offices in New Madrid, Stoddard and Scott counties...

Mike Holloway of Jackson, Mo., has joined Ford Groves Motor Co. in Jackson as a sales person. Holloway has more than five years experience in auto sales.

Tim Hendershott of Schaefer Water Centers in Cape Girardeau has passed the Water Quality Association exam for Certified Water Specialist. Hendershott, a certified installer, has been with Schaefer's for 18 years, as a service technician. Schaefer Water, staffed with 48 people, has 20 W.Q.A. certified employers. These employees are required to pass an exam and meet continued educational requirements...

David M. Plassman, a certified public accountant with Schott & Van de Ven, Certified Public Accountants, completed the Employee Benefit Plan Administration class recently in St. Louis. The day-long class was sponsored by the Missouri Society of CPAs...

Interest rates of 300 percent a year are legal on some loans in Missouri. This really isn't loan sharking, said Steve Gary, counsel for the Missouri Division of Finance. "We do get some complaints," said Gary, whose office is responsible for monitoring the loan makers. "People tell us That can't be legal,' but it is."...

Moves start small. Home to a furnished dorm room. Dorm room to a small, furnished apartment. Small, furnished apartment to larger, unfurnished apartment. As parents, we dutifully helped son Stephen stuff first a car, later a van and finally a U-Haul trailer. But when it came time to make a 600-plus mile move from St. Louis to Virginia, where Stephen will spend the year teaching criminal justice classes at Radford University, our backs told us to look for other options...

BENTON, Mo. Kelly school officials want to move students out of trailers and into brick-and-mortar classrooms. School officials said the trailers are a temporary and costly measure to handle a swelling enrollment. Leases cost $15,000 to $20,000 every year, not including setup and installation costs or handicap-accessibility add-ons. The district has purchased or leased six trailers in recent years to accommodate a seven-year gain in enrollment...

Melvin Gateley admits that Vision 2000 didn't overcome all the community spirit problems it set out to address in Cape Girardeau's first-ever strategic plan. Vision 2000 did make some improvements in community spirit, particularly with its addition of roses and blooming flowers -- more than 4,000 roses and more than 42,00 bulbs total...

BENTON, Mo. -- The Kelly schools Board of Education is going to try, try again to get a bond issue passed Nov. 7. Although the higher voter turnout that usually occurs in general elections could make it more difficult to win, schools superintendent Don Abner said the district has to try because there is no more space that can be converted into classrooms...

More air traffic at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport can boost both local revenue and state and federal grants to the city. More planes flying into the airport means pilots will buy fuel, eat meals at the airport restaurant and spend time in the city. It also means more passengers are arriving and leaving on flights...

The Upper Mississippi River, the stretch from Cairo, Ill., northward, has changed in the past 40 years. It has been straightened and leveed, turning many of the original backwaters and marshes into cropland and cutting off others. Locks and dams above St. Louis keep the river at an artificially high level so barges can move up and down...

FESTUS, Mo. -- St. Vincent High School's softball team split four games and took fifth place in the Jefferson County Conference Tournament Saturday. St. Vincent (7-10) beat Crystal City 11-2, lost to Perryville 9-1, lost to St. Pius 12-4 and beat Windsor 7-4...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Sara Marie Fulbright, 90, of Jefferson City died Saturday, Sept. 23, 2000, at Jefferson City Manor Care. She was born July 28, 1910, at Cape Girardeau, daughter of Robert B. and Sue Bergman Snider. She and Carleton Barfield Fulbright were married Feb. 9, 1935, at Poplar Bluff, Mo. He died Jan. 1, 1999...

BENTON, Mo. -- Brenda Joyce Fisher Baker, 53, of Benton died Saturday, Sept. 23, 2000, at her home. She was born Nov. 18, 1946, at Cape Girardeau, daughter of Roy Henry and Gladys Mae Reynolds Smith. She and Larry Franklin Baker were married March 11, 2000. He survives...

KARNAK, Ill. -- James Ramage, 74, of Karnak died Sunday, Sept. 24, 2000, at Massac Memorial Hospital in Metropolis, Ill. Arrangements are incomplete at Wilson Funeral Home in Karnak.

Coletta M. Huhn, 84, of Cape Girardeau, died Sunday, Sept. 24, 2000, at the Lutheran Home. Visitation will be at 9 a.m. Tuesday at Ford and Sons Sprigg Street Chapel. Funeral Mass will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at St. Mary's Cathedral Church...

OAK RIDGE, Mo. -- Hazel A. Reid, 57, of Oak Ridge died Sunday, Sept. 24, 2000, at her home. She was born Dec. 5, 1942, at Jackson, Mo., daughter of Lawrence and Vida Smith Williams. She and Larry L. Reid were married March 17, 1967, at Jackson. He survives...

Theola W. Schafer, 90, of Cape Girardeau, died Friday, Sept. 22, 2000, at Chateau Girardeau Health Center. She was born Dec. 28, 1909, at Jackson, Mo., daughter of Charles P. and Henrietta Green Wright. She and Howard L. Schafer were married in 1939 in Phoenix, Ariz. He died April 23, 1974...

ANNA, Ill. -- Jewell J. Cook, 85, of Anna died Sunday, Sept. 24, 2000, at her home. She was born Nov. 1, 1914, at Advance, Mo., daughter of John and Gertrude Schlenker Noble. She and Lawrence W. Cook were married Jan. 9, 1932, at Jonesboro, Ill. He died Dec. 11, 1973...

CAIRO, Ill. -- Jessie Mae Allen, 88, of Nashville, Tenn., and formerly of Cairo, died Sunday, Sept. 24, 2000, at Richland Place Health Care Center in Nashville. Arrangements are incomplete at Barkett Funeral Home in Cairo.

HERE WE go again. As soon as you can open your windows to get some fresh air, this man on Westwood starts all this burning again. He has tree limbs everywhere. He is going to catch this whole neighborhood on fire because it is so dry. They tell you not to burn. With this wind, it is really dangerous. No one else burns. Everything stinks. I have to keep my kids inside because the air is so bad...

The latest estimated population figures for the 8th Congressional District indicate the official 2000 census should show good growth across Southeast Missouri. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the district's population grew by 40,173 from April 1990 to July 1999. The bureau estimated 608,558 people lived in the district on July 1, 1999...

Most residents of Cape Girardeau and Jackson were probably surprised to learn that they live in "dreamtowns." But that is how they are described by Demographics Daily, an Internet newsletter. Its Web site listed the cities as dreamtowns among 139 others based on surveys of 632 cities with populations of 10,000 to 50,000 across the country...

To the editor: Approaching scientific evidence with a political commitment that demands denial of the evidence often requires creativity and self-deception. This is the problem that faced Ken Aldrich in his recent letter challenging climate-change evidence. Mr. Aldrich would downplay or deny the implications suggested by the evidence...