Out of the past: April 13

1998

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education installs new members and approves a retirement incentive that is expected to save the school district an estimated $170,000 during the next school year; Dr. Ferrell Ervin and Mark Carver are sworn in as board members following the acceptance of results from the April 7 election; Ervin, who was elected to a second term, is also re-elected school board president; board members also approve offering teachers an incentive for accepting early retirement at the end of the school year.

The remains of two people discovered last month by construction workers who were putting in concrete footings for a new warehouse near the Mississippi River will soon be laid to rest in St. Mary's Cemetery in Perryville, Missouri; the Rev. Louis Derbes of St. Mary's of the Barrens Seminary in Perryville said church officials have given the go-ahead to bury the bones in the religious community's cemetery, despite the fact no definitive identification was made; the remains, which were buried in what had once been the cemetery of St. Vincent's College in Cape Girardeau, were given to Derbes last week following an examination by Cape Girardeau Coroner John Carpenter.

1973

Damage within 11 Southeast Missouri counties from the record-breaking flood may exceed $11 million, the office of Gov. Christopher "Kit" Bond says; the estimate was prepared as a prerequisite in an attempt by Bond to secure federal disaster funds for thousands of Missourians who were forced from their homes during the flood.

Last summer it was Mo-Mo, and this year it appears to be UFOs; Missouri Monster, or Mo-Mo as the tall, hairy Bigfoot monster was affectionately called, proved an unsolved mystery for residents of the Louisiana, Missouri, area last summer; this year's mystery appears to be unidentified flying objects or mysterious lights, which have been seen in recent weeks in Southeast Missouri skies; the latest sightings were reported at Bernie in Stoddard County, where several times this week lights were seen by reputable citizens, including police officers, the county sheriff and a professional photographer.

1948

May Greene.Southeast Missourian archive

May Greene.Southeast Missourian archive

May Greene, beloved teacher of thousands of Cape Girardeau's children in her 53 years of teaching here and a guiding light in public education from the time of the construction of the first public school, passes away at 12:10 a.m. at Southeast Hospital; she began teaching in 1879 at the age of 18 at Old Lorimier School and completed her work in 1932, at which time she was principal of Washington School; a school was named for her in 1937.

The incoming Cape Girardeau City Council, moving with dispatch on an issue that has long been before the public, ordered at its inaugural meeting yesterday the procuring of all available information on parking meters; the city clerk has been directed to write to several parking meter companies relative to the cost of meters, terms, cost of installation and literature describing the products.

1923

A deed of trust for $1,700,000, given by the A.J. Matthews and Company Inc. to the Liberty Central Trust Co. of St. Louis to secure that amount of bonds issued by the bank to pay off encumbrances on nearly 10,000 acres of land in Southeast Missouri held by the Matthews company, has been filed at Jackson; the mortgage is the largest ever filed in Cape Girardeau County and covers land in Cape Girardeau, Scott, Stoddard, Dunklin, New Madrid and Pemiscot counties.

A committee made up of President Joseph A. Serena of the State College, Dr. J.H. Young and H.F. Leuer has been formed to cooperate with city officials in getting a new sanitary sewer district underway as soon as possible in what is known as the Normal School septic tank district; the committee will endeavor to find some way of remedying, or at least minimizing, the present obnoxious conditions of the sewer, as it will take several months at least to complete the new sewer system.

-- Sharon K. Sanders