Out of the past: April 15

1995

Brooks & Dunn, David Ball and the Tractors honky-tonked, road-housed and rocked the world at the sold-out Show Me Center last night; a youthful audience of 6,149 attended the 3 1/2-hour concert.

Cape Girardeau's newest radio talk show host is a motorcycle-riding, 30-year-old father of almost four with a taste for bone-breaking sports, conservative philosophers and rock 'n' roll; Southeast Missourian's news editor Jay Eastlick will begin his new duties Monday morning on radio station KAPE.

1970

SPACE CENTER, Houston -- Mission Control reports the Apollo 13 spaceship is off course and must make a mid-course engine correction tonight or Thursday if it is to return to Earth safely; if the firing isn't successful, the craft will miss Earth by 104 miles and probably would have no way to get home.

Cape Girardeau is encouraged by Col. Carroll N. LeTellier, new district engineer in St. Louis, to submit once again a proposal that Reach 4 of the Mississippi River levee system here be activated by the Corps of Engineers; Reach 4 is that section from the end of the present floodwall at the traffic bridge southward to include the Smelterville area.

1945

The morning service at Grace Methodist Church is given over to dedication of new Methodist hymnals in honor of some three dozen young men from the congregation who recently entered the armed forces; the minister, the Rev. Miles H. Stotts, preaches on the theme, "Those We Love."

A representative Cape Girardeau crowd pays respect to the memory of President Franklin Roosevelt in a solemn afternoon service held at State College auditorium under the direction of a community committee; playing a major part, the Navy V-12 Training Unit makes the service all the more impressive with its military ceremony; about 1,000 persons attend the service, held from the auditorium stage and under a large portrait of the late president.

1920

Cape Girardeau's street car system will be rejuvenated within the next three months; the Chamber of Commerce has agreed to the terms of the Missouri Public Utilities Co., which operates the system; the company has agreed to buy four new, all-steel safety trams and will spend $5,000 on the track to put it in good condition; in turn, the citizens of Cape Girardeau will lend the company $15,000; this money will be repaid in quarterly periods extending over five years.

A fugitive for 40 years, evading the law because in his youth he had slain a companion while crazed with liquor, David Statler, a native of Cape Girardeau County, is coming home; his mortal remains are on a train from Oklahoma, where he amassed a fortune, for burial at Daisy, beside the graves of his parents.

-- Sharon K. Sanders