Bill Emerson- 'a roads-and-bridges man'

Cape Girardeau's new Mississippi River bridge is named for the late congressman Bill Emerson, who sang off-key in the privacy of his car but was in tune with Southeast Missouri voters during his 16 years in office.

Friends and co-workers say Emerson was a down-to-earth conservative who loved gospel and patriotic music and was a student of history. He was fond of quoting the legendary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Without his persistence, Cape Girardeau's new $100 million bridge wouldn't have been built, said U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, the congressman's widow. She was elected to fill the House seat in 1996 after her husband's death earlier that year.

Jo Ann Emerson said her late husband started lobbying colleagues in Congress for funding of a new bridge in the early 1980s shortly after he was first elected.

Bill Emerson grew up in Hillsboro, Mo. A former Washington lobbyist, he returned to Southeast Missouri in 1979 to run for Congress. He was elected in 1980, the first Republican to win a seat in Congress in Southeast Missouri in 52 years.

A longtime smoker, he died from lung cancer on June 22, 1996, at age 58. Within days, Congress voted to name the planned bridge in his honor. Just over a month after his death, on July 26, officials broke ground for the new bridge.

"This bridge is a great monument to a great man," said Peter Kinder, state Senate president pro tem, who managed Emerson's first two campaigns for Congress.

"He was always a roads-and-bridges man. Building our infrastructure was important to him," Kinder said.

Kinder and other GOP political leaders credit Emerson with breaking the Democratic Party's hold on Southeast Missouri and creating a Republican base of power in the Bootheel.

But friends and colleagues remember him more for his character than his politics.

"You knew he was sincere," said Norm Harty, a Dexter businessman who became one of Emerson's closest friends. "He had a sense of value."

In 1988, Emerson admitted publicly he had a drinking problem. He entered the Betty Ford Clinic in California for treatment of alcohol abuse. He stayed at the clinic for 30 days.

Harty said his friend never took another drink.

Jo Ann Emerson said her former husband loved to sing and play John Philip Sousa marches as he drove. "He would open the windows and blast the music and sort of conduct with one hand as he was driving," she remembered.

History was another passion of Emerson's. On one family trip in England, Bill Emerson hired a tour guide to take the family on a private tour of Windsor Castle.

In the end, the guide only charged the family half price "because he learned so much from Bill," Jo Ann Emerson said.