COPPER DOME SPEAKER STRESSES MEMORIES

To prepare for the speech he gave to the Copper Dome Society at the Show Me Center Wednesday night, Dr. Robert Archibald visited the Old Lorimier Cemetery and read all the gravestones.

Archibald, the president of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, said he had only seen Cape Girardeau before from Interstate 55, a view that didn't distinguish the city from any other.

The Copper Dome Society invited Archibald to speak at its annual dinner. The Copper Dome Society is part of the Southeast Missouri State University Foundation, the fund-raising arm of the school. Members must have contributed at least $100 to belong. More than 700 people attended.

Before Archibald spoke, T. Ronald Hahs, chairman of the board of directors of the foundation, introduced some of the people attending, including Verl Riddle, a lawyer in St. Louis.

Archibald spoke of Riddle's origin's in Southeast Missouri on Riddle Hill near Malden and of Glenn Tompkins' book, "The House on Riddle Hill," which was recently published by the university. In his book Tompkins wrote of life on the same hill Riddle grew up on.

"It is irrefutable evidence of how important memory is to humans" and of how memory is tied to place, Archibald said.

He read a scene from the book where Tompkins returns to his childhood home and how the physical place evokes memories for him.

"Will anyone care about the strip development and the automobile-centered shopping centers the way we cared about the old downtown or the way Mr. Tompkins cared about Riddle Hill?" Archibald asked.

Two weekends ago Archibald came to Cape Girardeau looking for the essence of the town. "I didn't find it at Interstate 55 and William Street," he said. "I bought a copy of the Sunday Southeast Missourian, and I didn't find it in the advertising sections. I began to find it in a story about Old St. Vincent's Church and its renaissance."

He found even more in the Old Lorimier Cemetery. "I have walked through many old graveyards, but none more carefully preserved than this one," Archibald said. "I did find a contradiction between the old place and, forgive me, the new no-place along the highway."

He quoted novelist Thomas Pynchon, who decried a world becoming so homogeneous that individual places lose their identities.

But Archibald warned not to romanticize the past too much. He mentioned a tombstone in the cemetery. "When five children died close together, five X'. were added to the tombstone," he said, adding how common such sadness used to be.

Chuck Corpering, in town from Orange County, Calif., for his 15th high school reunion, heard Archibald, and said Cape Girardeau used to be a more tight-knit community with more of an individual identity.

He reminisced about buying beer at the old Cape Cut Rate Liquor, which has been replaced by Subway.

Virginia Goodwin, who attended the university in the 1940s, came to the dinner to hear Archibald speak and see many of her friends. She said Archibald touched a chord in her by talking about the importance of warmth and continuity in life.