Out of the past: April 30

1991

Astronaut Linda Godwin, just back to Earth after her space shuttle flight on Atlantis to launch the Gamma Ray Observatory, is scheduled to visit her home town of Oak Ridge next month; since her seven-day space trip, Godwin and her four fellow astronauts have been debriefed and are planning a publicity tour.

CHAFFEE, Mo. -- In a harrowing incident April 23 near St. Louis, train engineer W.R. "Billy Ray" Geiser of Dutchtown shouted instructions from the front of his locomotive at a 9-year-old boy who found himself trapped on a railroad bridge as the train rumbled toward him; following Geiser's instructions, the boy laid down as the train passed over him; miraculously, neither the boy nor five others with him on the trestle were injured.

1966

John P. Klassen, a native of Russia, is the guest artist at the Christian Arts Festival at Westminster Presbyterian Church and at the State College; Klassen studied art in Switzerland and Germany and has lived in the United States since the early 1920s.

Peter Lawrence Statler of Jackson and Lloyd G. Briggs of Chaffee, Missouri, were among 90 law school graduates who successfully passed their bar examinations; Statler is the son of Circuit and Common Pleas Judge W. Osler Statler and is a graduate of the University of Missouri Law School; Briggs is a former circuit clerk of Scott County who resigned the post to enter law school.

1941

Only six pupils attend classes at Fornfelt High School as the remainder of the student body continues its strike protesting the board of education's failure to re-elect principal L.L. Schuette to the faculty; most of the pupils assemble on the school grounds early in the day, but when the hour for classes to begin arrives, they duplicated yesterday's demonstration by forming a parade and marching away, carrying banners and placards in support of Schuette.

A party of WPA officials, engineers and superintendents were in Pocahontas yesterday to locate a stone quarry from which the stone for the new Pocahontas gymnasium will be taken; the quarry will be located a half-mile north of the school, where there are large deposits of a blue-gray stone of peculiar quality.

1916

A new time card goes into effect on the Frisco Railroad in the morning; the card should benefit Cape Girardeau a great deal, as it will give this city two new trains and faster through trains to St. Louis.

Big Elam Vangilder cinches the job of pitching for the Capahas this season in the SEMO League, when he lets Illmo down with four stingy hits and strikes out 13 batters in nine rounds; Illmo falls by a score of 8-1.

-- Sharon K. Sanders