Out of the past: Dec. 3

1996

After a four-month search for police and fire chiefs, Cape Girardeau has both; city officials have hired Daniel White, fire chief in Springdale, Arkansas, to take over the Cape Girardeau department on Jan. 2; Richard Hetzel, police chief in Norcross, Georgia, starts his new job here Jan. 13.

A Monday evening fire in Cape Girardeau destroyed an apartment building and left at least two parents and their children homeless; it started just after 5 p.m. on a back porch of the upper north-end apartment at 3019 Themis St.; that tenant wasn't home, but people living in the three other units were; interim fire chief Max Jauch says he believes the fire wasn't accidental, but declines to elaborate pending investigation.

1971

Speaking at the annual Cape Girardeau Freedom Fund Banquet at the Holiday Inn, St. Louis Alderman Joseph Clark tells the audience of more than 100 that the NAACP's function in the 1970s is to change the system designed by "whites for whites"; Clark, a black St. Louis city alderman serving his third four-year term, is the keynote speaker for the banquet sponsored by the Cape Girardeau County Chapter of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People.

Workers are razing a frame dwelling on the south side of the 300 block of Morgan Oak Street to make room for a new four-bay car wash on property owned by John L. Wescoat; the house occupying the site was one of the older dwellings in the city formerly occupied by the Lawler family.

1946

In an effort to alleviate parking problems downtown, the Cape Girardeau City Council has passed a 7 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. parking ban for certain Main Street area thoroughfares effective today, leaving the others for future consideration; only delivery trucks are allowed to park during that period on Main, between Broadway and Independence; Spanish Street, between Broadway and Independence, and Independence, between Spanish and Water Street.

Interior Secretary J.A. Krug in a House committee hearing yesterday announced natural gas may be moved from the Southwest to the East to help offset the effects of the coal strike, bringing about the resumption of activity along the Big Inch and Little Inch pipe lines, which cross the Mississippi River south of Cape Girardeau.

1921

NEW MADRID, Mo. -- The Farm Bureau of New Madrid County has the service of a business agent; R.L. Bierschwal, manager of the Southeast Missouri Co-operative Sunflower Growers' Association, took up the additional work Thursday; he is a son of Martin Bierschwal, prominent Cape Girardeau building contractor.

A portrait of Gen. Nathaniel W. Watkins, presented to the Cape Girardeau County Bar Association by Judge Charles A. Daues of St. Louis, is unveiled with appropriate ceremony in the Circuit Courtroom at Jackson; Judge Frank Kelly, in accepting the portrait, says it will hang on the walls of the courtroom to be an inspiration to attorneys.

-- Sharon K. Sanders