A Southeast Missouri farmer tends his herd of cattle in this early photograph given to the Southeast Missourian newspaper by the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce. (Southeast Missourian archive)...

While Melva Rose Schrader and sisters Mary Russell and Helen Coerver Fox (featured in last week's blog) were pedaling across Europe in the summer of 1949, Cape Girardeau received a new resident from Berlin, Germany...

The year before Melva Rose Schrader married Francis F. Lewis (shown here) on Oct. 21, 1950, at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau, she and two friends from Cape Girardeau -- sisters Mary Russell and Helen Coerver Fox -- toured parts of Europe on bicycles. The blog below tells of some of their adventures. (Southeast Missourian archive)...

In 1949 Bill Watkins and his wife resided at 350 N. Fountain St. in Cape Girardeau. The two had a William Tell moment in July of that year, when Bill, 21, took a shot at a late-night prowler at his home using a bow and arrow...

Caroline Smith (Wikipedia; public domain) Caroline Smith is probably not a name known to too many Girardeans these days, but 100 years ago she brought reflected glory to Cairo, Illinois, and Cape Girardeau by winning gold in the 1924 summer Olympics in Paris, France...

Perhaps E. Mike Doyle and J.H. Strain were feeling the strain of increased competition. The New Broadway Theatre had opened its doors in December 1921, and it’s possible Doyle and Strain had seen a drop in attendance at their movie houses, the Park Theater in the 200 block of Broadway and the Orpheum at 615 Good Hope St...

Circus folks, performing in Cape Girardeau as part of the Southeast Missourian's 50th anniversary celebration, visit with polio patients at Saint Francis Hospital on June 7, 1954. The children are Ruthie De Hart, 5, of Malden in the bed and Sondra C. Dickerson, 6, of Mound City, Illinois, in the wheelchair. (G.D. Fronabarger ~ Southeast Missourian archive)...

The Southeast Missourian reported the death of baseball legend Jerome "Dizzy" Dean, 63, on its front page on July 17, 1974. An article by Missourian sports editor B. Ray Owen brought the sad news to the newspaper's readers, and an Associated Press article was published on the front of the Sports section the same day...

I've written about bells before in my blog. One such article reflected on the silencing of the bells of St. Mary's Cathedral in 1988. An earlier blog tracked the bell that formerly hung at Saint Francis Hospital, when it was located on Good Hope Street...

For a business that operated in Cape Girardeau for 43 years -- on Broadway, no less -- there is very little in the files of the Southeast Missourian documenting Stubbs' Beer Garden. Located on the north side of the 1700 block of Broadway, the business started out as a root beer stand and grew into a tavern that catered to factory workers...

The Doyle house, facing east, was at the southwest corner of Broadway and Lorimier Street. (Kassel Studio ~ Southeast Missourian archive)...

At 6:56 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 1949, Cape Girardeau was struck by a tornado. Here are some statistics that demonstrate the destruction inflicted on this community of about 21,500: 22 persons killed; 72 persons treated at local hospitals;...

Twenty years after the May 21, 1949, tornado, the Southeast Missourian newspaper published an article by managing editor John L. Blue recalling the events of that Saturday that left Cape Girardeau shattered and 22 of its inhabitants dead. He related how he and other reporters and a photographer the night of the storm explored the path of the tornado, collected the names of the dead and those hospitalized with injuries, and produced an extra that was delivered to the newspaper's readers the following morning.. ...

1974 has yielded a number of blogs for me in recent weeks. This latest one was published June 2 and tells of then Ptlm. Howard H. Boyd Jr. attempting to read a book about a garbage man to a group of youngsters during the public library's story hour at Courthouse Park. Apparently, the children were more interested in Boyd and his uniform than they were in the story...

In the same edition that carried the feature story about Curtis Clymer and his riverboat models from last week's blog, a second article in the sports section caught my eye. The same photographer — Rick Morein — took pictures for both articles, but the sport story was the work of one of my favorite Missourian writers, Sam Blackwell. The subject of the story: Eddie Moss and pain...

As a kid growing up in South Cape, I spent my summers helping my parents in the garden, mostly growing tomatoes, and working on models of sailing ships. The more complicated the rigging, the better...

For most of my life, I didn’t know that my family suffered any loss in the tornado that devastated Cape Girardeau on May 21, 1949. My parents, Louis and Frances Sanders, weren’t married yet. Mom was still living with her parents, Raymond and Clara Glaus Stehr, in their home in the 1200 block of South Sprigg Street. That was well away from the path of the twister...

Old postcards provide us with images of bygone days. Even the colorized versions of old photographs help preserve history. But there is a danger that more recent postcards featuring reproductions of early events may contain erroneous information, since they were printed years afterward. I believe that is what happened with the postcard below, leaving us with a question: Is the first boat pictured the Bald Eagle or the Piasa?...

Winners in the Southeast Missouri Regional Science Fair, accompanied by their instructors and officials of the annual event, departed by plane Tuesday, May 5, 1959, for the National Science Fair in Hartford, Connecticut. Shown as they prepared to board a Central Airways plane are, from the left, Corona Jansen, Sister Jean Ann and Sister DeLellis of Cape Girardeau Catholic High, James Singleton of Cape Girardeau Central High, pilot Arthur Woolson of Centralia, Illinois, pilot John Higgins of Cape Girardeau, professor E.L. ...

I recently produced a blog about the christening of the third steamer Cape Girardeau in 1924. Among the passengers who sailed on the boat’s maiden voyage from St. Louis to the christening in Cape Girardeau were St. Louis Mayor Henry W. Kiel; Judge Charles H. Daues of the St. Louis Court of Appeals, a native of Cape Girardeau, and artist/architect Thomas P. Barnett...