Out of the past: Jan. 16

1999

Dexter's only hospital will soon become a for-profit institution; Dexter Memorial Hospital's corporate members Thursday voted 154-19 to affiliate with NetCare Health Systems, a Nashville, Tennessee-based management firm.

After averaging more than $3.5 million and 48 building permits a month during the first 10 months of 1998, Cape Girardeau construction permits declined in November and December; when the year's totals were compiled by Brenda D. Schloss, administrative secretary of the city's inspection services division, it showed a total of 550 permits had been issued in the amount of $39,785,496 during 1998.

1974

Cape Girardeau Mayor Howard C. Tooke plans to make several major proposals to the City Council tonight, including establishment of a city-owned refuse collection service which would be free for residential curbside pickups, but increase costs of rear-door collections from the present $4 to $5 per month; he will also recommend adoption of new subdivision regulations, street improvements, upgrading of the water system at the airport for better fire protection, a public transportation system and other projects.

Consumers are hot this winter; but the warmth is radiating not from home furnaces set at a scant 68 degrees, but from under consumers' collars as they encounter continually rising costs of home heating oil, liquefied petroleum gas and gasoline; nationwide, prices have risen sharply in the past month, and industry spokesmen say they'll probably rise more in the future.

1949

The Rev. Lelan Rogers, missionary to Latin American countries now home on leave, is the guest speaker at the morning service at Church of the Nazarene; he is accompanied by his wife, a trained doctor's assistant who serves with Rogers.

Succeeding the Rev. W.W. Betton, who served here for one year, the Rev. W.D. Wilkins, formerly presiding elder of the St. Louis-Cape Girardeau district, is the new pastor of St. James A.M.E. Church; he and his wife are residing at 409 N. Middle St.

1924

Marooned for 20 hours on a small ferryboat in an ice jam in the middle of the Mississippi River one mile below Thebes, Illinois, four men abandon the boat early today and walk on treacherous ice cakes to the Missouri shore, 1,000 feet away, after previous attempts to rescue them failed; four mules, a wagon and an automobile, which were on the ferry at the time it was caught in the ice gorge, are left behind.

More than 100 tax suits are to be filed in the next few weeks against delinquent property owners, says O.A. Knehans, who is filing the suits for County Collector George Meyers; between 200 and 300 tax bills are now in his hands, and suits will be filed just as soon as they have been put in order; these bills are all against real property, and some owners are two or three years in arrears.

-- Sharon K. Sanders