Jo Ann Bock’s Book

Jo Ann Bock at Tom Nuemeyer book signing 03-14-2010I photographed Jo Ann Bock at Tom Neumeyer’s book signing for his photo documentary book, Cape Girardeau Then & Now back in 2010.

When Mrs. Bock wrote Around the Town of Cape Girardeau in Eighty Years, she asked if she could use one of the photos on the back cover of her book. I didn’t hesitate to give her permission. She sent me a copy of the book in return. I was pleasantly surprised to see she had some extraordinarily nice things to say about a piece I wrote about her husband, Howard Bock, when he died.

Mr. Bock Changed my life

Howard Bock CHS 23In the curious way that things in Cape are intertwined, Mrs. Bock was my Cub Scout den mother and knew I was interested in photography. When I got to Central, her husband was in charge of the Tiger and Girardot photo staffs and asked if I’d like to join. That was, indirectly, the start of my photography career.

We saw different slices of time

Jo Ann Bock BookHoward and Jo Ann Bock were getting married (1950) just about the time I was getting born (1947), so we view Cape through slightly different lenses. She stayed in Cape, except for a few years, and I left in 1967, although Cape has never left me.

In the introduction to one of the chapters, she says, “Sometimes a person will ask why I didn’t mention this place, or that person, or recall a special event. My answer is that memories take different directions with people.” Maybe that’s why even though she and I plow the same ground, we come up with different crops.

Her view of Broadway

Vandeven Merchantile Company 1967She and a city directory did a good job of creating a list of businesses and residences along the Broadway corridor. We have some memory overlap on some long-time businesses like Vandeven’s and the movie theaters, but a lot of places she remembers were long gone when the 1960s came around.

Here’s a partial list of what I found along Broadway between Kingshighway and Main Street.

Library and Courthouse

Cook kidsids playing in courthouse fountain on Cape Girardeau's Common Pleas Courthouse grounds June 29, 1967She and I both spent a lot of time in the Cape Public Library when it was located on the grounds of the Common Pleas Courthouse. Unlike these kids, she “never felt right about playing in the fountain with that soldier staring down at me.”

Just for the record, the soldier that stared down at her was smashed by a falling limb. The pieced-together original lives at the Jackson Courthouse, and a replacement casting stares down at children today. Maybe the new one would be less intimidating.

The George Alt House

Trinity Lutheran School neighborhood c 1966We both served our time in the George Alt House, turned into Trinity Hall by Trinity Lutheran School.

A walk down Main Street

107 Main St Cape Girardeau MO 10-20-2009 - Hecht's Mrs. Bock takes us for a walk down Main Street, reeling off a list of businesses that are mostly not there. In fact, the only business still in operation is Zickfield’s Jewelry. Hecht’s is gone, as is Newberry’s, where she worked in the infant clothing department for 15 cents an hour.

Here’s a page where I posted photos of many of the businesses I remembered from my era. The current generation will think Main Street was nothing but bars and antique shops with a little art thrown in.

Hurrah for Haarig

Meyer-Suedekum 03-29-2010_2679That’s the name of her chapter covering the Good Hope / Sprigg area. She drops names like Hirsch’s for groceries, Suedekum’s for hardware, Cape Cut Rate for drugs and the anchor, Farmer’s and Merchants Bank. If she mentioned Pure Ice, I must have missed it.

Music and Majorettes

Homecoming 34Mrs. Bock devotes several chapters to the Cape Girardeau music scene: choirs, operettas, plays, the Cape Choraliers, the Girardot Rose Chorus, and local dance bands. She also mentions being a Central High School majorette in 1946.

SEMO Fair

SEMO Fair Groscurth's Blue Grass Shows MidwayShe and I both spent time at the district fair, both as kids enjoying the rides and exhibits, then later covering it for The Southeast Missourian.

Bring on the Barbecue

Wib's BBQ Brown Hot (outside meat) sandwichThis chapter touched on two of my favorite barbecue places: the Blue Hole Garden and Wib’s.

 Parade of Photographers

GD Fronabarger c 1967You don’t serve as a high school publication adviser and a Missourian reporter without running across that strange subset of humans (some would debate that human part) called photographers. She was suitably enough impressed with us that she devoted a whole chapter to photographers she knew and worked with.

One-Shot Frony, AKA Garland D. Fronabarger, was one of the most unique newspaper photographers I ever ran into. His gruff exterior covered up a gruff interior. He got his name because he would growl around a pipe or cigar clenched between his teeth, “Don’t blink. I’m taking one shot,” push the shutter release and walk off.

Paul Lueders, a Master Photographer who shot almost every school group and class photo for years, was the opposite of Frony: he was quiet, patient and willing to take however long it took to get his subject comfortable.

She mentions several other professional and student photographers who crossed her path over the years, then launches into two pages of such nice things about me I thought maybe I was reading my obit.

How do I get a copy?

Jo Ann Bock Book backIf you grew up in Cape, you might find yourself between the pages of Around the Town of Cape Girardeau in Eighty Years. She manages to work in more names than the phone book. So, how do you get copy?

The book is available on Amazon for $15.49. It’s eligible for free shipping though Amazon Prime, so if you sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime by January 10, you can save some money and get it in two days.

 

4 Shots of One-Shot Frony

G.D. Fronabarger - Gary Rust recognized at Kiwanis 07-20-1967I’m sure G.D. Fronabarger – better known to everyone in Southeast Missouri as One-Shot Frony – must have thought, “That kid’s crazy wasting four shots on a Kiwanis Club presentation.” (I took four, but only three were different enough to show here.)

Frony, who was the Missourian’s photographer from 1929 to 1986, was best known for lining up a group of people, then growling around his ever-present cigar, “Don’t blink. I’m taking one picture.” True to his word, he’d press the shutter release, then walk away.

The negative sleeve is slugged Kiwanis Club – Frony 07-20-1967. That’s in one of those months that is a black hole in the Google Archives, so I don’t know what’s happening in the photo.

Gary Rust was there

G.D. Fronabarger - Gary Rust recognized at Kiwanis 07-20-1967Gary Rust, who would become a newspaper magnate a few years down the road, was one of the three men being recognized with Frony. He’s on the left in the photo at the top of the page and on the right in this photo. I don’t know who the man in the middle was. Note Frony’s cigar. I don’t know if he ever smoked it or if he just chewed it to death. I tried to blow up the name tag on the man at the lectern, but “Wayne” was all I could make out.

Fred Lynch keeps him alive

G.D. Fronabarger - Gary Rust recognized at Kiwanis 07-20-1967

Fred Lynch, who has been a photographer at The Missourian since 1975, keeps Frony’s photos alive in his blog, f/8 and Be There. Some of his early work goes well beyond straight newspaper photography and approaches art as much as anything can that is destined to have a life of 24 hours.

By the time I got to know Frony, he was burned out from shooting 59 years worth of those Kiwanis Club meetings and the same annual events that had come around 59 times. I wrote about Frony in 2009 and published my favorite picture of him.

In it, I talked about how surprised I was to hear Frony defend a controversial spot news photo I had taken and how our relationship changed after that. We were never close, but I had the feeling that Frony finally conceded that “this kid might just make it as a news photographer.”

 

Albert Hall Dormitory

Albert Hall stairs from Mary Welch Steinhoff scrapbook c 1940

When I saw Fred Lynch’s blog with Frony’s pictures of some coeds on the steps of Albert Hall in 1960, I remembered seeing photos of those steps in Mother’s scrapbook.

I wasn’t sure that it WAS Albert Hall, but that’s the way Mother had the photo labeled, and the concrete detail on the right of the picture matches Frony’s shot.

Albert Hall demolished in 1960

Albert Hall stairs from Mary Welch Steinhoff scrapbook c 1940

Fred had another photo from 1960 showing the dorm being razed. (SEMO is great at flattening landmarks.) Fred noted that the dorm for women opened March 7, 1905. It was built by a private corporation, and acquired by the state in 1912. It served for 54 years.

Mother graduated from Advance High School in 1938, so these photos of her friends was taken after that.

“Judas Got a Raw Deal”

I mentioned that as The Kid of the staff I was on the Huck Finn Beat because they could send me out without wasting a real reporter and, because I could shoot my own pictures, they didn’t have to roust out One-Shot Frony. The Huck Finn Beat also included the non-river tourists like Ken Saunders, who passed through Cape during my summer internship right after high school. The story is not bylined, but I recognize my style enough to claim it as my own, for better or worse. It ran July 16, 1965. Click on any photo to make it larger.

The gentleman in the long, white robe walking briskly along Highway 61 Wednesday afternoon was not a sun-spawned hallucination. He was Kenneth Saunders, a British citizen who has walked from New York City to Los Angeles, Calif, and, thus far, from Memphis, Tenn., to Cape Girardeau.

Has walked 4,000 miles with message

Tall, sunburned an energetic, Mr. Saunders has trekked about 4,000 miles to challenge himself and other Christians to be honest with themselves.  “I started in September, 1964 – “it feels like 1864,” he chuckled.

Mr. Saunders carries a metal cross bearing the words “Church of Judas,” and at the drop of a question will hand out a leaflet telling what the Church of Judas is.

“We feel that Judas got a very raw deal,” Mr. Saunders explained. “He was no worse than the other disciples. By hating him, we have a split-level Christianity. Our church teaches that the love of Judas is a halfway point to the total love Christ taught.”

Asked if he was a pacifist, Mr. Saunders replied, “I am, but I’m a poor one. We’re all pacifists, you know, until a war starts.”

Missouri a “friendly, happy state”

The pilgrim is delighted with Missouri. “This is a friendly, happy state,” he declared. “It has an edge on the other states where friendliness is concerned.”

Mr. Saunders said he has never been harassed and that police and newsmen in the United States are “absolute tops.”

He hopes to complete his walk next month at Davenport, Iowa.