Out of the past: May 2

1998

Cape Girardeau residents would pay more for water and trash service in the coming fiscal year under a budget plan submitted to the City Council; city officials discussed the proposed increases in water and trash collection fees yesterday at the council's annual, day-long retreat at Black Forest Villages; the city administration has proposed raising water fees by 2% and trash collection fees by 2.1%.

The question of women's reproductive issues remains unanswered in affiliation talks between Cape Girardeau's two hospitals; James Sexton, president of Saint Francis Medical Center, said the Catholic hospital is looking for ways to offer tubal ligations as part of a permanent affiliation between Saint Francis and Southeast Hospital; Sexton and James Wente, Southeast Hospital's administrator, spoke at the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce First Friday Coffee at the Show Me Center on Friday; Sexton said Saint Francis officials are conferring with Bishop John Leibrecht of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church and with a canon lawyer to see what is possible.

1973

After reaching a record-setting 45.55-foot crest here yesterday morning, the river had fallen to only 45.54 feet by 6 a.m. today; Army Corps of Engineer officials say the river will probably stay at about this level most of the day before beginning a faster fall tomorrow; a contributing factor to the slow recession is runoff from a near 3-inch rain that pelted the area yesterday.

The need for more plumbers to perform service calls in Cape Girardeau was a problem emphasized and left unresolved at an informal meeting last night of the City Council and the City Board of Examiners of Plumbers; the groups spent three hours discussing a proposed ordinance that would amend the present city plumbing code to allow licensed journeyman plumbers to do plumbing work within Cape Girardeau; the ordinance would also bring the licensing procedure more into compliance with state statutes.

1948

The Rev. Laurence W. Cleland preaches his initial sermon as the new pastor of First Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau; aside from being his first sermons as pastor of the church, they also mark the 25th anniversary of his first sermon; Cleland came to Cape Girardeau from Liberty, Missouri, where he was professor of Bible at William Jewell College.

Arnold Unnerstall, assistant manager of Hecht's store, has returned from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he went by plane a week ago to help Louis Hecht with the formal opening of his store there; the Las Vegas store has been completely redecorated and remodeled since Hecht purchased it; it is on Fremont Street and vies for prominence in the street's blaze of lights with a large neon sign almost 6 feet high in an unusual combination of green and gold.

1923

G.W. Vinyard of Jackson, who with Dr. William Nifong of Fredericktown, Missouri, are among the oldest members of the Southeast Missouri Medical Association, is attending the association's all-day meeting in Cape Girardeau; he recalls the association was organized in June 1877 at a meeting of 25 doctors in Cape Girardeau; Vinyard is the oldest man attending the meeting; Nifong didn't make the trip here because of his advance age.

Expenditure of more than $300,000 on the improvement of the Mississippi River levee, between Commerce and New Madrid, Missouri, will be made within the next few years by the levee districts and the federal government, according to plans already being carried out; the improvements will make overflows into the river bottoms there practically impossible.

-- Sharon K. Sanders