Out of the past 3/9/12

25 years ago: March 9, 1987

The Cape Girardeau Jaycees and the Cape Girardeau Police Department announce a renewed effort to raise money for the purchase of bulletproof vests for Cape Girardeau police officers; a Jaycee-sponsored fundraiser in 1981 allowed the department to purchase 23 vests.

The Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce has voted to proceed with plans to place a half-cent transportation sales tax back on the ballot; the tax proposal failed last August.

50 years ago: March 9, 1962

Jesse Tow, 56, president of the American White Cross Laboratories in Cape Girardeau and New Rochelle, N.Y., collapsed and died last evening as he was boarding an airliner in St. Louis.

The State Park Board, working through the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce, is seeking to determine the number of boats which eventually would use a small-boat harbor at Trail of Tears State Park; the survey is being made at the request of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

75 years ago: March 9, 1937

Since repeal of Prohibition, automobile accidents in which victims have been brought to Southeast Missouri Hospital for treatment have increased 200 percent, says T.J. McGinty, hospital superintendent.

A petition bearing the names of 81 property owners in the Robertson Gale and Red Star suburbs, asking the city to prepare plans and make cost estimates for a sanitary sewer system in that section of town, has been filed with the city; that section of the city doesn't have any sewer service at present.

100 years ago: March 9, 1912

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- E.R. Roberts of Cape Girardeau, who is a freshman at Harvard, has been elected vice president of the Freshman Debating Club; the club carries on a triangular debate with Yale and Princeton every year.

A little thing like the city fathers turning a deaf ear to the white way proposition didn't end the scheme as had been the general impression; the First National Bank is having a beautiful, five-light lamppost installed in front of its building, and The Republican newspaper plans to replace its small post with a fine new one to match the bank's.

-- Sharon K. Sanders