LACROIX CROSS STILL A QUESTION

Although the Missouri Highway Commission said last week it had no authority to do anything with the memorial cross off North Kingshighway in Cape Girardeau, the District 10 legal counsel is preparing to bring it up again at the commission's May meeting.

A spokesman for John Koenig, district counsel for the 14-county Southeast Missouri area of the Missouri Department of Highways and Transportation, said he was "trying to dispose of it before the next meeting."

The cross, placed in 1947 to honor French missionaries, came to the attention of the Wisconsin-based group Freedom From Religion three weeks ago. The group demanded the removal of the cross, saying it violated the separation of church and state.

Cape Girardeau Dr. Chris Jung, owner of the property adjoining the 9-foot square of land the cross sits on, has said he will take the land with the cross if the highway department lets him.

At its April 7 meeting, the 6-member governing board of the department said it couldn't do anything about the cross.

At the same meeting, however, the commission permitted a 446-foot-long-by-50-foot-wide slice of land in Perry County, three miles north of Perryville off Highway 51, to be declared excess property and gave it to the adjoining landowner.

It also disposed of two other pieces of land, one off Route 32 in Cedar County in southwest Missouri and the other off Interstate 44 near Webster Groves in St. Louis County.

Bob Michael, assistant director of the highway department's right-of-way division, said there is "really no difference" between the Perry County disposal of land and the land where the Cape LaCroix cross is, except that the Perry County land was declared excess right of way. The land where the cross stands hasn't.

"We have to evaluate each disposition of property in terms of compensation," Michael said. "A lot of times the land can only go to the landowner of the property that adjoins the department's right of way."

Highway Commissioner John Oliver Jr. of Cape Girardeau said although the commission made a decision on the cross, it will listen to Koenig's appeal.

"We'll listen to anything they might have to say," Oliver said, "and they might persuade a majority to change their minds, but I doubt it. But if that's the recommendation, we'll listen. That's why we pay them."

Oliver said he felt the commission's decision should be final, but he cautioned that if the judgment about the cross is altered, "it could open up a little bitty crack that we can't stop."

"Are the people going to let somebody from Wisconsin tell them what to do?" Oliver asked. "You just can't let people decide what they are going to make you do, and I'm not just talking about the group in Wisconsin. I'm talking about anyone."

"We are the absolute," Oliver said. "We're not likely to surrender that to anybody."

THE COMMISSION AND THE CROSS

The resolution of the Missouri Highway Commission regarding the Cape LaCroix memorial cross approved at its April 7 meeting in Jefferson City:

RESOLVED that the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission determines that the historical monument at the intersection of what used to be Cape LaCroix Road and what used to be Missouri Route 71 does not now interfere with the use by the Department of that right-of-way and, therefore, that the Commission determines it is without power or authority to require movement of that monument until such time as it is determined by a court of competent jurisdiction that the monument interferes with the Department's enjoyment and use of its eyement.