Out of the past 5/23/12

25 years ago: May 23, 1987

A group of local businessmen, including Earl Norman and Thomas M. Meyer of Cape Girardeau, John Lichtenegger of Jackson and Clyde "Bud" Pearce Jr. of East Cape Girardeau, Ill., have proposed development of a major east-west highway through the region.

Seventeen years after it was first proposed, representatives of the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers yesterday signed a local cooperative agreement for construction of a slackwater harbor on the Mississippi River, north of Gray's Point.

50 years ago: May 23, 1962

Robert Osbourn is named district construction superintendent for the Cape Girardeau district for Southwestern Bell Telephone; he succeeds Claude Williams, who has retired.

The head of the State Highway Commission has agreed with protesters of the matching fund plan of distributing state gasoline tax money to counties; the commission had planned to require one half matching funds from the counties.

75 years ago: May 23, 1937

Trinity Sunday is observed as a "double" occasion at First English Lutheran Church; besides being Trinity Sunday, it also marks the first anniversary of the Rev. Roland Riechmann as pastor.

The Rev. J.C. Montgomery, pastor the New McKendree Methodist Church at Jackson, is the guest speaker at the evening service at Centenary Methodist Church.

100 years ago: May 23, 1912

Professor Henry S. Moore of the Normal School faculty and Allen Oliver, a Cape Girardeau lawyer, will leave next week for a tour of several of the countries of Europe; they will be gone three months.

Albert "Happy" Bernard, the Normal School athlete, is having a hard time smiling at present; while batting in the baseball game against Concordia College in St. Louis on Monday, he was struck by a swiftly pitched ball, sustaining a double fracture to his jaw.

-- Sharon K. Sanders