Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 2, 2010May 3, 2010

The Price of Freedom

I’m going to step away from Cape for a couple of days. I’m scanning some photos from late 1969 and early 1970 because it’s important that we don’t forget what was going on forty years ago. While politicians were wrapping themselves in The Flag, young men were dying.

Youth for Decency Rally

That’s Jack Sensenbrenner, the right-wing former Bible salesman mayor of Columbus, OH, speaking at a Youth for Decency Rally. The rallies popped up all over the country after Jim Morrison of The Doors was arrested for indecency in Miami, decades before Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction.” President Nixon immediately endorsed the events, along with everyone else who was afraid of change, Rock and Roll and all the other hedonistic free love hippie things that went along with it.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam War comes home

Newspaper photographers don’t have any idea what the day is going to be like. My first assignment for The Athens Messenger on Sept. 17, 1969, was a routine grip-n-grin photo of a local serviceman being awarded a bunch of medals for his service in Vietnam.

Posthumous medal presentation

That afternoon, I went back to City Hall to watch the mayor award the Bronze Star and Purple Heart to the parents of a boy who didn’t come back. As I looked at their expressions, I wondered how much they had aged since they received that knock on their door and looked out to see a somber-faced soldier on their stoop.

The lonely ride back home with a box of medals

The image I’ve never been able to get out of my mind is the one of them walking out to their car. On their ride home, they’re going to have a box of medals sitting where their son should have been.

Country Joe and The Fish

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep from thinking of the lines from Country Joe and The Fish that had been posted on the Ohio University College Green on Moratorium Day:

Well, come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don’t hesitate,
Send ’em off before it’s too late.
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.

Their names are lost to me

I don’t know their names after all these years. I guess it’s not important in the long run. They can be the “Unknowns” to stand in for all of those families who received a knock on the door that changed their lives forever.

One thing I’ve always wondered: was there a newspaper photographer in North Vietnam who had the mirror image of my assignments?

May 1, 2010April 20, 2025

Jackson’s 1938 Swimming Pool

I get amused when I hear people complaining about federal stimulus programs, because a lot of the same gripes were made about FDR’s alphabet soup of the CCC, NRA, WPA and the like.

In 1938, Jackson agonized over spending $2,000 for materials needed by the WPA to build a swimming pool for the city. The Missourian reported June 7, 1938 that a delegation argued “that such a pool is a necessity, that other cities nearby have such pools and that the pools are frequented a great deal and pay for their upkeep. It was also said that the construction of a pool in the Sanford Park would redeem the park which has become more or less of a white elephant to the city and that, unless something is done to utilize it, the park might as well be sold.

“It was also pointed out that daily Jackson people visit the swimming pool in Cape Girardeau, that, if Jackson had a pool, graduating classes from other towns could be invited to use it, that the pool would serve to keep the youth of the city off the streets in the idle summer months, that the Board of Education is spending $10,000 of the people’s money on a stadium that is used probably four or five times a year, and that only $1,500 of the people’s money is being asked for to build an $11,000 swimming pool that would be used 120 days a year.

The pool, as planned, would hold 140,000 gallons of water. The biggest concern was how much it would cost to maintain the pool. The City Council ducked making a decision by ruling that it would circulate a petition “to ascertain the feelings of the citizens regarding the matter.”

Jackson Swimming Pool and Drive-in

The voters must have decided they wanted the pool, because it WAS built. This aerial photo from the late 60s shows the pool in the middle of the photo. Jackson’s Drive-in Theater is at the bottom right. It’s the site of the new pool, which replaced the 1938 WPA project in 1976.

All good things come to an end

Oct. 13, 1965, The Missourian ran a story that said the old pool was too old and too small. James R. Nelson, summer pool manager and principal of Jackson High School, said the pool had become outmoded, machinery is believed to be in danger of collapse and huge leaks are releasing tremendous amounts of water. In one three-day period with no activity, the pool leaked 90,000 gallons of water, about half its capacity.

Nelson thought the problem was in the circulation system. When the pool was built, pipes were laid in the concrete around the pool. During the first 20 years of operation, the acid level of the pool was rarely checked and it was believed that acid over the years had eaten the pipes away. The presumed result was that the circulation system consists of holes in the concrete instead of pipes. Water leaked out at every joint or crack in the concrete. Water in the pool met safety standards, but just barely.

Pool has been filled in

I’m not sure when the old pool closed, but a new pool, opened in 1976. The old pool has been filled and turned into a Tot Land. If you look closely at some of the photos in the gallery, you can still see where the lifeguard chairs were mounted and see barely make out the NO DIVING markers.

Jackson Pool Photo Gallery

Here is a collection of vintage and current photos of the Jackson pool. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the photo to move through the gallery.

April 29, 2010April 30, 2010

Bill & Sue Roussel Keep the 50s Alive

Every class needs a Keeper of The Flame. Bill and Sue Roussel produce The Tiger Update, an email newsletter that keeps more than 1,000 classmates and friends of the Cape Central High School 1950s decade in touch with each other. It’s a combination of good news, bad news and shared memories.

Sue sort of fell into the job by accident when she tried to track down classmates for a reunion. Before long, she was getting letters (some hand-scrawled in writing styles that indicated that penmanship might not have been the person’s best class), emails and phone calls. “I created a monster,” she said.

Sue raises people from the dead

Bill says his wife is a “bird dog for details. She hasn’t mastered walking on water, but she’s started raising people from the dead. She’s gotten reports of classmates who have died and called the family for more information. Several times they’ve responded by saying, ‘Well, let me hand the phone to him and he can tell you himself.'”

Now that the classmates are getting older, it’s not unusual for some of the newsletters to be grim reading with accounts of deaths and illness. “Since everyone has scattered out, used to we didn’t find out someone had died until five years or the next reunion. That’s why I put the obituaries in there,” Sue explained.

Bill recently had a scare

Overnight, he had an onset of confusion where he couldn’t even identify family members. He was taken to a hospital emergency room where a CAT scan showed that he had bleeding on his brain. He was rushed to surgery, where several holes were bored into his skull to relieve the pressure.

His recovery was miraculous. I had never met Bill and Sue, and I was a little reluctant to impose on them so soon after this medical emergency, but they said to come on over. It never dawned on me that the vital, vibrant guy who opened the door could be Bill, considering the seriousness of his condition only days earlier.

Sue knew her friends on the newsletter would be concerned, so she fired off email and Facebook updates as soon as she got the good news about Bill. There was a huge outpouring of concern, with as many as 40 friends showing up at the hospital.

“Between the newsletter and Facebook, it was like practice for the funeral,” Bill quipped.

“If we took money, it’d be work”

Sue said the updates take about three or fours each. “People ask us why we don’t charge anything. We tell them, that if we took money, then that’d be work. Right now it’s fun.”

The Tiger updates started out as a once a month thing. As more and more people started contributing, their frequency increased. Usually there is at least one update a week, but during Christmas season, there may be enough content to have two or three a week, Sue said.

Keeping memories alive

Bill said that Tommy Meisner – Class of ’58 – told him, “I can look at that update and there’ll be just one little incident or one picture of a place that I’d figure would be all gone – that I’d have no memory of that left – but my mind will get to working on it. I’ll work on it for days. Then I’ve generated a whole bunch of other memories. It’s magical.”

If anyone wants to sign up for the Tiger Updates focusing on the 1950s, leave a comment and I’ll pass it on to Bill and Sue. Jerry and Margi Stout Whitright do a similar newsletter for the 1960s classmates. I had hoped to stop in and see them in Ellijay, GA, on my way south, but our schedules didn’t match up.

April 29, 2010April 15, 2021

Walther’s Becomes Discovery Playhouse

Volunteers were busy converting the old Walther’s Furniture Store and Funeral Home at 502 Broadway into the Discovery Playhouse when I was home earlier this spring. It opened April 22.

It looks like it’s going to be a great place for kids to cool off during Cape’s hot and humid summer.

Playhouse starting on the ground floor

The Playhouse is a two-story building, with an attached section that rises to three floors. All of the work is concentrating on the first floor at this time, with the other floors to be developed as funds become available.

Landmark sign to stay

I was told that the landmark Walther’s sign will remain, although it will be changed somewhat. I don’t know what those changes are.

The old parts of the building and the views from the windows fascinated me more than the playhouse in progress.

1916 was a big year

A Missourian roundup on Dec. 31, 1916, said that “1916 is prominent for the number of fine business houses erected, among them being the new home of the Buckner-Ragsdale, ‘Quality Corner Store,’ a handsome structure, the upper floor of which is occupied by the Cape Girardeau Business College; Walther Brothers Furniture Store, one of the largest in Missouri outside the three largest cities; the I. Ben Miller ice cream and candy factory, declared by State Dairy Commissioner Bennett to be the finest in the State of Missouri; the Meyer-Suedekum Hardware Company’s building and others.”

That’s a lot of landmark businesses in year. Meyer-Suedekum (now Meyer Supply) is the only one that has survived.

501-503 Broadway

Looking to the south from the second floor of the building, you can see 501 and 503 Broadway across the street. Hinchey-Greer Merchantile company occupied 501 Broadway around 1906. Alvin Cotner modified the building in 1919 or 1920 to house the Auto Parts Company, which was there until 1957. Cape Paint and Glass occupied the property from 1958 through 1991. An interior connection between the two buildings was made somewhere between 1908 and 1915.

Mural sponsored by Trinity Lutheran Church

A mural, sponsored by Trinity Lutheran Church is on the west wall of 503 Broadway. It reads, “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.” That’s probably fitting to be across from the Discovery Playhouse.

It’s easy to get lost in old newspaper stories

While researching the Walther’s history, I got sidetracked with stories of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic and accounts of local boys going “over there” to fight the “huns.” One thing that surprised me on the front page of the May 13, 1921 Missourian, was a pair of obituaries.

The first was three paragraphs giving an account of the funeral of Allbright Walther, retired furniture dealer of Cape Girardeau. It contained very little personal information.

Directly under it, was one headlined, “Sam Randol, Ice Dealer Is Dead; Long Illness Fatal to Colored Man.” It went on to say that “Sam Randol, well-known colored ice dealer, died at his home…following a long illness with dropsy. It listed his relatives and the organizations he belonged to and some funeral arrangements.

It concluded by saying that “Randol was among the better colored citizens of Cape Girardeau and stood high both among the people of his race as well as among the white citizens. He had been in the ice business here since a young man and was known by most every family in the city.”

I would never have expected the second obit to have been given such prominence in that era. He must have really been an exceptional person.

Walther’s was the city’s oldest retail store

A business column announcing the closing of the furniture store in 1984 said it had been open continuously for 120 years, making it the oldest retail business in town.

Gallery of photos from Walther’s Furniture / Discovery Playhouse

Here is a selection of photos taken of the Discovery Playhouse renovation and views of the neighborhood. As always, click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the photo to move through the gallery.