Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 12, 2011September 6, 2015

Photographers Don’t Understand Pressure

I should have know better than to take a tongue-in-cheek swing (pun intended) at golf and golfers yesterday. I described my disdain for the sport and singled out Sam Snead as a photographer-hating prima donna who would try to blame shutter noise (chirping birds, wriggling earthworms, spectator coughing) for missing a shot.

CHS classmate Brad Brune, a self-described “humble golf fan,” took me to the woodshed in a very creative comment. I decided it was worth sharing.

Brad Brune’s comment

Once upon a time….

One of the promising young rising stars in the world of photo journalism, Ken Steinhoff, is on a very important shoot. Many Thousands of Dollars, all your sponsorships, and your national ranking are at stake. Your assignment is to catch a picture of Sam Snead “exactly” as his club strikes the ball on the 18th tee box of the Masters.

You are the only photographer allowed to take this exact photo. Too soon,too late, or off center won’t work, and your successful shoot would be jeopardized. At the very least you would loose several thousands of bucks for missing that essential shot – at that historic time and place.

Hundreds of people surround you and are watching you work. “GO KEN…. YOU THE MAN!!” they shout at you as you steady your camera. Millions are watching on TV and there is a close up of you on every TV screen in America. All is quiet…. just the sound a the breeze in the trees in the distance. Sam starts his 100 mph down swing. You are nervous as hell, sweat is running down you face, and you have your moist finger lightly poised above the shutter button.

BOO!

I sneak up behind you at the worst possible moment and quietly whisper, “BOO!” You jump out of your skin, snap the shot a fraction of a second early and your hands move slightly so that Sam’s head is half cut out of your shot!

That night you are the “joke” on every talk show on cable and broadcast TV. Slow motion video of the exact millisecond you blew the shot are repeated over and over. Every paper in the country has the head line the next day, “STEINHOFF CHOKES…. BLOWS THE SHOT!” Photographic columnists take cheap shots at you because you won’t accept responsibility for blowing the shot saying, “a sudden noise from a fan caused me to loose concentration.”

Had you been in Bush Stadium taking a picture of Stan the Man in the World Series with 50,000 fans screaming…. my little trick would not have bothered you at all. You would have been a rich hero, and the toast of the town.

There is no comparison Ken.
Brad
a humble golf fan.

A photographer’s rejoinder

Photographers are the one group who have to literally keep their focus no matter what kind of chaos is happening around them.

When you’re shooting what should be a routine traffic stop of some armed robbery suspects and suddenly someone shouts, “Get the photographers!” that’s a little more unnerving than someone whispering “BOO!” while Sam Snead is swinging.

Lens hood being ripped off

I’m proud to say that this photo, taken seconds after the one above, is sharp, even as the trooper rips the lenshood and filter off my camera while he’s trying to take it away from me. THAT’S focus. (The hood and filter are the round, dark and light objects in his palm.)

Trooper attack from another angle

Palm Beach Post Staffer C.J. Walker captured this frame of the lens hood flying through the air. One of these days I’ll publish the whole sequence and tell the complete story.

The short version is that by the time the incident investigation was finished, the Florida Highway Patrol adopted a media access policy that has become the model for public safety departments all over the country.

So, while I won’t say that every photo I’ve taken has captured the peak action, been sharp and exposed properly, I’d say my powers of concentration are pretty good under real life pressure. Let’s see how well Sam Snead putts in a burning building, while being attacked, in a hurricane or while being teargassed.

I agree. There IS no comparison.

Ken

A humble photographer

[What happened to the trooper, you wonder? My very own newspaper named him Lawman of the Year a couple of years later. I can only assume that what happened here was an aberration or that the editors of the paper thought the trooper had the right idea of how to treat photographers.]

May 11, 2011September 18, 2011

How to Improve Your Golf Swing

Actually, I have no idea. I just used that title to catch the attention of search engines.

In fact, golf was always my least favorite sport after Dad put me to work one summer cutting weeds along the roadside. He issued me a thing with a long wooden handle and a sharp curved blade that looked like something the Grim Reaper uses to harvest souls and sent me out into the hot summer sun to make grass out of weeds.

The first time I picked up a golf club, I noticed the similarity between swinging a club and a sythe. I did not want to relive that experience in any form, so I scratched golf off my life list.

The guys above are the Central High School golf team. I recognize most of them as being Class of 65, but a whippersnapper or two from ’66 might have snuck in.

J. Fred Waltz is second from left

James Fred Waltz – he was always known as J. Fred as far as I recall – is second from the left in both photos. I mention him because he tracked me down and took me out to lunch at a secret, undisclosed location the last time I was in Cape.

Al Spradling was supposed to come along, but he came up with a convenient excuse to ditch us at the last minute.

Waltz, Palmer, Snead, Trevino

Here’s what Mr. Waltz looks like today.

Not only did I not like to play golf, I hated covering it. Fortunately, golf wasn’t a big sport in Missouri, Ohio or North Carolina. Unfortunately, it WAS a big sport in Florida, where golf courses outnumber graveyards.

The first couple of years down here, I shot all the biggies at PGA National, Doral and other cathedrals of grass and sand traps. I disliked all of the hoity-toity pretentiousness that went with the sport.

Sam Snead was the worst

The worst guy to shoot was Sam Snead. He hated photographers and always blamed us if he made a bad shot. He reamed me out in front of the whole world one day for – in his eyes – shooting before he completed his swing. When I processed my film, I saw that he had clearly hit the ball before my shutter fired, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if I’d have shown up the next day with photographic evidence.

I never could figure out why golfers need absolute silence when a baseball pitcher can throw a rock 90 miles per hour at some batter’s head with 50,000 people screaming in his ear.

Arnold Palmer wasn’t bad, but my favorite was Lee Trevino. Here was a man who didn’t take himself or the sport too seriously. He played a relaxed game like he was having fun, joking with the gallery and never saying an unkind word to anyone.

May 11, 2011September 18, 2011

Louis Lorimier and Indian Park

I really didn’t have many memories of Indian park. It always felt a a little rundown and neglected, although it has a few more amenities these days. It’s bounded on the east by Lorimier, the south by William (and, at one time, Happy Hollow, the town dump). Louis Houck’s railroad ran past the west end of the park. There was a little BBQ stand just up the street from it.

I figured this would be an easy posting: a couple shots of the granite memorial (dedicated Oct. 7, 1946) and I’d get to bed early. Darned history got in the way of that.

Friend and leader of Indian tribes

The inscription on the marker reads, “Indian Park. Indian tribes often came here 1793 – 1812 to meet Don Louis Lorimier their friend and leader.”

I took THAT with a big grain of salt. When you’ve got Trail of Tears just north of Cape, I wondered just how much of a friend any white man was to the Shawnees who used to camp on this ground because there was a good spring nearby.

Lorimier captured Dan’l Boone?!?

A Jan. 31, 1948, Missourian clip quoted the Houck histories as saying that Lorimier and Indians, opposing the Americans, made a raid into Kentucky, captured Daniel Boone and took him and others to the principal Shawnee Indian village in Ohio on Feb. 7, 1778. Boone escaped June 16.

I guess it IS possible that he could be considered a leader.

He established Cape Girardeau in 1793. Before coming to this (Spanish) territory, he had favored the English in the war (1775) against the American colonies.

Was he married or not?

The light was really ugly on Lorimier’s grave when I strolled through the cemetery, so I blew it off with a perfunctory shot. I wish I had paid more attention.

A Missourian story – 140 Years Ago – 1809 – said that on March 23, Charlotte Pemanpieh Bougainville, consort of Lorimier, died, aged 50 years, 2 months, leaving 4 sons and 2 daughters. She was laid to rest in Old Lorimier Cemetery in the first marked grave. Lorimier speaks of his consort as “the Shawnee woman, Pemanpieh, with whom I have lived these 4 and 20 years and upward, and whom I consider, love and regard as my wife.”

The tombstone reads, in part, To the memory of Charlotte P.B Lorimier consort of Maj. L. Lorimier…

That would indicate that she took his name, at least in stone.

“Married by the Great Spirit”

Another Missourian story says that Lorimier, prior to his coming to Cape Girardeau, had taken for his wife a half-breed Shawnee woman, named Charlotte Pemanpieh Bougainville, supposed to have been the daughter of a French-Canadian officer of that name. Tradition has it that he was married to his spouse according to tribal ritual, by standing on a mountain top at sunrise, with uplifted arms, imploring the Great Spirit to guide their every footstep on their journey through life.

My friend Shari and I noticed a fair number of graves in the old cemetery that had a wife on one side and a much younger “consort” on the other. We thought that maybe “consort” was just another word for wife in those days. Looks like that might not be exactly true.

I sure don’t remember hearing much about this in history class. I’d have paid closer attention if that kind of stuff had been part of the curriculum.

We’ll see if I can come up with more info before I do a piece on Old Lorimier Cemetery.

May 10, 2011August 17, 2021

Cape Tornado of 1949

My readers usually know more about Cape history than I do and they’re good about sharing their knowledge. This contribution stopped me cold. It’s an account of the May 21, 1949, tornado that killed 22 people, hospitalized 72 and injured hundreds, written by a pregnant newlywed to her mother on pages torn from a day calendar. I’m reprinting it here with the family’s permission.

Gallery of the Tornado letter

I’m going to present the letter in two forms: as a series of photos of the pages and as a .pdf document that you can download in its entirety so you can read it at your leisure. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

Letter in a downloadable form

Here is a copy of the 18-page letter in a single file: 1949 Tornado Letter by Kathrine Lamkin. You’ll need Acrobat Reader version 7.0 or later to open it. The file is fairly large, so I wouldn’t try to get it if you don’t have a broadband connection. If right-clicking doesn’t open it, right click on the link and chose Save Link As. Depending on your monitor, you may want to view it at about 125%. Save the file if you want to read it later.

Kathrine Porter Russell Lamkin

The writer was Kathrine Porter Russell Lamkin. She died Aug. 27, 2009, just a few days short of her 83rd birthday.

She was a society deb, pictured in Life Magazine’s Oct. 28, 1946 photo display of the Veiled Prophet Ball in St. Louis. (I’m sorry that I don’t know which specific photo she’s in.)

She attended Washington University, where she met John T. “Jack” Lamkin after he had returned from World War II.. They were married Nov. 6, 1948. She was pregnant with Central High School classmate Tucker Lamkin when she wrote this account of the storm.

Names I recognized

Codeen is Codeen Sherwood, a Lamkin family friend and cook.
Jack is Kathrine’s husband.
Dr. Herbert is Dr. Charles T. Hebert. This was a particularly heart-wrenching part of the letter.
Rush Limbaugh’s house was wrecked but the family was at Rush Jr.’s wedding when the storm hit.
It ruined Dr. Parker’s house, touched the Boutin house and knocked down a tree at Libby and Jack Oliver’s.
The Medical Building is wrecked and Dr. Ritter and the other doctors are working out of Dr. Ritter’s home.

Missourian Series

The Southeast Missourian did a good job of pulling together photos, reprints and stories from the 1949 tornado. Rather than rehashing what they did, I’ll get out of the way and let Mrs. Lamkin’s letter and The Missourian retrospective speak for history.

Thanks to the Lamkin family for sharing this first-hand account of one of Cape’s biggest tragedies.