Out of the past: May 17

1997

CHARLESTON, Mo. -- Despite objections, the three-man Mississippi County Commission voted unanimously to build a $2.5 million county courthouse at the location of the one damaged by an arson fire Feb. 10; part of the money needed will come from a $1.4 million insurance settlement collected when the 100-year-old courthouse burned; voters will decide in August whether they want a half-cent sales tax increase to pay the balance.

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson is the guest speaker at the 124th commencement of Southeast Missouri State University; she speaks to a packed house of graduates and their friends and family at the Show Me Center; there are 925 students who receive sheepskins; 845 are undergraduates and 80 are graduate students.

1972

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- The start of a campaign to obtain an overall reassessment of all real estate in Bollinger County is announced by county resident Norman Fish of Zalma, Missouri; Fish contends assessments in the county are becoming more unfair each year, and that a successful reassessment of real estate in the county would reverse that trend.

Just who sent eviction notices to residents in an area of South Cape Girardeau is being debated by both representatives of the City of Cape Girardeau and the Rev. Joseph C. Nixon, pastor of St. James A.M.E. Church and president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; residents of an area south of Boundary, east of the railroad tracks, extending to LaCruz and east to the Mississippi River in the Village of Cape Girardeau have received notices, initially thought to be from the city, to vacate their homes; however, it now appears the orders may be from the private owners of the land upon which the houses are located.

1947

Acuteness of the teachers shortage and the wide variance between supply and demand are sharply shown in figures furnished by Hattie Eicholtz, director of placement at State College; during the month of April, the college was asked to recommend candidates for 453 teaching positions; for those vacant posts, the college has been able to suggest candidates for only 153 places.

With the announcement that the Naval Air Station is being forced by the city of St. Louis to vacate its $7,000,000 installation at Lambert Field, Cape Girardeau Mayor R.E. Beckman urges that civic organizations direct letters immediately to the office of Chief of Naval Operations in Washington and to the office of Vice Adm. G.D. Murray, commandant of the Ninth Naval District, Great Lakes, Illinois, urging establishment of the air station here at Harris Field.

1922

There are 3,522 children living in Cape Girardeau between the ages of 6 and 20, according to the report of C.A. McDonald to the school board Monday night on school enumeration; of these children, Supt. J.N. Crocker estimates there will be about 2,600 enrolled in the city's public schools next year.

Elbert Heuschober, Cape Girardeau boy, wins the contest in declamation for the Faculty Medal in Teachers College; his subject is "John Sobieski"; Melvin Englehart took second place in the contest with his piece, "The Spirit of the West."

-- Sharon K. Sanders