Out of the past: Sept. 23

1999

The legal counsel for the Missouri Press Association says the Cape Girardeau school board may have violated the Missouri open meetings law during a closed meeting Monday; board members closed the meeting to discuss a matter related to a student, which the state’s law allows, but during the closed session members also heard how would-be buyers of May Greene Elementary School plan to use the building.

Shu-Ju Lulu Chuang can’t stop crying; she worries about the fate of friends in her earthquake-devastated country of Taiwan; one of a handful of Taiwanese students at Southeast Missouri State University, Chuang is a student teacher at Jackson Middle School; yesterday’s quake has killed more than 2,100 people and injured 7,800; another 1,844 remain unaccounted for, including those buried under rubble and landslides.

1974

A police officer has resigned in disgust and the police chief has been upheld by the Chaffee City Council in a growing controversy over an arrest featuring gunfire and a foot chase; starring in the controversy are Jimmy Coates, police chief for six months who fired several shots at the unarmed run-away suspect, and Tom Schiwitz, an officer for three and a half months who literally threw in his badge after being reprimanded for blocking the chief’s line of fire.

The absence of Associate Judge Edwin W. Sander forces Cape Girardeau County Court to postpone a decision on awarding an earthwork contract for construction of a new county jail; Presiding Judge Clarence W. Suedekum says the court likely will decide Thursday whether to award an excavating contract on the proposed 23-acre County Farm site or temporarily abandon plans to proceed with construction of the proposed county jail.

1949

The dark picture painted earlier on the financial outcome of the 1949 SEMO District fair, which suffered rain and chilly weather almost every day, has changed slightly for the better; as fair board members did more detailed figuring on income and expenditures, it was found their might be a possibility of the association nearly breaking even, or at least the loss may not be as great as first expected; immediately after the fair closed, it was estimated the deficit would be in the neighborhood of $6,000.

An anticipated visit yesterday by a caravan of men from Illinois to the Oran pumping station of the Texas Eastern Transmission Corp., operators of the Big and Little Inch pipe lines, failed to materialize, but officers kept a close watch on the situation through the night; a motor cavalcade of hundreds of union men was rumored to be en route to Oran after closing two pumping stations in Illinois, one at Norris City and the other near Anna; the union action was erroneously directed at pumping stations, rather than against Brown & Root Construction Co., which does work for Texas Eastern.

1924

The final concert of the summer series is given in the evening at Courthouse Park by the community band; it’s the 16th open-air concert of the season, all of which have proven popular and pleasing to the public.

Cape Girardeau Mayor James A. Barks and commissioners Roy Brissenden and Martin Krueger departed last night for Memphis, Tennessee, where they will spend two days visiting the Tri-State Fair and investigating several departments of the city government; city officials say they want to see what success is being made of the Tri-State Fair, as the city owns the fairground and a committee directs the fair; the Memphis fairground is a park used year-round by the city, except for fair week, and the arrangement in Cape Girardeau is virtually the same.

Southeast Missourian librarian Sharon Sanders compiles the information for the daily Out of the Past column. She also writes a weekend column called “From the Morgue” that showcases interesting historical stories from the newspaper.