Out of the past 8/9/09

25 years ago: Aug. 9, 1984

A vehicle plunges into the Mississippi River in Cape Girardeau, but it isn't known whether anyone is inside; the white truck rolls down the embankment at the Broadway floodgate, curves south along the bank and enters the river.

The Cape Girardeau Lions Club has endorsed the idea of a joint city/Southeast Missouri State University multipurpose building to be built on the university campus; it is the first civic club to publicly back the project.

50 years ago: Aug. 9, 1959

The new Alma Schrader School will stand as a monument to the cause of education and to freedom, declares Rush H. Limbaugh as the cornerstone of the building is laid with Masonic ceremonies; the Cape Girardeau lawyer is the principal speaker, while Judge Robert L. Aronson, grand master of the Missouri Grand Lodge, presides at the ceremony.

More than 1,400 people sign the guest register at the open house of the dredge Kennedy, reports Capt. Wallace R. Grieshaber, master of the boat; a complete tour of the dredge takes nearly an hour.

75 years ago: Aug. 9, 1934

Two men are being mentioned for possible selection as chief of police to succeed J.E. Crafton: Capt. Charles Schweer, who has been night officer in charge of the police station, and F.J. Courleux, former director of athletics at State College and now superintendent of the municipal swimming pool at Fairground Park.

What is considered the final approval of a large loan by the government to the Little River Drainage District has been given by the Reconstruction Finance Corp. at Washington, D.C.; the money should be available Aug. 31 for the refinancing of the district and payment of the bonds.

100 years ago: Aug. 9, 1909

Dr. Alexander Franz of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, who is the head of the Frankfort school system, is here visiting Louis Houck; Franz is making a tour of the United States; he is a historian, having authored a German history of the Mississippi Valley.

St. Vincent's Young Ladies Academy is being rebuilt; Mother Placide Keating was compelled to abandon plans for construction of an entirely new school and, instead, the old facility will be modernized.

-- Sharon K. Sanders