Out of the past: Oct. 26

1992

The Missouri Baptist Convention opens at the Show Me Center, with about 50 exhibitors lining the concourse to promote their programs and gently hawk their wares to the 4,000 people attending the event.

A group known as the "Don't Gamble with Missouri Rivers Committee" is opposing Proposition A on the Nov. 3 ballot, which would bring riverboat gambling to Missouri; a member of that group, the Rev. Larry Rice of the New Life Evangelical Center in St. Louis, held a news conference here Saturday to express his concern state-supported gambling like this will make gambling "the addiction of the '90s."

1967

Almost $60,000 in new equipment is added to the Cape Girardeau Fire Department in the morning, when an American LaFrance Co. engineer drives two new pumpers out of boxcars here; their arrival, after a year's wait, brings the department to within one pumper of having adequate equipment in comparison to the Missouri Fire Inspection Bureau standards.

Cape Girardeau's auxiliary police chief, Robert E. Eckelmann, has decided to step down after almost 13 years as chief; he has asked to be replaced after Nov. 1 because of poor health resulting from a recent leg operation.

1942

Lt. James C. Whittaker, 41, a native of Cape Girardeau County and currently of Burlingame, California, is listed as a member of the crew of the airplane on which Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker is missing in the Pacific; Whittaker was operator of a civilian flying school in California until the war started, when he became a pilot for the Army Ferry Command.

At least three Cape Girardeau County men, two of whom are home on leave, were on the aircraft carrier Wasp, reported by the Navy Department to have been sunk while covering reinforcements to Guadalcanal in September; there is no word on Lt. Morris R. Doughty of Cape Girardeau, who is a flight officer aboard the ship; home on leave after their ship was sunk beneath them are Jesse McClard of Oriole and Earnest C. Jaco of near Millersville.

1917

When the sale of Liberty Bonds by Cape Girardeau County people begins to drag in the morning, Robert Lamkins suggests a plan that might put the county's quota in reach; he suggests a scheme of getting merchants to inquire of their wholesale houses if debts may be paid off in Liberty Bonds.

The Gem Theater at Jackson was filled to the doors last night by a crowd that had come in spite of the rain to enjoy the moving pictures of the Sixth Regiment at Camp Clark in Kansas; of the boys of the Sixth, many were recognizable in the pictures, especially members of the Sixth Regiment band.

-- Sharon K. Sanders