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2019 Newsmakers: Gayle Unverferth (9/2/19)Next year, Gayle Unverferth, RN, OB nurse at SoutheastHEALTH who has served the Cape Girardeau community at the hosptial for 40 years, will retire. Forty years at the same hospital in the same community is quite a feat. Especially today, when nurses often stay for only a couple of years at an institution due to the myriad of opportunities available. ...
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2019 Newsmakers: Andy Patel (9/2/19)Andy Patel, national franchise owner, came to the United States from India when he was 20 years old with $20. It was money his parents had given him as they saw him off from their small farming community, believing in his dream of making it in America through hard work...
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2019 Newsmakers: Carolyn Bohnert (9/1/19)It was on the stairs in a hallway at Cape Catholic High that Carolyn Bohnert, senior vice president of Drury Southwest, saw Bill Bohnert and told her friend, "That's the man I'm going to marry one of these days." And she was right: the two met when Carolyn was a junior, and four years later, they were married...
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2019 Newsmakers: Lisa Newcomer (9/1/19)When Lisa Newcomer was a little girl, her mother worked at Saint Francis Hospital on Good Hope Street in Cape Girardeau and taught nursing at Southeast Missouri State University. Newcomer recalls "being the guinea pig" for nursing students as they checked her reflexes and temperature during pediatric clinics. She says the people her mother worked with became another family to her, and it was this that inspired her passion for health care...
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2019 Newsmakers: Honorable Young Men Club Leaders (Wyky Jean, Kweku Arkorful, Cantrell Andrews and Aaron Adeoye) (8/31/19)Four former Redhawks football players have captured a community's attention with their infectious attitudes and commitment to mentorship among Cape Girardeau's most at-risk students. Aaron Adeoye, Cantrell Andrews, Kweku Arkorful and Wyky Jean knew they wanted to give back after college. They volunteered at the Christian Boxing Academy founded by Danny Rees. When boxing ended, they'd stay afterward to hang out with the kids. It was clear the kids could benefit from their positive influence...
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2019 Newsmakers: Denise Lincoln (8/30/19)To understand why Denise Lincoln is a Newsmaker, you have to know the twists and turns that led her to where she is today. From 13-week stints in cities across the U.S. for her husband Doug's job as an ultrasound technician to what she thought was a mistake the day she opened the wrong microfilm drawer at the National Archives while doing research on her family's history, it almost seems as though the universe put the African American story of Southeast Missouri into her hands to help tell...
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2019 Newsmakers: Ethan Welker (8/30/19)Music is what emotions sound like. It's this artistic value of music that Ethan Welker, creator of a youth orchestra program in Perryville, Missouri, loves about music. Welker says he also enjoys the intellectual value of music: "Some things work because of rules that we just agree on."...
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2019 Newsmakers: Jim Eddleman (8/29/19)A few years ago, Jim Eddleman was driving around Perry County, Missouri, with architects, looking for a place to build a memorial to veterans. It was part of the fulfillment of a promise he made to himself more than 50 years ago, when he was serving his country in Vietnam: to honor his comrades in some way if he returned to the U.S. ...
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2019 Newsmakers: Marla Mills (8/29/19)"It's not about me." As the face of Old Town Cape for the past 13 years, it's hard to imagine a downtown Cape Girardeau without thinking of Marla Mills. Under her leadership as executive director of Old Town Cape, the downtown area has seen considerable change and growth, including what Mills sees as the pinnacle: winning the Great American Main Street Award in 2015. ...
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2019 Newsmakers: Dennis Vollink (8/28/19)While serving in the U.S. Air Force 37 years ago, Dennis Vollink received a call that would map the course of his personal and professional life for the next four decades. Bob Drury of Drury Southwest in Cape Girardeau was looking for a pilot. After contacting Randolph Air Force Base in Universal City, Texas, and speaking with a couple of pilots who weren't a fit, the pilots said Drury should meet with Vollink, who, they believed, would be the perfect candidate: not only was he a pilot and engineer, but the career path was something his peers believed would suit him.. ...
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2019 Newsmakers: Doug Austin (8/28/19)You can't miss the booming voice -- or personality -- of Doug Austin. He's a fixture at any number of area events, be it with his church (Bethany Baptist Church) or community. After a career in the grocery business marketing products for more than 100 independent stores, Austin made up his mind early on he would retire by age 60. After two stops in Cape Girardeau during his career, Austin and his wife, Fran, knew where their retirement years would be spent...
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2019 Newsmakers: Patricia Morris (8/27/19)Helping is part of who Patricia Morris is. It's why she loved working as a Department of Youth Services (DYS) teacher for 12 years, and why she founded Keidra's Caring Centers in Sikeston, Missouri, and Caruthersville, Missouri. She says her husband jokes she helps and gives too much. But Morris says she can't help it...
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2019 Newsmakers: Alyssa Phares (8/27/19)Had it not been for taking an art class rather than a Spanish class in high school, it's quite possible Alyssa Phares might never have made it to Cape Girardeau. As a senior at her Central Illinois high school -- a school of 34 people -- Phares had an opportunity while on vacation to visit the College of Charleston, which has one of the top-ranked programs for historic preservation studies. ...
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2019 Newsmakers: Dennis Vinson (8/26/19)"No one has a lock on good ideas." This is a core tenant of the leadership philosophy of Dennis Vinson, president and CEO of Signature Packaging & Paper in Jackson. He credits the success of his business to the 66 employees he leads each day. "The basis and the success of Signature is all about the employees," Vinson says. "My leadership is there, but they make it happen everyday."...
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2019 Newsmakers: Kirby Ray (8/26/19)River Radio 99.3 Real Rock program director. Radio personality. Founder of the heavy metal band Emaciation. Co-founder of the annual Scoutfest. Judge of the Polar Plunge benefitting Special Olympics. Board member of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri. Lover of nature, animals and all types of music (yes, even the Country genre.) Photographer. Arrowhead finder. Falconer apprentice. Libra...