Cape Girardeau History and Photos

February 25, 2015

American History Review

I touched on the dreaded math word problem, stressed out over the rules of grammar, and expressed my intense dislike of cursive writing in earlier posts.

Today we’re going to look at what we were supposed to know in Second Semester American History.

I had Miss Kathryn Sackman and Mrs. Lois K. McKinnis for history. I think the former taught American History, and the latter had World History – or it might have been the other way around. The thing I remember best about Miss Sackman was her jet-black hair.

Nearly got ulcers

Phyllis Hansen commented on another post, “I was so scared of Ms. Sackman I nearly got ulcers in the first month of school, but I developed a great love for history from having had her as a teacher.

In the Class of 1965 reunion bio, Nancy Jenkins Wilson said Miss Sadler and Miss Sackman were her most influential teachers. David Spradling echoed that: “Miss Sackman influenced me the most. She taught me that learning could be fun as well as a challenge.”

Miss Sackman retired in 1972 after 20 years in the Cape school system. Her obituary in the July 8, 1992 Missourian reported that she died on her 87th birthday in 1992. She was the daughter of John Theodore and Barbara Louisa Juden Sackman. Miss Sackman was a graduate of Central High School and Southeast Missouri State University. She did research at Columbia University in New York City and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and received a master’s degree in education from Vanderbilt.

Are you ready for the test?

I broke the page into two pieces to make it easier to read, but you will probably still need to click on the image to make it larger.

“Discuss the date, causes, leaders, events, and results of every war the U.S. has entered since 1865.” A variation says to “Review causes, events, results of each of the following wars: Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War.”

Kids back then had it easy: look how many fewer wars they had to learn. In fact, I’m not sure we ever made it all the way through World War I; I’m positive we didn’t discuss Korea.

Discuss present day problems

“Discuss fully present day problems concerned with: Elections; Education; The Mississippi River; Science; Foreign Policy; The Census; Segregation, labor.”

The problems of the CENSUS ranked right up there with problems of SEGREGATION?

Now that what I used to cover as news has grown enough whiskers that it has become history, I’ve gained a real appreciation for the past. The difference between what we memorized in school and what I find interesting today is discovering His Story and Her Story, not the name of some obscure, long-forgotten treaty, bill or politician.

Tell me the story about Louis Houck’s ghost whistles instead.

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015

Seelitz Cemetery

Seelitz, in eastern Perry County, was a short-lived town near Altenburg. It was one of the seven colonies established in 1839 in the Saxon Migration.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

Not a good location

Gerard Fiehler from the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum walked me back to where a memorial stone contains the names of some of the earlier settlers. You’ll notice that many of the dates are from the first two years of the settlement.

Seelitz, I was told, was located in a low area that it made it disease-prone. The other problem was that the the early inhabitants were mostly students and professional men poorly prepared for carving out farms and houses from wilderness.

Rev. Stephens exiled

The Rev. Martin Stephan was the leader of the movement. He and his followers, with a communal treasury of $88,000 (you can see the chest it was kept in at the museum), landed in Wittenberg with the goal of farming about 4,500 acres of land that resembled what they had left in Saxony, Germany.

Rev. Stephan, however, was accused of “voluptuous living and dictatorial conduct” and put in a boat for exile to Illinois. It is rumored that he had been tapping the till and some of the wives.

That was the start of the Missouri Synod

Despite all the difficulties, the Saxon immigration was the start of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, which was established in 1847.

The beautiful and still active Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg was built in 1867.

February 23, 2015February 24, 2021

Paul Newman 1968

The big news was that Paul Newman was coming to the Ohio University campus in January of 1968 to stump for Eugene McCarthy. I covered the event for The Ohio University Post.

Some bios say that Newman was a student at Ohio university and lived in the very same Scott Quadrangle dorm I did. [He couldn’t remember where his room was; I asked.]

Some say he left the school to join the armed services in 1942. He wanted to be a pilot, but washed out because of color blindness. He served as a turret gunner on an Avenger aircraft. Because of a twist of fate – his pilot developed an ear infection and was grounded – he was not on the USS Bunker Hill when it was hit by kamikaze attacks that killed more than 300 sailors.

Was a keg involved in his departure?

Other bios say that he was invited to leave the university after he rolled a beer keg down Jeff Hill and bounced it off the president’s car. He mentioned “It’s good to be home” in his remarks, but he did not bring up anything about an errant beer keg.

Students mobbed the car carrying Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, when they arrived.

Jon Webb doing Hail Mary

Jon Webb was the photographer at The Athens Messenger who started the daily picture page. I idolized the guy’s work. Still, it gave me a small amount of pleasure to see him doing a Hail Mary shot, something photographers do when they are out of position or hemmed in and need to try to get SOMETHING.

The story in The Post

Here is the story that appeared in The OU Post, along with two of my photos:

“It’s good to be home,” Paul Newman said as he walked up to the microphone on the stage of Memorial Auditorium yesterday after being mobbed by students outside.

The former Ohio University student who dropped out of school to join the armed forces in 1942 urged a crowd of some 3000 students to make “a rich physical commitment” to the presidential candidate of their choice.

Young people are McCarthy’s capital

Urging the crowd to help campaign for Eugene McCarthy in Indiana this weekend, Newman said, “We can’t afford to pay your way like some of the other candidates. We don’t have the capital – you young people are McCarthy’s capital.”

Newman at Press conference

In a press conference, Newman said he supports the Minnesota senator because “his credentials are better than anyone else and he has demonstrated his courage.”

“McCarthy rises above politics to become a statesman. He deals with things on a higher level: an intellectual strategy, not just a political strategy,” the actor continued.

Wanted to say he was part of his time

“I don’t know if my campaign will persuade anyone, but that’s not going to stop me,” he said. “I have six kids and I don’t want them to say I was never part of my time.”

Newman, who also visited the Ohio State and University of Cincinnati campuses yesterday, was presented with an Ohio University sweatshirt by students in the crowd.

A Harry & Son encounter

For the record, I don’t recognize Mr. Cool, the photographer on the right. He wasn’t on the staff of the newspapers nor yearbook. He must have been one of the Fine Arts students.

I brought up another Paul Newman anecdote when I wrote his obit on my bike blog.

Newman arrived in Lake Worth, Florida, to film Harry & Son in 1984. I went to the set, not to take pictures, but to ask the movie crew if they could switch to a different two-way radio frequency because it was interfering with The Palm Beach Post’s radio system. That was a particular problem that morning because a an airliner inbound to Palm Beach International Airport had declared a mechanical emergency. The reporters and photographers scrambling to get into position were being overridden by the movie crew.

It happened because the FCC assigned newspapers and movie crews a shared group of frequencies in the 173 MHz range. Movie companies would frequently rent their radios from a Ft. Lauderdale company and pick a channel at random. In this case, they grabbed 173.275, which we used.

They were nice enough to switch when I pointed it out. (The plane landed safely, by the way. It was a faulty indicator light in the cockpit.)

Paul Newman photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the images.

February 21, 2015

Even Her Mug Shot Is Cute

Not everybody can look cute in a mug shot with a number under their chin.

Had Wife Lila elected a life of crime, the FBI would have had a tough time keeping her picture on the Post Office walls because teenage boys would have been snagging them to hang next to their Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs posters.

Pre-politically correct SEMO

This Southeast Missouri State College ID was issued while the school still had a newspaper called The Capaha Arrow, a yearbook named The Sagamore, and Chief Sagamore was a fixture at all the football games.

I removed Lila’s Social Security number and birth year to thwart ID thieves. I don’t know what all the holes that are punched out signify. The top evidently refers to the school year, but I don’t what the 1 through 25 boxes are for.

Here’s what happened to Chief Sagamore.

Capaha Arrow turns 100 as The Arrow