It’s a busy weekend. A shop clerk won big at a city-wide raffle in 1924, the Rodgers Theatre opened, street work was snagged in 1949, and a massive mail theft left Butler County shortchanged in 1974.
__Saturday__
100 years ago
June 1, 1924 — No issues available.
75 years ago
June 1, 1949
• The state was walloped by severe thunderstorms overnight. While other regions reported tornadic winds and severe damage, Southeast Missouri escaped largely unscathed. Poplar Bluff measured an inch of rainfall between 6-7 a.m. this morning, and lightning caused power and phone outages. No structure damage was reported.
Meanwhile, St. Joseph recorded record-breaking 81 mph winds, and nine cows were killed by a lightning strike near Columbia.
50 years ago
June 1, 1974
• Reporter, photographer and outdoor columnist John Stanard was named city editor of the Daily American Republic today. He joined the DAR in 1965 after graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and working at newspapers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Beaumont, Texas.
His father, Bob Stanard, is the news editor.
__Sunday__
100 years ago
June 2, 1924
• “Getting that car was about the only piece of luck I have ever had,” said W. Forrest Lepcheske. The Poplar Bluff store clerk won a citywide lottery for a new Ford Tudor last night but almost missed it.
The drawing was held at Wortham Carnival late last night, wrapping up a month-long fundraising campaign for the American Legion. Lepcheske’s name was drawn, but he wasn’t at the show. He was at work. After his 10 p.m. shift wrapped up, he stopped for a late meal at a nearby cafe and asked another patron who won the car, only learning, “It was some fellow with a peculiar name.”
After eating, Lepcheske returned home. He was taking a bath when his housemates, Mr. and Mrs. John Wright, got a phone call from a friend with the news.
“I was so excited that I never finished that bath,” he told reporters. His friends drove him to the carnival to collect his prize.
75 years ago
June 2, 1949
• Over 1,800 people attended opening night at the Rodger’s Theatre. Poplar Bluff Mayor E.W. Robinson bought the first ticket and dedicated the building, cutting the ribbon alongside W.M. Griffin, the theater chain’s executive vice president.
“We expected a crowd but the number of persons who came out far exceeded our fondest expectations,” Griffin said. “..It was the finest turnout I have witnessed in many years in the entertainment field.”
The theater also received congratulations from Hollywood producers and actors including Clark Gable, June Allyson, Esther Williams, John Wayne and Jane Greer.
The Rodgers opened with two showings of “Red Canyon.” Its capacity of 1,160 made it the largest theater in Southeast Missouri.
50 years ago
June 2, 1974 — No issues available.
__Monday__
100 years ago
June 3, 1924
• The Poplar Bluff City Council received an estimate for $150,000 to upgrade the city’s water supply.
Though the Interstate American noted the engineer “was in no position to give accurate data, not having gone into the details minutely,” his overall estimate included new settling tanks, water meters for customers and a deep-cleaning of the city’s mains.
Settling tanks were recently recommended by a state health officer to better purify water from the Black River.
75 years ago
June 3, 1949
• A miscalculation has turned Pine Boulevard’s paving project into a quagmire.
First, contractors were delayed by spring rain. When conditions were finally right to pour asphalt, workers found it had partially hardened in transit from the mixing plant in Advance. Gasoline and naphtha were added to thin it back out for pouring, which state authorities believed would evaporate quickly. Instead, the street has remained a gummy mess.
“Nobody with authority would hazard a guess as to when the asphalt part of the project will be sufficiently cured for use,” the Daily American Republic stated. If traffic were allowed back on Pine now, authorities said the tires would leave tracks and holes in the pavement.
50 years ago
June 3, 1974
• The Butler County Welfare Department’s entire payroll was stolen in April, but local law enforcement has no leads — in fact, they weren’t alerted to the theft for over a week.
Curtis Bybee, chief of the Missouri Division of Welfare’s finance office in Jefferson City, mailed an envelope of 55 checks on April 29. The $22,000 payroll should have traveled from the Jefferson City Post Office to Poplar Bluff mailboxes in 24 hours, but none of the checks were cashed for days. It seemed to Bybee like a normal case of delayed mail until one of the checks appeared at a Jefferson City bank. He ordered all payments stopped immediately, but by then eight checks had been cashed in Poplar Bluff, Dexter and Malden, equaling $2,820.15.
Bybee notified postal inspectors on May 7, the same day he stopped the payment, and claimed he notified the Butler County Sheriff’s Department “a day or two later.” Deputy James Kimbrow countered that BCSD was never contacted and only learned of the thefts through the Poplar Bluff Chamber of Commerce.
Officers have interviewed employees of the banks and businesses that cashed the stolen checks but gained no leads.
Bybee asserted the checks must have been taken from the Poplar Bluff Post Office, and said this was the first time he’d seen an entire county’s payroll stolen in his 30-year career with state and federal financial institutions.
Butler County Welfare Department employees received duplicate checks 10 days after the stolen deliveries. May’s payroll arrived without issue.