Out of the past: May 19

1990

JEFFERSON CITY -- With just 35 minutes remaining in the session yesterday, the Missouri General Assembly approved by a four-vote margin a bill that permits Cape Girardeau and Bollinger County voters to decide whether to enact a one-cent sales tax to fund construction of a recreational lake.

First Federal Savings and Loan of Cape Girardeau has been sold to Cape County Bank, 13 months after First Federal was declared insolvent and placed under federal supervision.

1965

A dynamite blast for a road widening project north of Cape Girardeau hurled a large rock through the roof of a nearby house yesterday afternoon. Damaged was the home of Gary Hurst on Cape LaCroix Road about three miles north of the city; his house is about 250 feet from the scene of the blasting.

Earl G. Gramling, owner of the St. Charles Hotel and former president of the Cape Girardeau Federal Savings and Loan Association, dies at the hotel, where he resided; Gramling was 88 years old.

1940

The Rev. R.E. Weisser, pastor of Christ Evangelical Church, delivers the sermon to the record Central High School graduating class in the afternoon, when the baccalaureate service is conducted in Academic Hall auditorium; the senior class consists of 185 members.

Reunion services are held in the morning and afternoon at the old Jamison Church, near McGee, Missouri, in Bollinger County. Preaching at the services is Dr. S.D. Aubuchon of Cape Girardeau, dean of the Southeast Missouri Baptist Foundation. A basket dinner is served at noon, and a business session concludes the day. The church was organized about 1890, with Mr. and Mrs. Eurias Jamison, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Lacy, James B. Hopkins, John Hardesty and James Jackson as charter members.

1915

One of the barges of the McMurry Construction Co. on the levee is torn loose in the morning by the steamer Stacker Lee as the boat backs away from the levee; the Stacker has to spend considerable time towing the barge back to its docking place.

Joe Halley has just about completed a beautiful cottage on the farm of J.C. Call on the Burfordville Road; he next will begin construction of a new home on the farm of Henry Oberbeck on the same road.

-- Sharon K. Sanders