Out of the past 10/25/04

25 years ago: Oct. 25, 1979

In a protest of the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education's proposal to phase out the four state university laboratory schools including the one at Southeast Missouri State University, the school's board of regents endorses a faculty resolution that maintains the coordinating board shouldn't have the authority to cut the lab school funding.

Louis Hecht is back on Main Street; Hecht, who has made his home in Las Vegas, Nev., for some years, is back in Cape Girardeau to attend the grand opening of Hecht's Two in a newly renovated space on MainStreet; he founded Hecht's Store here 68 years ago.

50 years ago: Oct. 25, 1954

Philip H. Steck is relieved of his duties as commissioner of police and public safety; those duties have been transferred to the department of public affairs, under Mayor Narvol A. Randol.

The appeal to the generosity of Girardeans to give to the city's first United Fund campaign reaches its peak, as an army of volunteer workers, men and women, go into the field in an effort to contact every home and business for its contribution.

75 years ago: Oct. 25, 1929

Grover M. Cozean, superintendent of schools at Fredericktown, is elected president of the Southeast Missouri Teachers Association at the initial session of delegates to the association's annual meeting at noon on the Teachers College campus.

About $5,000 damage is done in the morning when a fire of undetermined origin breaks out in the card room of the plant of the American Cotton Gauze Co. in south Cape Girardeau; a sprinkler system enables the employees to get the fire under control.

100 years ago: Oct. 25, 1904

President W.S. Dearmont, at morning chapel exercises at the Normal School, reads a letter signed by "A Friend of the School," in which it was stated that 58 pieces of statuary had been given to the school; the collection is now on exhibition at the Palaces of Varied Industries and Education at the World's Fair in St. Louis.

The chilly weather is being felt at city hall; City Collector Gus Schultz has no stove in his office, and he feels like a bird in cold storage.

-- Sharon K. Sanders