This you must read for yourself ...

Some things bear repeating. That's a lesson most of us learned as students. That's a lesson Gary Rust convincingly teaches with his column of collected thoughts from other notables and not-so-notables.

In the past few days, there have been a couple of items in the Southeast Missourian that bear repeating. If you missed them the first time around, you'll learn something. And if you've already read them, I think you'll enjoy them again.

The first item is an obituary brought to my attention by a friend at lunch on the day it appeared in the paper. It tells of the life of Dorothea Rickard Heise of Cape Girardeau, who, as it turns out, led a remarkable life.

The Central High School graduate was probably best known to many locals through her long affiliation with Rust & Martin, her Cub Scout leadership and her aviation interests, having been involved with both the Cape Pilots Club and the Experimental Aircraft Association. And she was a charter member of St. Mark Lutheran Church.

All of the above add up to a life lived fully and well, but Heise is also known, at least indirectly, across America and even around the world. Why? Because of a government-sponsored poster contest she won in 1942 when she was in high school. The poster featured Uncle Sam pointing his finger. It became a national symbol during World War II with the phrase "Uncle Sam Wants You" added to it.

Just think how many of you have seen that poster and immediately recognized it as being an icon of this nation at war.

And just think how it all started with a 15-year-old Cape Girardeau girl.

The other item I want to repeat -- again -- was first posted by Southeast Missourian photographer Fred Lynch on his blog. This particular blog, which was also published in Sunday's Good Times section of the Missourian, was about drugstores of the 1920s.

Included was an advertisement for cod liver oil. Read it for yourself ...

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Who is Your Skinny Friend, Mabel?

Tell him to take Cod Liver Oil for a couple of months and get enough good healthy flesh on his bones to look like a real man.

Tell him he won't have to swallow the nasty oil with the nauseating fishy taste, because the McCoy Laboratories, of New York, are now putting up Cod Liver Oil in sugar coated tablet form.

Ask for McCoy's Cod Liver Oil Compound Tablets -- Kinder's Drug Store, Holloway's Drug Store, Finney's Pharmacy and every druggist worthy of the name sells them -- 60 tablets -- 60 cents. Any man or woman can put on five pounds of healthy flesh in 30 days or your druggist will willingly refund the purchase price.

One woman put on 15 pounds in six weeks. Children grow robust and strong.

"Get McCoy's, the original and genuine Cod Liver Oil Tablet."

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My, how times have changed. Now drugstore counters are overflowing with diet pills and such. Look how much our culture -- and our diet -- has changed in the last century.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.