Out of the past: Oct. 12

1998

The Cape Girardeau area, one of the largest population and economic centers between St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee, has a solid industrial base but doesn't quite qualify as a metropolitan area; although the area has more than 150 manufacturing facilities that employ more than 8,000 people, it is still too small to be metropolitan and too big to be rural, says John Mehner, president of the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce.

ORAN, Mo. -- After two years of persistence by Sylvia McGranahan's family, Oran has a safer railroad crossing; a dedication ceremony officially opens the crossing gate and signals on Shelby Street, where McGranahan and a friend, Wanda Johns, were killed March 8, 1996; the crossing then had no gate or signals; in the past 40 years six people have died there.

1973

A parent of two of the 38 pupils suspended from Cape Girardeau Central High School tells the Board of Education that if something isn't done to correct the situation "every Black child will be taken out of school and then the federal government will come in and straighten this out"; the pupils were suspended indefinitely after a sit-in demonstration at the school entrance Wednesday morning.

Public opposition to tentative plans to construct a new county jail on the north lawn of Cape Girardeau Courthouse in Jackson was received yesterday by the County Court; the Jackson Garden Club submitted a letter opposing construction adjacent to the courthouse because "it would be impossible to match construction of the proposed facility with that of the old" and "even if it were possible, any addition would destroy the symmetry of the present architecture."

1948

In a record for brevity for a regular Federal Court term, Judge Rubey M. Hulen held a lengthy afternoon session yesterday, then adjourned the court until Nov. 29; the judge didn't sentence a defendant to a penitentiary or jail, and in keeping with a previous announcement, no petit jury was present; Hulen was under the weather when he arrived here Monday.

After Judge Rubey M. Hulen in Federal Court Monday overruled a motion for a new trial in the Cape Girardeau post office case, Judge I.R. Kelso, defense counsel, announced he would take an appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Kelso had sought a new hearing of Hulen's ruling that the city is entitled to the proceeds from the condemnation of the site in Courthouse Park for the new post office, contending the heirs of Louis Lorimier, who gave the tract to the city, should get the money.

1923

A bale to the acre probably will be the average on 4 1/2 acres of cotton planted on the Teachers College experiment farm this year, according to an estimate given by professor J.C. Logan of the college agriculture department, following the picking of 3,200 pounds of the crop; the college planted four varieties of cotton -- Trice, Express, Mebane and Cleveland Big Boll; of these, Express seems to have out shown the others.

A group of women met Wednesday at the Cape Girardeau Public Library to organize a local League of Women Voters; Mrs. John Kochtitzky presided and Marion G. Keith, a member of the State Board of the League of Women Voters, gave a talk on the league and its work; the following officers were elected: president, Mrs. E.R. Spencer; vice president, Mrs. B.C. Hardesty; secretary, Mrs. Julien Friant; treasurer, Mrs. L.J. Pott.

-- Sharon K. Sanders