Out of the past: July 6

1996

Jo Ann Emerson will run for her late husband's 8th District congressional seat, Republican Party insiders said Friday; sources in the party said Emerson, 46, will officially announce her candidacy Tuesday or Wednesday in Cape Girardeau; her campaign will carry the theme: "Team Emerson. Join Us Now."

Forty members of the St. Vincent's and St. Mary's Catholic youth groups piled into cars yesterday to catch a flight to Phoenix, Arizona; the group's final destination, a Navajo and Hopi Indian reservation in Tuba, Arizona, is where the youths will stay while they complete a seven-day mission trip; with the help of their adult chaperones, the youths will paint and restore churches, work with disabled Navajo children, visit an alcohol recovery center and organize a clothes pantry.

1971

With the sights of London a memory, the Cape Girardeau Central High School Stage Band is touring France, presenting concerts as its educational European music tour gains momentum; Mrs. Bill Ewing, wife of the band's director, says all 16 band members are "fine and thoroughly enjoying the new sights and sounds."

Workers of the Burton J. Gerhardt Construction Co. of Cape Girardeau begin filling in and leveling the large hole that was formerly a basement of one of the Idan-Ha Hotel buildings, North Fountain Street and Broadway; since a fire in 1968, some of the buildings have stood in a deteriorated condition, windows and doors on part of the floors boarded as a safety precaution; the main hotel building has been razed, leaving the gaping hole now being filled.

1946

World War II veterans outnumber World War I members of the Louis K. Juden Post of the American Legion, 331 to 319, reports V.H. Dunham; total membership of the organization is 650.

A. Max Hatfield, executive for the Southeast Missouri Boy Scout Council, announces his resignation to take a similar position, effective about Aug. 1, at Bartlesville, Oklahoma, home of the Phillips Boy Scout Foundation and one of the leading councils in the country.

1921

Cape Girardeau is to have public drinking fountains for the convenience of visitors and the general public; the City Council yesterday approved a plan submitted by the Chamber of Commerce; four drinking fountains will be placed in different parts of town; at present, there are few places in town where one can get a drink of water.

Robert Keller starts threshing wheat with his machine on his farm on Bloomfield Road; it is the first threshing of wheat to be done in the vicinity.

-- Sharon K. Sanders