Michael Sam, the first openly gay football player to be drafted by the NFL, will speak in the Standing In Your Truth lecture series at Missouri Western State University next week.

The event is scheduled at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13 in the Kemper Recital Hall, Spratt Hall room 101. The event is free and open to the public.

Sam was an All-American football player at the University of Missouri and was named the Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year as a senior.

Before the 2014 NFL Draft, he publicly came out as gay. He was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round. Sam was cut by the Rams after the team’s training camp, and was briefly on the Dallas Cowboys practice squad.

He signed with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League in 2015, and became the first openly gay player to play in the CFL on Aug. 7 of that year.

A 54-year-old Missouri inmate serving a 12-year sentence for drug crimes has died in custody.

According to a news release from the Missouri Department of Corrections, Robert D. Moore died at 11:37am Tuesday at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron.

Mr. Moore was a 54-year-old male serving a 12-year sentence for convictions in Greene County.

He was convicted on charges of possession of a controlled substance, possessing chemicals with intent to produce a controlled substance and producing a controlled substance with a child in the house or within 2000 feet of a school.

Mr. Moore was first received in the Missouri Department of Corrections on July 16, 2009.

The news release says he died of apparent natural causes.

The costume contest being organized for the newly-rescheduled South Side Festival is on, and we’re not clowning around.

Organizers were forced to reschedule the festival to the weekend of October 21 because of flooding at Hyde Park. Because the new dates were closer to Halloween, a costume contest was proposed and has been gaining momentum.

There was a social media posting that declared the contest had been cancelled because of recent threats of violence at the hands of people dressed as clowns. But officials with the festival say they have not cancelled the contest.

We expect to make a formal announcement soon.

https://www.facebook.com/stjoepost/videos/1146153645465298/

 

Gov. Jay Nixon today announced a more than $1 million investment through Missouri Start Smart to expand access to quality early childhood education opportunities in Maryville.

“Access to early childhood education is a vital component of ensuring children are ready to start kindergarten with the skills they need to be successful,” Gov. Nixon said. “We’re proud to make this more than $1 million Start Smart investment here in Maryville to help St. Francis Hospital continue their mission of offering quality, affordable early learning opportunities to area families.”

The Governor announced that through the Missouri Start Smart initiative, the Missouri Department of Economic Development has awarded a $1 million Community Development Block Grant to the City of Maryville on behalf of SSM Health St. Francis Hospital. In addition, a $250,000 Neighborhood Assistance Program tax credit will help the hospital construct a new, 15,817-square-foot early learning and Early Head Start center, increasing the available early learning slots offered by SSM Health from 67 to 136.

For the past 30 years, St. Francis Hospital has provided early learning opportunities within the community at a small facility that was formerly a single-family home built in the late 1950s. Due to the age and size of this facility, the ability of SSM Health to expand early learning opportunities has been extremely limited. The new early learning and Early Head Start center, made possible by the Start Smart grant, will be operated in partnership with Community Services, Inc. Additionally, early childhood education majors attending Northwest Missouri State University will be able to complete hands-on, practical experience in early childhood education.

“As a long-term goal of ours, we want to continue to provide this service to the community we serve,” said Mike Baumgartner, president of SSM Health St. Francis Hospital. “In collaboration with our partners, this new preschool facility will allow us to provide a high quality learning environment for the children in our area.”