Out of the past: July 3

1996

Jo Ann Emerson may run for Congress in the 8th District to carry on the legacy of her late husband, U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson; in a prepared statement, the 46-year-old widow said yesterday she will spend the next few days conferring with her four daughters on whether she should enter the race; a number of Republicans have urged her to finish the remainder of Emerson's term and run as an independent candidate for a new two-year term in the November election; those backers include some who have looked at entering the race themselves if she doesn't.

With the Fourth of July approaching, Jackson is enforcing a law that makes the use of fireworks illegal in City Park; the ordinance, passed in August 1994, has been consistently violated but has substantially reduced the use of fireworks in the park; it was imposed after some young people at the city's Fourth of July celebration engaged in "bottle rocket wars," Alderman David Hitt said.

1971

Cape Girardeau County's draft board and the 139 others in Missouri came to a near standstill this week as the United States became a nation without a draft for the first time in 23 years because of a congressional deadlock over attempts to force U.S. withdrawal from the Indochina war; Missouri's 140 draft boards were notified Wednesday to stop work on all classifications, pre-induction examinations and inductions.

Holiday festivities got off to a sparkling start last night when Cynthia Lynn Niswonger, 7-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Larry D. Niswonger of Jackson, was crowned "Little Miss Firecracker"; her coronation kicked ff the Jaycees' Sesquicentennial and Independence Day celebration at Arena Park.

1946

Missouri Gov. Phil Donnelly signs a bill authorizing a building program by the state universities and colleges; at Cape Girardeau, the State College is scheduled to receive $415,500, which President W.W. Parker says will enable the college to do some building.

Dr. Harold Buxton, a graduate of the Southern College of Optometry in Memphis, Tennessee, has started practicing in Cape Girardeau; Buxton, a native of Murphysboro, Illinois, states that for three years he prescribed lenses to men in the Army in the United States and the Philippines; his office is in the Hirsch Building.

1921

The Rev. Reinhart Lehman, pastor of Christ Evangelical Church, leaves in the afternoon and will be gone three weeks; he plans to visit relatives at New Philadelphia, Ohio, and return by way of Chicago.

Charles H. Gelvin, formerly a florist in Cape Girardeau, has written from St. Louis that he is now located in that city, having disposed of his property in Springfield, Missouri, and moved there; he will be visiting here soon.

-- Sharon K. Sanders