Out of the past 12/14/10

25 years ago: Dec. 14, 1985

More than 3,000 parents and friends pack a steamy Houck Field House to watch 522 graduates receive their diplomas from Southeast Missouri State University; commencement speaker is Thomas C. Wood, a 1965 Southeast graduate and publisher of the St. Louis Business Journal.

Union Electric crews are expected to work through the night to repair a natural gas distribution line under Normal Avenue on the Southeast Missouri State University campus; the leak was discovered when someone noticed a hissing sound to the north of the Harold O. Grauel building.

50 years ago: Dec. 14, 1960

Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. has exercised an option to purchase two tracts on Broadway immediately west of its present building for expansion; the company will purchase the Hartford Hill property at 814 Broadway and Wayne's Grill, 816 Broadway.

Two district men are reported to be among those being considered by President-elect John F. Kennedy for the post of secretary of agriculture; they are Albert A. Story, a Charleston, Mo., cotton plantation owner, and Ralph Bradley, a native of Anna, Ill., residing in Springfield, Ill.

75 years ago: Dec. 14, 1935

A Christmas tree has been placed by the city at the southeast corner of Fairground Park and will remain there until after the holidays; the cedar, measuring nearly 20 feet tall, was erected there instead of Courthouse Park, as the city council believed more people will see it.

V.W. Dyer has sold his barbershop at 32 N. Main St., to George Unger, who will take charge within the next few days; Dyer has been a barber here for 25 years.

100 years ago: Dec. 14, 1910

Among the fine homes lately built on Normal Heights, the two that are just completed are of the handsomest; one has been built by professor B.F. Johnson of the Normal School faculty, and the other by I. Ben Miller, the well-known druggist and confectioner.

Floating ice and low water have brought a close to the most disastrous season of river traffic known to the Upper Mississippi in many years; all the towboats and packet steamers have gone into winter quarters, and only the ferry boats, tows and small swift craft remain.

-- Sharon K. Sanders