Out of the past: Dec. 4

1998

Superintendents at two Missouri school districts have been named finalists for the top school job in Cape Girardeau; Dan Steska, superintendent at Arcadia Valley R-II District in Iron County, and David G. Smith, superintendent at Excelsior Springs District near Kansas City, will be in Cape Girardeau next week to meet with faculty, staff and the public.

A 156-year-old house once occupied by a daughter of city founder Don Louis Lorimier and an abode designed by Sears, Roebuck and Company are the latest candidates for local landmark designation by the City of Cape Girardeau; the application for the circa 1842 Steinbeck-Brock House at 9 N. Fountain St. -- owned by Lee Ragland -- will be considered by the City Council at its meeting Monday night; it already has been approved by the city's Planning and Zoning Commission and its Historic Preservation Commission; whether to grant local landmark status to the Freeman House at 24 N. Middle St. will be considered by the city's Planning and Zoning Commission on Wednesday; the city's Historic Preservation Commission already has given its blessing; the 1911 house is owned by Gary and Patsy Robert.

1973

The Charmin Paper Products Co.'s Cape Girardeau plant has been chosen as a training center for Germans to be employed at a new Charmin plant in West Germany; a number of Charmin managers from Germany and their families will be temporarily relocated to Cape Girardeau beginning in early 1974 and continuing into 1975.

State Highway Department surveys show no traffic-control signals are warranted at the dangerous Bloomfield-South Kingshighway intersection, which was the site of a crash fatal to a 15-month-old girl last week; city police records show an accident rate increase of 243% over 1972, when only seven accidents were reported; the accident rate at that location has shown one of the greatest increases of any in the city.

1948

For the fifth consecutive deer season, police Capt. F.L. Schneider, long a fancier of muzzle-loading rifles as well as other types of firearms, will hunt white tails using a muzzle loader; he and Alvin M. Kempe of Cape Girardeau and their guide, Carlin Meader of near Gipsy, Missouri, will go to Wayne County tomorrow, where they vow to bag a deer; from his collection of 10 muzzle loaders, Schneider has selected a .43-caliber piece of German make with which to hunt.

John E. Godwin Jr., Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport manager, and Frank L. Mabry, a local automobile dealer, made a crash landing in a light plane in Southern Illinois last night; the incident occurred after cruising over the city for three hours and fog obliterated the lights from the airport; neither Mabry nor Godwin was injured seriously; the plane, however -- a two-place Ercoupe owned by Mabry -- was badly damaged, the left wing being ripped from the fuselage and the front badly crumpled.

1923

The County Court plans to take steps at once to mark the graves of the dead at the Cape Girardeau County Farm and to take other steps necessary to protect the lasting resting place of the county's charges who have died there since the establishment of the almshouse, nearly 50 years ago; it is planned to erect at least a small slab at each grave, with a number which will correspond to a notation in the vital statistics records book kept by the farm superintendent; in this way it will be possible to locate the grave of any deceased person.

Condemnation proceedings to acquire a right-of-way for the primary highway southeast of Cape Girardeau will be started by the County Court and the Cape Girardeau Township Road Commission at once; with the bids already in for the erection of a bridge across the diversion channel, the state highway commission is demanding the right-of-way be secured at once; right-of-way from the Hunter Land and Development Co. and the Little River Drainage District was secured, but no agreement has yet been reached with Ed Cuskaden, a landowner whose property the road will pass.

-- Sharon K. Sanders