Southeast Missouri is mourning. After widespread support and donations enabled Poplar Bluff High School student Marsha Hawes to get a kidney transplant, her body unexpectedly and fatally rejected the new organ.
Wednesday
100 years ago
July 3, 1924
• Poplar Bluff citizens can look forward to saving $10,000 per year, starting today, with the end of a tax on telephone calls, telegraphs and entertainment of a WWI.
A law ending the war tax took effect at 12:01 a.m. today. The Southwestern Bell Telephone Company said the 5- to 10-cent message tax on long-distance calls and telegrams is now dropped. For example, the cost of a 10-word telegram to St. Louis is down from 41 cents to 36 cents.
75 years ago
July 3, 1949 — No issues available.
50 years ago
July 3, 1974
• Poplar Bluff mourns the loss of a young kidney patient today. Marsha Ann Hawes, a Poplar Bluff High School student, passed away this morning in St. Louis after her body rejected her new kidney.
Local fundraisers and private donations from the across across the country enabled Hawes to get a transplant, after seven years of chronic kidney malfunction and months of hospitalization this year. Extensive testing revealed the best match was her father, and the June 17 transplant went smoothly. Surgeons at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital were optimistic for the 15-year-old’s recovery.
The rejection episode began late last week, said a spokesman for her transplant team, and she may also have suffered a stroke.
She is survived by her parents, Dorothy and Rev. Otis Hawes Jr., and four siblings, Victor, James, LaRita and Ronald.
• A young escapee is back in jail, and fellow prisoner’s privileges are revoked for aiding his breakout.
James Royce Metz, 18, escaped the juvenile section of the Butler County jail by sawing through three bars in his cell around 9 p.m. June 30. He raided an office on the way out and stole a key to an exit and an unloaded pistol.
Metz was recaptured behind a house at North Riverview and Almond streets yesterday afternoon. He confessed to stealing a small amount of cash, a radio and tools from the offices of the Butler County Collector and the Missouri Division of Veterans Affairs. Some of these were recovered.
Metz was serving a one-year sentence for breaking custody. His fellow prisoner Carl Ray, 24, smuggled him the hacksaw blade. Ray was serving a month of jail time for driving while his license was revoked, but was allowed to attend school during the day. That privilege was revoked this morning by the magistrate court and he’s now serving an additional three months.
Metz was arraigned on a charge of escaping the jail this morning. His preliminary hearing is next week.
Thursday
July 4 1924, 1949 and 1974 — Independence Day, no issues available.