Out of the past: April 18

1994

Cape Girardeau residents are able to draw a sigh of relief, after the Mississippi River crested at 41.6 feet yesterday morning; it has started a slow descent.

Southeast Missourian circulation manager Michael Sturm, 46, died yesterday of an apparent heart attack; Sturm started working in the circulation department of the Bulletin Journal newspaper June 1, 1978, and continued with the company after it purchased the Southeast Missourian in 1986; he is survived by his wife, Patricia Sturm; a daughter, stepson, stepdaughter, parents, sister and three stepgrandchildren.

1969

Student apathy was the main target yesterday afternoon of students expressing their opinions at a "gripe-in" session held on the State College campus; about 80 students and administrators assembled on the terraces east of Academic Hall for the first of what may be a series of such open forums.

The usual spray of clear water issuing from the fountain in front of the Hirsch Building on Broadway turns bubbly; detergent, apparently placed in the fountain by pranksters, causes a sudsy, soapy mess that spills out over the basin.

1944

Wanda L. Gaither Hesse of Cape Girardeau has been notified by the War Department that her husband, Sgt. Albert A. Hesse, is missing in action; he had been serving with a cavalry division in Los Negras in the Southwest Pacific.

Federal Judge Rubey M. Hulen opens a hearing of the Cape Girardeau post office site case; the government is seeking to proceed to condemn the Common Pleas Courthouse Park site, with the courthouse to be removed and a federal building constructed on the spot; but the right of the government to condemn is being contested by Iska W. Carmack, a defendant, who is a descendant of Louis Lorimier, who donated the site to the city.

1919

The Rev. W.H. Halberstadt delivers the 46th annual commencement address to the graduating class of the Normal School in the auditorium this morning; John H. Withers, superintendent of instruction of the city of St. Louis, who was to have delivered the address, doesn't appear at the appointed time.

Chris E. Stiver and family are again permanent residents of Cape Girardeau; they return from St. Louis in the morning and are hunting for a place to live; Stiver says he will open an office here for C.E. Smith & Co., consulting engineers of St. Louis, and will handle such work in Southeast Missouri.

-- Sharon K. Sanders