Out of the past: March 20

1993

The Cape Girardeau County Salary Commission will hold its first meeting in several years Monday to discuss a request from the public administrator for a pay increase and to consider possible pay increases for county elected officials; Public Administrator John Ferguson is requesting his basic salary be increased from $4,000 to $10,000, in accordance with recently passed legislation.

Former Major League Baseball pitcher Dave Dravecky was the guest speaker yesterday at the sixth annual Mayor's Prayer Breakfast; the event drew more than 1,350 people to the Show Me Center.

1968

Getting a crack at motion pictures was always a professional ambition of professor and playwright Dr. Jerry C. McNeely, formerly of Cape Girardeau, who recently completed his first screenplay; the story, loosely based on "Life on the Mississippi" by Mark Twain, will soon be made into a major, big budget musical; filming is to begin this summer.

An apparent low bid for the first-phase of construction of a marina at Trail of Tears Park of $108,810 is received by the Corps of Engineers in St. Louis; the bid, from Eugene Luhr and Co. of Columbia, Illinois, is far below the government's estimate.

1943

Sam Woerber, owner of the Dorsa dress factory on Spanish Street, is very unhappy; first, he has too much business, and, second, he has too few employees; more than 100 men and women are working at breakneck speed at the factory, but Woerber would like to add 100 to 150 more women to the work force.

Whether the Southeast Missouri High School Track and Field Meet, which has been held annually for 36 years, will be staged this year is strictly up to the school superintendents and coaches of schools in the district, says professor W.T. Doherty, who heads the committee that runs the meet under the sponsorship of the Teachers College; last year, the event was called off because of war conditions, chiefly motor vehicle tire rationing.

1918

It is believed every doctor in Cape Girardeau County attended the meeting last night at Central High School to hear the address by Maj. W.H. Luedde of St. Louis, who discussed the medical officers' reserve corps; Luedde, in company with 1st Lt. J.W. Berry of Cape Girardeau and 1st Lt. W.O. Finney of Chaffee, Missouri, goes to Benton, Missouri, in the afternoon to speak.

R.W. Minton of Cairo, Illinois, is spending several days in Cape Girardeau visiting his mother, Mrs. Francis Minton of Washington Avenue; R.W. Minton is an express messenger on the Illinois Central Railroad.

-- Sharon K. Sanders