Out of the past: Jan. 26

1998

Efforts are moving forward to create a one-stop referral network for people trying to access social service agencies and fill special needs in Cape Girardeau County; United Way director Nancy Jernigan says an executive committee has been formed to devise an information and referral network in the county.

Two Catholic elementary schools in Cape Girardeau have recognized the Rev. James A. Seyer and postal service employee Kevin Cracraft as distinguished graduates; St. Mary Cathedral School presented the Distinguished Graduate Award to Seyer; St. Vincent de Paul Grade School gave its Distinguished Graduate Award to Cracraft, who graduated from the school in 1973.

1973

Mr. and Mrs. Art Siemers and Mrs. Robert Naeter appear before the Cape Girardeau County Court, saying they hope to form a steering committee early next week to organize a petition drive for formation of a rural Cape County fire district; the group asks the court if the present firefighting equipment of the Office of Disaster Planning can be continued in service until a fire district is organized and operational.

A second candidate has filed for one of the two seats open on the Cape Girardeau Board of Education for the April 3 school election; Charles E. Woodford, a retired Air Force officer, is seeking one of the three-year posts; Mary Kasten, board president, previously filed for re-election to a fifth term on the board.

1948

Plowing through heavy ice floes, the steam-driven Kokoda nears its destination at St. Louis, the certain winner over the diesel-powered Helena with which it undertook a race up the Mississippi River from New Orleans on Jan. 15; the Helena, also battling ice, was off Tiptonville, Tennessee, at 6 a.m.

Apparently shipping water in its bottom, a 200-foot barge loaded with raw sulphur and belonging to the Central Barge Line, sank amid heavy ice at the lower end of the U.S. Engineers fleet anchorage at Cape Rock on Saturday afternoon before a pump line could be place aboard.

1923

The embargo placed on the Cape Girardeau Northern Railway by the Frisco Railroad is lifted at 11 a.m.; a switch engine of the C.G.N. this morning moves several carloads of freight from the Frisco tracks in South Cape Girardeau, shifting them to side tracks on the former railroad where they will be unloaded; Giboney Houck, assistant to the receiver, announces all cars will be handled by the C.G.N., following an agreement reached by representatives of the two companies; the embargo had been in effect six days.

Edw. F. Regenhardt, who went to Chicago to attend the national exposition of road-building apparatus, went on to the nation's capital for a chat with the "big chief"; he spent an evening with Chief Justice William H. Taft at his home in Washington, D.C.; when Taft was president, he appointed Regenhardt -- the "Lighthouse of the Mississippi Valley" -- marshal for the Eastern District of Missouri.

-- Sharon K. Sanders