Out of the past: April 28

1998

Venture Stores Inc. has announced plans to sell and assign leases on most of its stores and other real estate to Kimco Realty Corp.; under terms of the agreement, Kimco will acquire lease rights to 89 Venture properties; at this point in the negotiations, the future of Venture as an anchor store at West Park Mall in Cape Girardeau is not known; it could become a Kmart store, a retail outlet for one of the other Kimco clients, or it could close.

A leaky septic tank may prompt Cape Girardeau to force homeowners along a stretch of Perryville Road to form a sewer district; the tank at the home at 2932 Perryville Road has been leaking for several years, but the situation became worse after a lateral line of the tank was severed April 1 by a contractor during the reconstruction of Perryville Road; for Jewell and Marilyn Cox, who live across the street on Evergreen, the leaking tank means raw sewage is running across their property and into a natural stream.

1973

This is the big weekend that should tell whether all of the hard work of more than a month to maintain soggy levees in Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois has been enough to hold back the biggest Mississippi River flood crests of them all; with the flood fight lost at historic Kaskaskia Island, Illinois, where the levee was topped early yesterday, attention now centers on Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and on Miller City, McClure and East Cape Girardeau, Illinois.

St. Louis’ football Cardinals won’t be coming to Cape Girardeau, nor will they go to Rolla, Missouri; an agreement was reached yesterday between the Big Red and Illinois State University for the Cardinals to conduct their summer training camp at the Normal-Bloomington campus, about 150 miles northeast of St. Louis.

1948

Filing time for the primary election Aug. 3, when nominees of the two parties for county offices will be selected, expired at midnight with only one major change in the lineup; the race for the Republican nomination for assessor became a three-way affair when Philip H. Steck, former Cape Girardeau city commissioner, filed late yesterday to oppose John L. Wescoat, the incumbent, and Ralph S. Ward, credit agent worker.

The Rev. Joseph Theunissen, C.M., of Rotterdam, Holland, a missionary to China for the past 30 years, is here with the Rev. Stephen Dunker, C.M., a native of Perryville, Missouri, and also a missionary to China, visiting the Rev. T.J. Murphy, pastor of St. Vincent’s Catholic Church; Murphy formerly served as a missionary to China; both Theunissen and Dunker are en route to their diocese in the Kiangsi Province to resume their duties following leaves at their homes.

1923

Cape Girardeau city officials, stepping into the breach with a compromise, virtually put an end to the fight between the Missouri Public Utilities Co. and the Dunnegan Construction Co., and the work of installing the West End sewer continues uninterrupted; the agreement re-routes the trunk line of the sewer in order to avoid the intersection of William Street and West End Boulevard; installs a smaller sewer pipe down the boulevard, which will hopefully prevent interference with the street car track, and replaces a smaller sewer on Painter Avenue with a large, 6-foot one; both companies agree to cooperate in order to get the work completed as quickly as possible.

Martin L. Haupt of Egypt Mills is re-elected president of the Cape Girardeau County Farm Bureau at the annual meeting in Jackson; Fred Naeter of the Southeast Missourian is named a member from Cape Girardeau County on the executive committee of the Southeast Missouri Agricultural Bureau.

­— Sharon K. Sanders