SEMO GIFT PAVES WAY FOR HISTORY LECTURE SERIES

A $50,000 contribution to the Center for Regional History has paved the way for a regional history lecture series at Southeast Missouri State University and an interpretive area at a farm near Oran.

Lynn S. Bollinger and his daughter, Nancy Friend Bollinger Adams, both of Godfrey, Ill., made the gift to the University Foundation. The gift boosts an endowment they provided a year ago to further the center's mission.

The series will be called the "Bollinger/Friend Regional History Lecture Series" and will bring a speaker to campus each fall to discuss the region's history.

"We will bring in prominent scholars and authors who have written about, researched and know about events and trends in the history of Southeast Missouri," said Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History. "I think the lecture series is just another way to call attention to the history of this region."

Nickell said experts on the geology and archaeology of the region, Mississippian Indians and the Mississippi River are among those being considered as speakers. Details of the series are still being worked out, but the annual lecturer may make his presentation on both the Cape Girardeau campus and at the Harry L. Crisp Bootheel Education Center in Malden.

Nickell is considering compiling the texts from the various lectures and having them published and sold.

In addition to the lecture series, the gift will help fund the development of an interpretive area at the Friend family farm. Bollinger and Adams in December 1997 donated their 260-acre farm at Oran to benefit the university in the operation of the Center for Regional History.

The property was valued at about $325,000 and was given in memory of Virginia Friend Bollinger and the Friend family. The university is using income from the farm to further the mission of the Center for Regional History. Bollinger and Adams made an additional cash gift of $50,000, to fund student scholarships and program enhancements for the center.

Nickell said the farm dates back to the early part of the 19th century and contains a number of outbuildings in disrepair. Southeast is removing those buildings and plans to use lumber from the old farmhouse to construct a five-panel kiosk.