Out of the past: March 5

1997

METROPOLIS, Ill. -- After more than a week of anxious waiting, riverfront residents are moving to higher ground as the Ohio River heads toward its highest crest in years; state prisoners sandbag homes and city buildings while Players Casino employees raise a temporary walkway linking the riverboat to a nearby hotel parking lot that is unlikely to flood; some Metropolis residents have evacuated because the Ohio River is out of its banks following 6-inch rains over the area last weekend and almost twice that much elsewhere in the Ohio River basin.

A collection that could draw scholars from all over the world to Cape Girardeau was formally dedicated at Kent Library on the Southeast Missouri State University campus last night; about 100 people, some from as far away as St. Louis, heard Louis Daniel Brodsky talk about how he came to collect one of the four largest collections of books, manuscripts, photographs and memorabilia by and about the Nobel-Prize-winning fiction writer William Faulkner.

1972

After this weekend, St. Mary's Cathedral will no longer have a Mass at 7:30 on Saturday nights, but instead will have one at 5:15 in the afternoon on Saturday; the Mass schedule for the other days will remain the same.

The 19 1/2 hour KFVS-TV Cerebral Palsy Telethon garners an estimated $146,595; an estimated $10,000 is brought to the television studio and placed in a huge fish bowl.

1947

Starting next Tuesday, extended city mail delivery service will be given, with two additional carriers to be put on duty, announces Postmaster Nat M. Snider and Glenn McCain, superintendent of mails; houses to be served will have to be numbered by the owners, and they must put boxes for the mail on the dwellings.

Absences in Cape Girardeau's pubic schools move upward, apparently because of colds and influenza; 255 pupils are absent today, compared to 231 yesterday and 238 Monday; while authorities are keeping a close eye on those numbers, Supt. Louis J. Schultz says at present there is no cause for alarm.

1922

The Rev. C.H. Swift observes the second anniversary as pastor of First Christian Church in Cape Girardeau, preaching a special sermon on "The Soul of a Minister" during the morning worship; under his leadership, the church has grown, the active membership now being nearly double that of when he assumed charge in March 1920.

The Rev. S.M. Robinson, presiding elder of the Methodist church, scathingly denounces the so-called social evils of Cape Girardeau and the world in an evening talk at Centenary Methodist Church; heading his list of condemnation is the Sunday moving picture show, what he calls "the greatest evil of the day."

-- Sharon K. Sanders