Out of the past: Jan. 14

1997

School board races have developed in a number of districts in advance of today's filing deadline for the April election; Chaffee, Missouri, heads the list with six candidates on the ballot: Danny Finley, Kathy Kinsey, Debbie Patterson, Alvin Vandeven, Candace Witcher and Linda Wessel.

Cape Girardeau's new police chief, Rick Hetzel, is on the job; he says his first priority is to get to know the department and its officers; Hetzel, 44, brings years of law enforcement experience with him; he comes from Norcross, Georgia, where he had been police chief since 1992.

1972

The demand for tickets to State College's first mid-year commencement has exceeded expectations, forcing the college to change the location of the ceremony to Houck Field House; degrees will be awarded to 295 students in Sunday's afternoon ceremony; commencement speaker will be Dr. Herbert W. Schooling, interim chancellor of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The first candidate has filed for one of two seats on the Cape Girardeau Board of Education to be filled at the April 4 election; he is the Rev. Earl W. Tharp, pastor of Red Star Baptist Church.

1947

JEFFERSON CITY -- Wildlife management in the Lake Wappapello region has been entrusted to the State Conservation Commission under a just-announced agreement; although flood control will remain the principal purpose of the reservoir, the commission outlines a tentative plan to improve hunting and fishing in the area.

The so-called downtown flood-control suit, filed a year ago in a move by Main Street property owners to seek a method of curbing high water of the Mississippi River, is dismissed in Common Pleas Court; dismissal comes on a motion by City Attorney R.P. Smith and Rush H. Limbaugh, the latter representing the original petitioners; the action comes as no surprise; interest in the proposal, which would have created a special improvement district in the Main Street area in an effort to remove the section from flood danger, had noticeably dwindled since the suit was field Feb. 1, 1946.

1922

Eleven indictments were returned by the grand jury late yesterday afternoon at Jackson, after being in secret session nearly five days; the nature of the indictments wasn't divulged; in addition, the jury in its formal report gave approval of the move of the County Court to wreck the old County Poor Farm building and construct a new one; loafing about the county courthouse in Jackson and its furnace room was condemned by the jurors in the report.

This has been a great winter for fur, and hunters and trappers of this section, especially in the river hills around Neelys Landing, haven't neglected the opportunity according to Boren Brothers, who a few days ago bought 1,085 opossum hides from Frank Schenniman, a merchant at Neelys; 'possum hides are worth $1.50 and $2; good raccoon hides, $5.50 and $6, and mink, $7 and $8.

-- Sharon K. Sanders