Out of the past 5/4/12

25 years ago: May 4, 1987

On-again, off-again efforts to develop the Westborough Mall property are on again; developers have announced construction work on a 45,000-square-foot supermarket is expected to get underway on the 67-acre tract in the near future; Cape Girardeau Centre will eventually include a second major anchor store, restaurants and retail specialty shops.

Cape Girardeau School District superintendent Dr. Arthur Turner announces the appointment of Gary Kralemann, a Jennings, Mo., elementary school principal, as the new principal of Jefferson School.

50 years ago: May 4, 1962

LeRoy F. Mason, music instructor at State College, has been promoted to professor and chairman of the department of music; he will replace Frieda V. Rieck, who is retiring at the end of the summer session of college.

State College announces it has entered into an agreement with the Audubon Society of Missouri concerning the use of the Springdale Bird Sanctuary, a 38-acre tract of land on Bend Road north of the Cape Girardeau Country Club; the society has leased the tract to the college for use by field biology, conservation, ornithology, nature study, systemic botany and geology classes for field studies.

75 years ago: May 4, 1937

CHARLESTON, Mo. -- Working feverishly to avert the second inundation in four months of a major part of the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, cooperating forces of the U.S. Army Engineers, WPA, the CCC, Red Cross and Highway Department are pouring men and materials into the threatened sector near Wolf Lake to keep back rising floodwaters from the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

The Cape Girardeau City Council has ordered plans drawn up for a sanitary sewer system to serve chiefly the Red Star suburb.

100 years ago: May 4, 1912

Boat agent W.S. Albert receives a telegram in the morning from Capt. William "Buck" Leyhe saying that the steamer Cape Girardeau had to tie up at Wittenberg, Mo., to make machinery repairs; it should be here in time for the high school excursion this evening.

Herman Siemers is riding about town in a brand new Ford automobile; before making the purchase, he sent his son to an automobile school in Kansas City to learn the mechanism of the machine.

-- Sharon K. Sanders