Out of the past: Dec. 27

1995

EAST CAPE GIRARDEAU, Ill. -- Witz Village Bar-B-Que and Restaurant is closing this weekend; Betty Colyer and her husband, William M. "Witz" Colyer, opened the family restaurant in March 1982; during the past 13 years, the restaurant has become renowned for its home-style cooking.

SIKESTON, Mo. -- The business community and school officials recently shifted gears from talk to action on a junior college for Sikeston by asking area school boards for support; people started talking about a junior college in 1980, but efforts to get one in the Bootheel were unsuccessful; later, through cooperation with Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Sikeston schools began offering two associate degrees; now community leaders are eying a separate, Sikeston-based junior college that would attract students from surrounding counties.

1970

The Rev. and Mrs. Earl W. Tharp of Cape Girardeau will be at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Jan. 19 to receive five awards in behalf of their son, Spec. 5 Earl W. Tharp Jr., who was killed in South Vietnam June 26; the awards are the Silver Star for Gallantry in Action, the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart, the Good Conduct Medal and the Air Medal for Heroism, his second.

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- A three-way race for sheriff of Perry County will be decided Monday, with the winner filling out the unexpired term of the late S.J. Zahner, who died in office Nov. 28; candidates in the special election are Acting Sheriff Marvin Lukefahr, Republican; Francis S. "Frank" O'Brien, Democrat, and Leroy J. "Topper" Brewer, independent.

1945

The Gift Shop, owned and operated by Mrs. D.J. Keller and Marie Friant, is moving from quarters on the ground floor of The Missourian Building to a building owned by V.J. Clemens at 135 N. Main St.; the shop will reopen the first week in January; it has been in The Missourian building since July 1925; Missourian Printing & Stationery Co. will expand into that space.

Holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross for participation in a mission of Giefu, Japan, July 9, T-Sgt. Kenneth E. Bender is on furlough visiting his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Martin G. Bender of Cape Girardeau, until Jan. 24; a central fire control gunner on a B-29, Bender flew 22 missions, all over Japan, and was a crew member of a bomber which was assigned to photograph Nagasaki 24 hours after the atomic bomb was dropped.

1920

Judge William Paar has been called; lacking one day of being 72 years old, he closed his life of long service to his fellow man at midnight Sunday night, following several days of suffering from pneumonia at his home in Jackson; Paar was born in Cape Girardeau, the son of Andrew Paar; he married Katherina Frank, and they made their home in Jackson; in 1914 he was elected presiding judge of the County Court and in 1918 was elected for a second, four-year term.

Draft deserters, lulled to rest by more than two years of security from prosecution, are about to receive an unpleasant surprise; the names of 173,911 alleged deserters are about to be published in their "home town" newspapers, according to the War Department.

-- Sharon K. Sanders