Out of the past: Nov. 5

1997

Candidates for the Cape Girardeau City Council can begin filing nominating petitions for the April 7 general election today at City Hall; filing for the mayor's office and council seats in Wards 1, 2, 3 and 6 won't close until Nov. 25; races are already developing in two wards; in Ward 1, incumbent James "J.J." Williamson will seek a second four-year term and will again face Frank Stoffregen, whom he defeated in 1994 by a 15-vote margin; in Ward 3, Gerald Stevens, 329 N. Pacific, and Jay Purcell, 315 N. Pacific, are vying for a two-year unexpired term vacated by the resignation of Jack Rickard in October.

Cape Girardeau businesswoman Judith R. Wilferth has been named the 1997 Woman of Achievement by the Zonta Club of Cape Girardeau; she received the honor at a ceremony yesterday at the Holiday Inn; the award is presented annually to a woman who exemplifies the ideals of Zonta in improving the legal, political, economic and professional status of women.

1972

First National Bank of Cape Girardeau plans to install next year an automated electronic teller machine available to customers around the clock; it will allow customers to make 11 types of banking transactions automatically, without assistance.

Put a wandering stray cat who is a little too curious on a hot wire, and the result is a sudden blackout; a large part of Cape Girardeau and a portion of the surrounding rural area is without electrical power in the evening, after a cat gets into the old power plant on North Main Street and crawls onto the 343 kilovolts lightning arrester; the intruding cat causes a major short circuit which knocks out electrical power about 9:25 p.m.; the blackout ranges from 10 minutes to more than four hours in various sections of city; needless to say, the feline loses all nine of his lives.

1947

Automobiles weighted down with a sundry of camp duffel and an assortment of hunters, most of the amateur type and many with a confidenc that won't permit failure, roll out of Cape Girardeau for spots in some of the 25 Ozark counties where Missouri's fourth annual deer hunt will get underway tomorrow morning and continue through Saturday; popular hunting sites for the 100 or more nimrods are the Ste. Genevieve area and Sam A. Baker Park.

Silas Dohogne, who for the past six months has operated a watch repair service in Cape Cut Rate Drug Store, 635 Good Hope St., has dissolved the business and will move with his family to Mitchell, South Dakota, to be employed in a jewelry store there; Dohogne, the son of Louis Dohogne of Cape Girardeau, says he is moving to South Dakota primarily for his health; his wife is the former Mary Belle Roth, and they have a 7-month-old son, Thomas Joseph.

1922

Dr. C.A.W. Zimmermann, for 20 years a practitioner at East St. Louis, Illinois, is relocating to Cape Girardeau; he says he is tired of life in the large cities and wants to live in a smaller town, where he can practice medicine more to his liking; his offices will be over the Bergmann grocery store on Broadway.

Congressman Edward D. Hays spoke yesterday afternoon in the auditorium of the circuit court at Jackson before an audience of about 2,200 voters; at the same time, L.R. Ward of Caruthersville, Missouri, addressed an audience at the Gem Theater in behalf of the Democratic ticket.

-- Sharon K. Sanders