Out of the past: Feb. 12

1998

Cape Girardeau's Planning and Zoning Commission last night rejected a proposal for a halfway house at Gibson Recovery Center Inc.; the commission voted 6-3 to turn down the Gibson Center's request for a special-use permit and zoning change to allow operation of a halfway house program to serve inmates from the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole; some members cited opposition by parents and staff at a neighboring school for severely handicapped children as the reason for their votes against the halfway house.

Wetlands on the planned site of a vocational-technical school won't prevent the Cape Girardeau School District from building the school, superintendent Dr. Dan Tallent says; the site is west of the intersection of Kingshighway and Southern Expressway along a gravel section of Silver Springs Road; a wooded portion of the tract has been declared wetlands by the Army Corps of Engineers; it is unclear where or how large the area is.

1973

The Missouri Park Board has discontinued park user fees and decided to finance capital improvements at state parks with federal revenue-sharing funds instead; the user fees, which had been collected since Jan. 1, were stopped Thursday.

With a new confidence that their war-prisoner son will be returned home and in fairly good condition, Mr. and Mrs. Earl G. Lewis of Cape Girardeau are anxiously awaiting the next list of POWs to be released by North Vietnam; Lt. Cmdr. Earl Gardner Lewis Jr., a Navy flier captured by the enemy in 1967, wasn't among the POWs released today.

1948

Ice-jammed tributaries of the Mississippi River above St. Louis are responsible for the river being at its lowest level here in a number of years, and all but halting traffic in this vicinity; K.A. Head, who operates a refueling station for river craft, reports a number of tow boats are tied up here waiting for the river to rise sufficiently to permit them to continue upstream.

D.W. Gilmore, an attorney of Benton, Missouri, announces he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination as state senator from the 27th District of Missouri, which includes Scott, Cape Girardeau and Mississippi counties, subject to the primary election on Aug. 3.

1923

Irvin V. Albert, proprietor of the Albert Boat Store on Water Street, local agent for the Eagle Packet Co. and Cape Girardeau port warden, died yesterday at the home of his sister, Mrs. L.A. Givens, 1107 Broadway; Albert, 47, was the son of the late Sebastian Albert.

Because of the crowded conditions at Jefferson School, nine pupils are transferred to May Greene School in the morning; those from the first grade are Fred Al Meystedt, Adolph and Albert Fee, Ellis Reynolds and Woodrow Kinder; others transferred are Earl Volkerding of the second grade, Wilma Smith and Stella Hildebrand of third grade and Marie Windisch of fourth grade.

-- Sharon K. Sanders