Out of the past: May 5

1996

The Rev. Brendan Dempsey is the new pastor at First Presbyterian Church, Broadway and Lorimier, having been elected by the congregation April 21; his initial call to ministry was in his native Australia in 1976, when he left six years of railway work to serve as a youth counselor in an Episcopalian youth rehabilitation center; Dempsey will begin his post here the second week in July; he and his wife Martha have two children, Patrick and Kathleen.

A special tribal meeting of the Northern Cherokee Nation of the Louisiana Territory was held yesterday at Trail of Tears State Park north of Cape Girardeau; the tribe's chief, Barbara Baker-Northup, said this monthly meeting was special because it was taking place in the park set aside by Missouri to honor the Cherokee and the "suffering they endured" during the Trial of Tears march from Georgia to Oklahoma almost 160 years ago.

1971

After waiting 75 days for the previously approved contractor to provide a surety bond on the west end sanitary sewer replacement project, the City Council decides to issue a new call for bids; it could delay the start of the project about two months; the council orders the $10,000 bid bond of the approved contractor forfeited.

Max Bukstein, a former Cape Girardeau resident, has accepted the position of executive vice president of manufacturing with the A-1 Kotzin Co., Los Angeles; he will leave Michigan City, Indiana, where he has worked since December 1968 as vice president of research and development at Jaymar-Ruby, Inc., this week to assume his new position; prior to joining the Jaymar-Ruby firm, he was an executive with Thorngate Ltd. of Chaffee, Missouri.

1946

Revival services begin at the Mill Street Pentecostal Church in the evening and will continue two weeks or longer; conducting the revival is the Rev. Peter M. Jensen of Duquoin, Illinois, a returned missionary from Liberia, West Africa.

Traffic moves along Highway 61, as sightseers view Ten-Mile Garden in May 1946.G.D. Fronabarger ~ Southeast Missourian archive

An average of 1,000 motor cars per hour pass through the Ten-Mile Flower Garden in the afternoon, as Girardeans by the thousands, augmented by visitors from a wide area, take in the beauty of the roadside plantings now at their height; there is an almost continuous line of traffic over Highway 61 between Cape Girardeau and Jackson until late in the afternoon.

1921

Today is undoubtedly Reido Nebel's lucky day; dropping from a ladder raised 25 or 30 feet in the air onto the granite paving on Broadway, he suffers nothing more than a few bruises to his body and a slight cut on his right arm; Nebel, an employee of the Missouri Public Utilities Co., with Robert Hyatt was at work decorating for the annual Southeast Missouri High School Meet to be held here tomorrow and Saturday, and was fastening flags on wires above the street when the accident occurred.

Valentine Fischer, city sexton in Cape Girardeau for more than 30 years and one of the oldest residents, dies at his home on North Sprigg Street Road in the morning, following an illness of more than a year; born in Germany, Fischer was 85 years old; 39 years ago, he immigrated to this country, bringing his wife and five children with him; 10 more children were born here.

-- Sharon K. Sanders