Southeast Missouri State University Archives

April 9, 2014April 9, 2014

Capaha and Arena Parks

Tuesday was a fun day. I got to speak to Dr. Lily Santoro’s Local Techniques in History class at SEMO. I brought along Carla Jordan from the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in case the kids got rowdy. As it turned out, they were a very attentive group: the laughed where appropriate and were somber where appropriate. I hope they enjoyed the experience as much as I did.

I promised the group I would keep providing links to the subject matter they had been assigned, so here are stories about Arena and Capaha Parks.

Capaha Park Lagoon

Capaha park has many different facets, so I’ll break pieces of it apart. The lagoon is in more-or-less the center of the park. It was one of the first places I fished by myself. Except for one monster crappie I caught to win a rod and reel in a fishing contest, my results were mostly unremarkable.

Capaha Park Pool

The Capaha Park pool was THE place to be in the summer months. Wife Lila and her best friend were lifeguards there. When the pool was razed, they shared some powerful memories. She had a tear in her eye the first time she came back to Cape and saw it gone.

Capaha Baseball

General Park stories and photos

Arena Park

Arena Park was best known for the District Fair, stockcar races, animal exhibits and the train.

April 7, 2014April 7, 2014

Preservation Homework: Parks and Buildings

This is a continuation of the links I’m posting to help students in a SEMO Historical Preservation class. They’ve been given a list of Cape landmarks to research. It turns out I’ve written about most of them, so I’m going to give them a some background information about some of the parks and random buildings they’re looking for. I posted churches and cemeteries yesterday.

I’m doing a presentation to the class on April 8 where I will tell the students what I do and why I do it. After that, I’ll talk about how I do it. I hope I can get across there is no better way to find out things than to knock on doors and talk with people like I’m doing with The Last Generation project. I won’t swear that I get all the facts right, but you readers do a good job of setting me straight when I’ve miss the mark.

Cape Rock Overlook Park

Old Bridge Overlook Park

Cape Girardeau City Hall

Indian Park

Louis Lorimier and his Indian cohorts, battling the Americans, captured Daniel Boone.

Houck Field House

KFVS TV Studio/Tower on Broadway

This story has lots of links about KFVS

Fort D Park

Cape Girardeau Regional Airport

April 6, 2014May 1, 2014

Preservation Homework: Churches & Cemeteries

Dr. Katy Beebe invited me to speak to her historical preservation class at Southeast Missouri State University last year. Dr. Lily Santora asked if I would come back April 8 to meet with her class.

Dr. Beebe’s class was researching Main Street, so I put together a list of the stories I had done about downtown. Dr. Santora gave her class a wide variety of local landmarks. I’ll spend the next couple of days helping her students by posting links to stories I’ve done about their topics. I’m going to concentrate on churches and cemeteries today. (Maybe I can make up for all those assignments I didn’t turn in when I was a student.)

[Hint to students: don’t just read what I’ve written. The comments are generally more interesting than my copy. Feel free to post questions and comments of your own. My readers are a friendly group who love to share Cape’s history. Click on the photos to make them larger.]

First Presbyterian Church

St. Mary’s Cathedral

Curtis Williams – Trailblazer

When I ran photos of the Southeast Missouri State Indians playing the Martin Branch of the University of Tennessee, several readers commented on Curtis Williams, #34. It turns out I had some action mug shots I took of him for either The Missourian or The Sagamore in December of 1966.

Central grad first black SEMO athlete

What I didn’t know until I read an excellent profile by Marty Mishow in the February 19, 2004, Missourian was that the CHS grad was SEMO’s first black student-athlete and a basketball and track standout from 1964 through 1967.

“Kermit Meystedt, Williams’ former basketball teammate at both Central and Southeast who along with Williams was inducted into Southeast’s Athletic Hall of Fame last October said, “He was just a very class individual, and an excellent, very gifted athlete.”

In basketball, Williams was a three-year letterman under coach Charles Parsley. He averaged 18.4 points per game as a senior to earn first-team all-MIAA honors after being second-team all-MIAA as a junior.

On the track, Williams earned four letters and excelled in all the jumps. He at one time held school records in both the high jump, at 6-8 3/4, and the triple jump, at 48-8 1/4. He was a multiple conference champion.

Wasn’t on a scholarship

The story pointed out that Williams began his SEMO career without a scholarship, which meant that he not only played sports, but he routinely worked almost a full shift at Cape Frozen Foods, which specialized in butchering and storing meat.

Track coach Marvin Rosengarten said, “He worked at least 30 hours at the frozen food locker on Broadway. I always used to have him promise me he wouldn’t work the day before a meet so he wouldn’t be worn out.

“But after his sophomore year, I went to Charles Parsley and we worked out a deal where we split the scholarship. I think in his junior year he was just on a partial scholarship but by his senior year he was on full scholarship between basketball and track.”

Flashbacks of racism

Williams was quoted as saying that he was well accepted by his teammates.

“Coming back from trips, sometimes we wouldn’t get served in restaurants, or they’d say I had to go eat in the back, but Coach Parsley said we would all eat together or we wouldn’t eat there. I remember we left one place outside Jonesboro.”

While Williams said he never encountered much negative reaction because of being black while at Central or Southeast, he was certainly not exempt from racism.

“During the early years of my life, I grew up at a time when blacks had to go in the back doors of restaurants to be served, where you were not allowed to attend movies or swim in public pools,” he said. “To this day, I still have flashbacks of those moments when one was made to feel less than human. You deal with it and move on.