Trinity Lutheran Church Archives

April 23, 2012

View from Trinity Bell Tower

Just before it was torn down, Brother Mark and I crawled all over the Trinity Lutheran Church documenting it. I posted photos of the bell earlier. Today we’re focusing on the view FROM the bell tower. Those louvered windows had a fairly big space to look through, even if the mesh screening was a bit distracting with some lens choices. Click on the photos to make them larger.

View to the northeast

The building towering over everything else is the KFVS-TV building. To its left you can see the H & H Building and the Marquette Hotel. The bright white object rising above the trees at the top right is the Common Pleas Courthouse. You can barely make out the Walther’s sign on the left side of the frame. It has become the Discovery Playhouse. Across the street was a the building that would later sport a bright blue mural with the words, “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.” That building was torn down last winter.

View to the north

Switching to a slightly longer lens let me throw the screening out of focus (mostly), but it didn’t cover as much area. The white building to the right was Brinkopf-Howell Funeral home, now Annie Laurie’s Antiques. Shivelbine’s Music would be the building on the southeast corner of Broadway and Frederick. Star Service Station was on the northwest corner. I’d sure like some of that 36-cent gas today.

View to the west

The tall structure at the top right is the telephone company’s microwave tower. In the days before fiber optic cable, much of the country’s long distance traffic was handled by radio signals beamed from tower to tower. Southeast Missouri State University’s Academic Hall’s dome barely clears the treetops near the top right.

View to the south

This is looking south from the intersection of Themis and Frederick. The small brick building on the southwest corner was known as “The Mouse House.” Cape-Kil is directly south of it.

Trinity Lutheran Church neighborhood in 2011

Here is an aerial photo I shot of the neighborhood April 17, 2011.

January 14, 2012January 15, 2012

First Baptist Church Bell Found

I wondered in my story about the original First Baptist Church if the bell salvaged from a sunken steamboat was still in the 200 Broadway church or if it had been moved. It didn’t take long for Mitchell Givens to send me this photo of the bell at the First General Baptist Church. Mitchell, CHS Class of ’59, says the bell is attached to a motor and can be rung from inside the church. He and James Baker hooked it up. Bill Reiker was responsible for the brick work.

A bell with a history

He also sent this clipping. I assume it was from The Missourian.

First Presbyterian Church bell

I did another church bell story a year ago when I published photos of the razing of the First Presbyterian Church at the corner of Lorimier and Broadway and its subsequent re-belling.

Trinity Lutheran Church bell

Here are photos taken in the bell tower of Trinity Lutheran Church before it was torn down.

December 23, 2011July 25, 2023

Scouting Is Fun and Other Uniforms

Almost every kid in Cape had a crack at radio and / or TV fame. I can remember going to the KFVS radio studio to sit on Santa’s lap and to tell him (and the whole world as I knew it) what I wanted for Christmas.

There was a local radio quiz show called Know Your City Quiz that would ask questions about Cape’s history. I’d sit there with my second-grade-level picture history book frantically rooting for the answer to such questions as, “When did Cape get its first fire engine.” The book had all kinds of stuff about some guy named Washington crossing some river in the middle of the winter, but not important stuff like Cape’s first fire engine. (What was that guy doing standing up in the boat, anyway? Even I knew enough not to do THAT.)

My TV debut

I think my TV debut might have been during Scout Week in the eighth grade or my freshman year. Boy Scout Troop 8 was supposed to have someone tap out “Scouting is fun” in Morse code, but the guy who was supposed to do it backed out at the last minute for some reason or other. I could send like a demon (but couldn’t receive worth two cents), so I was sent in as a sub.

Dad set up the family’s 8mm camera to record the moment off the Zenith television in the basement. For what it’s worth, he had a guy working for him who could read code who pronounced my transmission flawless. I’m not sure who the Scout was looking in awe over my shoulder.

The whole escapade ended with future debate partner John Mueller being interviewed. I’m sure he said something about how important being able to send Morse code would be in an emergency. Unspoken was the fact that my buzzer couldn’t be heard on the far side of the room and that the little light on the key was a tiny flashlight bulb. I guess it was OK for close emergencies.

Switched to different uniforms

A couple of years later, John and I traded in our Scout uniforms for suits and ties to be undefeated members of the Central High School Debate Team.

Here’s a bunch of us getting ready to wreak havoc on the teams from the smaller schools in the area. That’s John on the right. I’m to his left. I see, in no particular order, Mike Daniels, Rick Meinz, Andy Scully, Shari Stiver, Vicky Roth, Jim Reynolds, Becky McGinty and Bill Wilson, among others whose names are lost in the fog of years.

We didn’t make it as the Three Counts

I’ve run this before, but some pictures deserve to be resurrected from time to time. John, Rick Meinz and I got dragooned into dressing up like this for a church play at Trinity Lutheran Church.

Someone Higher Up (well, not THAT higher up) cut my best line, “We’re the Three Counts: Count de Bills, Count de Checks and Count de Change.” I lost enthusiasm for my part after that. Heck of a note when the only line you can remember from a role is the one they wouldn’t let you deliver.

That’s not really MY National Guard uniform

I made about as good a soldier as I did a Lutheran Reverend and donned the uniform just about as long.

I wanted to do a story on the local National Gurard contingent going to summer camp. The Higher Ups (does this sound familiar) wouldn’t let a civilian ride in the convoy, so an enterprising Master Sergeant said, “I’ve got it all worked out. Come on by and get fitted for a uniform. You’ll look like everybody else. Nobody’ll know.”

Here’s the brief story of my National Guard career. I’ll have to scan the photos one of these days, even if they were taken in Florida. I’m happy with several of them.

November 17, 2011

Rush H. Limbaugh Courthouse and Trinity Lutheran Church

On my way back to the car after shooting the new Shivelbines Music sign, I noticed the Rush H. Limbaugh Sr. (no, not THAT Rush, his grandfather) Federal Building all lit up. I braced myself against the back wall of Bob’s Shoe Service and took several long exposures. The shutter was open half a second, which was long enough for a passing car’s lights to register as a blur.

If you click on the image to make it larger, you might see some tiny red spots (if I missed taking them out) that are “noise” from the low light level and the 1600 ISO.

Trinity Lutheran Church

MY Trinity Lutheran Church was torn down to erect this one, but I have to admit the steeple looks neat in the sunset.

This, too, was a fairly long exposure, .4 seconds. I underexposed the frame by one stop to keep from burning up the lighted clock and to make the sky more dramatic. I had a circular polarizing filter on the lens, but it had little, if any effect on the picture.

Brother Mark and I photographed the inside of the bell tower before the old church was torn down.

I like fooling around with night scenes, but I’m making a note to myself to do them before the weather starts turning cold.