SEMO breaks ground for alumni center

Southeast Missouri State University broke ground Saturday for a privately funded $1 million alumni center on the north side of campus that school officials say will provide needed space for university fund-raising and alumni services.

Over 100 people crowded into a red and white tent for the ceremony on a windy but sunny day that saw unseasonably warm temperatures.

The building will be named the Aleen Vogel Wehking Alumni Center after its major benefactor. The late Aleen Wehking of Cape Girardeau left $645,000 for the project in her will. Earl and Marjorie Holland of Fort Myers, Fla., were the other major contributors, donating $300,000.

Dr. Ken Dobbins, university president, and other dignitaries paid tribute to the generosity of Wehking and the Hollands. An Alumni Merit Award hall in the new building will be named after the Hollands.

Dobbins said Wehking, a cheerleader and 1932 graduate of Southeast, continued to champion the school in her later years. She died in 1995.

Her nephew, Charles Wehking III of St. Louis, said she loved Southeast and regularly visited the campus and dropped by the current alumni center, which also is named for her.

"She was always down here," he said. "She always spoke of Southeast as her family."

The 7,400-square-foot, two-level, white stucco and glass building will be constructed just southeast of Wildwood, once the official residence of school presidents and now a campus reception hall and guest house.

School officials hope to have constructed finished by Oct. 19, the date of the university's Homecoming celebration.

The structure will provide better office space for alumni services and the fund-raising university foundation, which currently are housed in a building on Sprigg Street in front of the Show Me Center.