Out of the past: Dec. 28

1998

All that Christmas shopping in Cape Girardeau County over the past couple months has helped push sales tax receipts for the year well over last year's totals; the county ends 1998 with a 7.1% increase in sales tax from 1997 sales tax collections; in 1998, sales tax receipts totaled $4.78 million; in 1997, the total was $4.44 million.

ST. LOUIS -- Southeast Missouri State University's basketball team gave up a home game to play Southern Illinois in St. Louis; the Indians are hoping it will be Dome Sweet Dome for them tonight; Southeast and SIU -- two longtime rivals -- will square off in a 5:15 p.m. tipoff at the Trans World Dome as part of a college basketball doubleheader dubbed the Earth Grains Classic; Saint Louis and Kansas State will meet at 8 p.m. in the nightcap.

1973

Cape Central Airways Inc., the fixed-base operator at Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport, has asked the city for a long-term lease as a forerunner to constructing new hangars for private airplanes; if the lease is granted, very likely the old wooden hangars built in World War II would be demolished; two previously were destroyed by fire.

Eugene J. McNeely, 73, president of American Telephone and Telegraph Co., from 1961-1965, and a native of Jackson, died Thursday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; McNeely was born Nov. 1, 1900, in Jackson and graduated from Jackson High School in 1918; he attended Southeast Missouri Teachers College for two years, before transferring to the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering.

1948

John E. Godwin Jr., field manager at Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport for more than a year, has accepted a position with Heuer Truck Sales, 20 S. Sprigg St., and will assume his duties in the sales department Jan. 1; he will be engaged in selling trucks, trailers, buses and airplanes.

CONRAN, Mo. -- Louis McGill, 15-year-old son of Leona McGill of Cape Girardeau, died yesterday shortly after being struck by a charge from a 12-gauge shotgun in a hunting accident near here; New Madrid County Coroner Leo Hedgepeth says the gun was in the hands of a 15-year-old hunting companion; the accident occurred while McGill and two other boys were rabbit hunting.

1923

Extension of the St. Mary's accommodation train to Memphis, Tennessee, and reduction of the running time of the faster "through" passenger trains are included in a new time schedule for the Frisco Railroad effective Jan. 6; under the new schedule, the present accommodation passenger train will leave St. Louis at 6:40 p.m., reach Cape Girardeau at 11:30 p.m., and proceed on to Memphis.

Laura Sachse, who has been attending a music conservatory in Louisville, Kentucky, will return to that city Wednesday; she has been visiting with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Sachse of Jackson.

-- Sharon K. Sanders