History
In June of 1942, Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, a 24-year-old British pilot, who was part of the 260 Squadron of the RAF Volunteer Reserves was tasked with flying P-40 Kittyhawk (serial code ET574), on a ferry flight to a neighboring British airbase to have the undercarriage repaired. The upcoming Summer Offensive that year, was to include the P-40s. Copping took off on June 28 and headed West. He was never seen again, even with extensive searches being undertaken. Both the aircraft and its pilot were reported missing. After a time, the search was called off, because they couldn’t find anything.
The lost flight stayed a mystery for almost 70 years. Then, in April 2012, workers of a Polish Oil company discovered the remarkably well-preserved remains of a P-40. It’s quite likely that they not only had no idea how it could have come to be there, nor when. Nevertheless, the desert’s extremely dry conditions had basically ‘mummified” the P-40, as it only showed minimal rust and decay.
The wings of the P-40 were half-buried under the sand, but they were still in very good condition, with the exception of the fact that the fabric-covered control surfaces had rotten away. Even the cockpit was still somewhat preserved, and the aircraft still had live ammunition loaded in the magazines of its six machine guns.
When the authorities were called in, they were easily able to link the downed P-40 Kittyhawk to Dennis 
Copping, because of its relatively good condition. They finally knew what had happened to Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping and his Kittyhawk exactly 69 years, 9 months, and 14 days later. The only thing missing was the pilot. It was then assumed that Copping had survived the crash, but where was he? The only thing they could assume was that he must have tried to walk out. The problem is that Copping was lost and alone in the middle of the largest desert on Earth. They began the search again, but this time with the plane as a starting point.
They found a small makeshift camp built next to the aircraft. Near it was the plane’s battery and radio. This meant that Copping probably attempted to broadcast for help. Unfortunately, the radio, or at least the internal workings of it had been destroyed by the crash landing. Finally, unable to call for help, Copping knew he would have to leave the plane and go for help. The teams continued their search, and a group of Italian historians uncovered a number of human bones five kilometers from the crash site. However, it was decided that those bones probably “did not belong” to Copping as they were “too old” to be his. Interestingly, the bones were never tested for any DNA. The historians were also able to find a section of the parachute, a keyfob, and a buckle stamped ‘1939,’ which were things Copping might have had with him at the time of his death.
Because of the desert’s dry conditions, the ET574 Kittyhawk was able to be fully restored. Of course, given the 
years and the fact that it was a crash, the restoration is far from perfect. and it sports a historically inaccurate camouflage scheme. Maybe someday, it will be restored to a historically accurate condition. Nevertheless, it is the last surviving example of a Desert Air Force P-40 Kittyhawk in existence. The mystery was finally solved.
The Civil War was fought for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason was the slave issue. During the war between the North and South, came President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and the freedom of the slaves…well, most of them, anyway. Of course, things like this come in stages. The Proclamation had the effect of “changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to ‘be received into the armed service of the 
United States.’ The Emancipation Proclamation played a significant part in the end of slavery in the United States.”
This all seemed simple enough, if the slave could escape, but they had to know about the Emancipation Proclamation, and the slaveowners in Texas decided not to tell them that they could be free. The Proclamation had the effect of changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to “be received into the armed service of the United States.” The people of Texas kept their slaves in the dark about everything, including the end of the Civil War Major General Gordon Granger, who had been tasked with enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation. Granger arrived in Galveston until June 19, 1865, where he formally announced that the slaves were free according to 
General Order Number 3. It was the first time many of them had heard this good news. Texans began celebrating June 19th as Juneteenth since that time. It became a state holiday in 1979.
On April 8, 1864, by the necessary two-thirds vote, the Senate passed the 13th Amendment. The House of Representatives passed it on January 31, 1865, and the required three-fourths of the states ratified it on December 6, 1865. The amendment made slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional, “except as a punishment for a crime.”
When RMS Titanic sank to the ocean floor after hitting an iceberg on April 15, 1912, it immediately became a “media sensation” for lack of a better term. Everyone wanted to know more about the ship. They wanted first to find it, and when it was finally located, everyone wanted to see and hear more about it. Once submarines were created to be able to go to that depth, the wreck was researched and view the world over. Still, people couldn’t “visit” the ship. It became an obsession similar I suppose to a trip to outer space. Still, you knew that at some point, someone would pave the way for excursions to the site of the Titanic wreck and with that would come the eventual possibility for anyone with enough money to purchase a ticket to make the journey for the sake of being able to actually say they “had been there.”
When Titan was created, that dream became a reality…for a time. Titan was a submersible operated by the private American tourism and expeditions company OceanGate. The company was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein. Beginning in 2010, OceanGate took paying customers in leased commercial submersibles off the coast of California, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Atlantic Ocean. OceanGate was in Everett, Washington. The trips were profitable, but Rush couldn’t get past the thought that visiting shipwreck sites would be a great way to generate media attention. OceanGate had gone to a few other shipwrecks, including its 2016 dive to the wreck of Andrea Doria aboard their other submersible Cyclops 1. Then in 2019, Rush told Smithsonian magazine: “There’s only one wreck that everyone knows … If you ask people to name something underwater, it’s going to be sharks, whales, Titanic.” And in the end, all three can prove deadly.
The unfortunate reality was that while Titan looked very cool and would likely be just the media draw that Rush had hoped for, the materials used in its construction were not what would be needed to make it a safe vehicle at the depth of the Titanic. Rush didn’t see that the vehicle was dangerous, even though several people told him it was unsafe. Some people who had planned to go even cancelled before that fateful trip, but unfortunately not all od them. In the end, five people, including Rush made the trip to see Titanic for themselves. Also aboard the submersible were Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French deep-sea explorer and Titanic expert, Hamish Harding, a British businessman; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani-British businessman and Dawood’s son, Suleman. One hour and 45 minutes into the dive, communication between Titan and its mother ship, MV Polar Prince, was lost. Everyone knew what that meant, but they couldn’t give up hope. When Titan 
failed to resurface at the scheduled time later that day the authorities were notified. Four days later, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) discovered a debris field containing parts of Titan, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. Of course, all onboard were crushed to death instantly. They would not have felt a thing.
For nearly a month beginning June 17, 1900, the man who would become President Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou were caught up in what was to become known as the Boxer Rebellion in China. During the Boxer Rebellion, the community of foreigners the Hoovers lived in, in the city of Tianjin, was besieged and under attack. You might wonder how a future president could be caught up in such a situation, but remember, he wasn’t president yet. He was a citizen. After they were married in Monterey, California, on February 10, 1899, Herbert and Lou Hoover left on a honeymoon cruise to China. Following their honeymoon, Hoover started his new job as a mining consultant to the Chinese emperor with the consulting group Bewick, Moreing and Company.
In 1900, a Chinese secret organization called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising in northern China against the spread of Western and Japanese influence there. The uprising would become known as the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The rebels performed calisthenics rituals and martial arts that they believed would give them the ability to withstand bullets and other forms of attack. Westerners referred to these rituals as shadow boxing, leading to the Boxers nickname. They also killed foreigners and Chinese Christians, and they destroyed foreign property.
The Boxers besieged the foreign district of China’s capital city Beijing, which was called Peking then, from June to August. It was at that point that an international force that included American troops ended the uprising. By the terms of the Boxer Protocol, which officially ended the rebellion in 1901, China agreed to pay more than $330 million in reparations. In the end, America returned the money it received from China after the Boxer Rebellion, on the condition it be used to fund the creation of a university in Beijing. Other nations involved later remitted their shares of the Boxer indemnity too.
Western nations and Japan had forced China’s ruling Qing dynasty to accept wide foreign control over the country’s economic affairs by the end of the 19th century. China had resisted the efforts throughout the Opium 
Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860, by means of popular rebellions and the Sino-Japanese War, but without a modernized military, China had suffered millions of casualties.
John Hay, the US Secretary of State from 1898 to 1905, began to implement an “Open Door Policy” to push for American and European influence over the Chinese trade and economic partnerships. The Open Door Policy called for a system of equal trade and investment and to guarantee the territorial integrity of Qing China. The policy was met with indifference or resistance by other key players, including the Qing Empress Dowager Tzu’u Hzi, but it brought continued Western influence over domestic Chinese affairs, and it set the stage for the rebellion.
The Boxers came from various parts of society, but many were peasants, particularly from Shandong province, which had been struck by natural disasters such as famine and flooding. These things made them particularly volatile. In the 1890s, China had given territorial and commercial concessions in this area to several European nations, and the Boxers blamed their poor standard of living on foreigners who were colonizing their country.
The siege stretched into weeks, and the diplomats (including the Hoovers), their families, and guards suffered through hunger and degrading conditions as they fought to keep the Boxers at bay, while the Western powers and Japan organized a multinational force to crush the rebellion. It is thought that several hundred foreigners and several thousand Chinese Christians were killed during this time. On August 14, after fighting its way through northern China, the rescue began, when an international force of approximately 20,000 troops from eight nations, including Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States arrived to take Beijing. The Boxer Rebellion formally ended with the signing of the Boxer Protocol on September 7, 1901. “By terms of the agreement, forts protecting Beijing were to be destroyed, Boxer and Chinese government officials involved in the uprising were to be punished, foreign legations were permitted to 
station troops in Beijing for their defense, China was prohibited from importing arms for two years and it agreed to pay more than $330 million in reparations to the foreign nations involved.” The Qing dynasty, which was established in 1644, was weakened by the Boxer Rebellion. Following an uprising in 1911, the dynasty came to an end and China became a republic in 1912.
When my grandfather first met Chief Red Cloud, it was an eye-opening experience for sure. I’m not exactly sure how old Grandpa was at the time, but since Red Cloud died when my grandfather was 16 years old, I have a timeframe to start with. Red Cloud was born near the forks of the Platte River in 1820 (exact date is unknown). He was one of a family of nine children whose father, an able and respected warrior. Red Cloud lived in an exemplary life. He was faithful to one wife all his days and was a devoted father to his children. He wanted great things for his only son, known as Jack Red Cloud. He wanted his sone to be a great warrior too and started him on the warpath at the age of fifteen. Of course, at this point, Red Cloud didn’t realize that the days of Indian warfare were very close to an end. Among the chiefs of his era, Red Cloud was known as a quiet man, simple and direct in speech, courageous in action, an ardent lover of his country. He possessed all the manly qualities characteristic of the American Indian in his best days. Red Cloud lived a long life and died on December 10, 1909, of natural causes.
Red Cloud, like most chiefs was a warrior in his day. He was famous for Red Cloud’s War that took place between 1866 and 1868. Nevertheless, Red Cloud was a wise man, and he saw that if his people were going to survive, they would have to make peace with and learn to coexist with the White Man. He was also a man who wanted peace. In 1887, he opposed the Dawes Act, which broke up communal tribal holdings and allocated 160-acre plots of land for subsistence farming to heads of families on tribal rolls. Then, the US declared additional communal tribal lands as excess and sold them to immigrant settlers. In 1889, Red Cloud opposed a treaty to sell more of the Lakota land. Red Cloud and Sitting Bull steadfastly opposed the 1889 treaty, but government agents obtained the necessary signatures for approval only through cheating, such as using the signatures of children. Red Cloud negotiated strongly with Indian Agents such as Dr Valentine McGillycuddy, who was an honest man and highly respected by the Lakota. For the rest of his life, Red Cloud advocated for 
Native American rights to the Black Hills. During this time, June 15, 1893, to be exact, my grandfather was born in Springfield, South Dakota. The advocating Red Cloud did in those years was less violent, and more intellectual, although not any more fruitful than any other advocating he did. There were very few White Men he trusted…among them, my great grandfather, Cornelius Byer.
My great grandfather was invited to the Pow Wows and invited to sit in on their tribal meetings. He was also so respected by the Native Americans, that when he was dying, they all came to see him…bringing their wives and children to tell him goodbye. When he passed away, they followed him as far as they could toward his final resting place in Iowa. That said, between the year of my grandfather’s birth and the death of Red Cloud, I believe when my grandfather was about 12 years old, my great grandfather took my grandfather to visit Red Cloud. The Native American culture was quite different than the White Man’s. When Great Grandpa and Grandpa went into Red Cloud’s teepee, he was sitting there under a blanket. Red Cloud stood up to get a peace pipe to offer to Great Grandpa and the other men in the room. That was all fairly normal, even for my grandfather, but the fact that Red Cloud was naked was not something my grandfather was used to. In fact, my Aunt Sandy tells me that she doesn’t remember ever seeing her dad shirtless. He always wore at least a t-shirt, whether indoors or outdoors, in Summer or Winter. I’m sure Grandpa’s eyes were as big as saucers, until his dad nudged him, basically telling him not to stare. Grandpa sat quietly while the men talked, and then the peace pipe was lit. As it was handed around the circle, Red Cloud handed it to my grandfather. My grandfather looked at his dad, and Great Grandpa nodded his head. With that one motion, my grandfather was allowed to 
take his first puff of a peace pipe. I don’t know if Grandpa ever met with Red Cloud again, although I assume he did, and I don’t know if he ever smoked a peace pipe again either, but he did that day, and it was a moment in his life that he never forgot. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he smoked the peace pipe again either. It was a story he told to his children many times through the years. It was a sign of respect from the Lakota toward my grandpa, and from my grandpa toward them. Today is the 131st anniversary of my grandfather’s birth. Happy birthday in Heaven, Grandpa Byer. We love and miss you very much.
As events from the past get further and further from the present, it’s easy to forget all about them, and for the younger generations…well, they never knew about them, unless they learned about them in history class. In my opinion and the opinion of many conservatives, one of the greatest presidents of all time, was President Ronald Reagan. As a young man, I’m sure no one would have expected that he would even pe president. He was, after all, an actor, and not a politician. Nevertheless, he stepped out of that role, and became first the governor of California, and later the President of the United States, and it was at a pivotable time in history that he was the president.
Our nation was in the middle of the Cold War, which had really fired up in 1945, at the end of World War II, and continued on until 1991. During that time, we experienced the Iran Hostage Crisis on November 4, 1979, that lasted until January 20, 1981, spanning a total of 444 days. The hostage rescue finally came after President Reagan ordered it, when he became president. He was not afraid to act. He saw something that was unacceptable, and he remedied it…just hours after his inaugural speech. It shouldn’t have taken 444 days to 
free these hostages, but until President Reagan stepped in, there was just one attempt, and it failed. The 52 hostages felt forgotten, until President Reagan and the men he sent in, rescued them.
During President Reagan’s two terms in office, he worked tirelessly to change many things for the better. He hated tyranny, no matter what country it invaded. He looked at the Berlin Wall for what it was tyranny. Those people had been taken hostage and separated from their friends and family for long enough. In one of his most well-known speeches, President Reagan called for the tyranny to end, when on June 12, 1987, he challenged Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” which had long been a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany. Of course, the wall didn’t come down immediately, and in fact, it wasn’t until November 9, 1989, that it actually came down.
President Reagan was at the helm when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after liftoff. It was a tragic event in the space program, and the people of this nation need to be consoled. President Reagan was just the man to give this nation the support it needed. His speech that day was supposed to have been the 1986 State of the Union speech, but President Reagan knew this was more important, so he delayed the State of the Union speech, and instead gave a speech to console us saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d planned to 
speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering.” He concluded his speech saying, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.'” President Reagan was truly a great president. President Reagan served two terms as president, from 1981 to 1989. He died on June 5, 2004, at age 93.
Car racing has been around since cars have been around, and for the most part, professional car racing has been a fairly safe event, but that isn’t always the case. One of the big races is the Le Mans 24 race, which was organized by France’s Automobile Club de L’Ouest, was first held in May 1923. Since that time, the race has been held nearly every June. The race is an unusual kind of race in that it begins at 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon. It lasts for the next 24 hours over a 13-kilometer course running through the country roads near Le Mans. The winner is the racer who covers the greatest distance in the 24-hour period. Some of the rules have changed for safety purposes. Originally each car could only have a single driver. Then the rule was changed in 1970, allowing each car to have two drivers. These days, three are required. Eddie Hall managed to complete the entire race alone in the 1950 edition of Le Mans 24 and is the only person in history to do so. Several other drivers have tried in the early years of the event, but then it was outlawed.
In 1952, during the one driver years, Pierre Levegh, a Frenchman driving alone, might have won the race, but he made one single mistake in the last hour. Levegh was invited to join the Mercedes-Benz team three years later. Their 300SLR was to be outfitted with a new innovation, an air brake that would enhance cornering. It must have been an exciting thought, but Levegh complained that the course was too narrow near the pit-stop area and the grandstand. He was worried about the tight turn. His observation was proven to be almost prophetic. In that very turn, as Levegh was racing for the lead near the tight pit-stop area, he swerved to avoid fellow racer Mike Hawthorn’s Jaguar moving toward the pits. Levegh’s car, which was traveling at about 150 miles per hour, hit Lance Macklin’s Austin-Healey and shot upward. The car crashed into the grandstand and car parts sprayed straight into the crowd. In the fiery crash, Levegh and more than 80 spectators, who were packed into the grandstand, lost their lives. The race went on despite the horrific accident, and in the end, it was thought that Hawthorn won. The remaining spectators had to stay where they were, because if they had left the area, they would have blocked the ambulances called to pick up the dead and injured.
Grand Prix races in Germany and Switzerland, which had been scheduled for later that year were cancelled. Spain and Mexico temporarily banned motor racing following the 1955 Le Mans tragedy. Of course, the bans didn’t last very long…just long enough for people to realize that safety had to be a priority, and to put safety measures in place to protect the crowds. That doesn’t mean that tragedy can’t happen at a race, but it is usually on a much smaller scale.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. Because of the horrific things the man known as “Heydrich the Hangman” had done, the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile had decided they needed to get rid of him. The assassination didn’t go quite as planned when the assassin’s gun jammed, but a bomb thrown succeeded, albeit after a few days, caused Heydrich to contract sepsis, which ultimately lead to his death on June 4, 1942.
There was no evidence that the people of the village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia had anything to do with his death, but that didn’t matter to Hitler. On June 10, 1942, Hitler sent his troops to obliterate the village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. They had apparently been chosen as the example to all others that killing Hitler’s men was not going to be tolerated. The troops went in and killed all the adult males and deported most of the surviving women and children to concentration camps. The retaliation against these innocent people for something they had no control over, was brutal!! The massacre was carried out just a day after the Nazis rounded up the residents of Lidice, which is located near Prague. During the raid, SS troops herded all the town’s male residents aged 16 years and older…a total of more than 170…to a local farm and gunned them all down. The Germans then shot seven women who tried to run, and deported the remaining women to Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was a women’s slave labor camp. At Ravensbrück about 50 prisoners died, and three were recorded as “disappeared.” Of some 105 children in the village, one was reported shot while trying to run away, and approximately 80 were reported murdered in Chelmno Killing Center, and a handful were reported murdered in German Lebensborn orphanages. A few of the orphans, who were deemed “racially pure” by Nazi standards, were dispersed throughout German territory to be renamed and raised as Germans. After the massacre, SS agents burned Lidice, blew up what was left with dynamite, and leveled the debris. The destruction was to be complete at all costs.
On child, Marie Supikova, a Lidice survivor, was just 9 during the massacre. She tells of the horrible train ride to Poland after her father was executed and her mother was sent to Ravensbrück. “We cried and cried because we were very scared, upset and confused,” Supikova told BBC in a 2012 interview. Because she looked “racially 
pure” she was spared. She was sent to a German family living in Poland and had her name changed to Ingeborg Schiller. “We all had blonde hair and blue eyes. We looked like the type that they could German-ize easily and raise as a good German girl or boy,” she said. Today, the Lidice Memorial honors the memory of the victims killed in the totally senseless annihilation of the village of Lidice.
As the westward movement progressed different areas began to emerge as important places along the trail to places like Utah, Oregon, and California. One of those important places, as it turns out, was Casper, in what would one day be the state of Wyoming. On the journey west, water was essential, and so the wagon trains often followed and even crossed the rivers as the terrain necessitated. Because the future city of Casper was located on the banks of the North Platte River, it was a logical location for a town, that later became a city. In order to locate a cut through the Rocky Mountains, the Platte River proved to be the key.
As the trail of emigrants made their way across the continent, Casper was formed, and a man named John Baptist Richard could see that the river could be a necessity as a water source, but also a hinderance in that crossing it wasn’t always easy. A ferry had been established in 1847 to get emigrants across the Platte River on their way west on the Oregon-California Trail, but later Richard two bridges were erected in the 1850’s to improve the passage of settlers on their westward march. The first bridge was built in 1851 just east of present-day Casper, in the area of present-day Evansville. The second bridge became much more successful bridge and was built in 1859-1860. This bridge came to be known as the “Platte Bridge” and was a important mark on the Oregon-California trail. Later, with the establishment of the Platte Bridge Station in 1858, renamed Fort Caspar by the military in 1864 the fort and the bridge were major forces that contributed to the formation of Casper. Fort Caspar was abandoned in 1867, but the town of Casper remained, and was prosperous.
The military no longer needed the fort, and shortly thereafter, the bridges burned by the Indians. A short time later, white settlers began to develop the area. It turned out that the area was perfect for ranching. From the 1860’s through the 1880’s large cattle ranches were established near Casper. Ranches such as the Sun Ranch on the Sweetwater, the Goose Egg Ranch of the Seebright Brothers at Bessemer Bend, the Carey Ranch near the old Platte Bridge, and the Brooks Ranch east of modern-day Casper dotted the landscape.
It was about this time that John Merritt and C W Eads learned of this railroad expansion. It is believed that they were the first to arrive in what would eventually be known as Casper. On the afternoon of June 7, 1888, they pitched a tent at a spot near what is today known as McKinley and “A” Streets and established the town of Casper. As the city grew, this area would become known as “Old Town.” The town grew slowly and for two decades was one of a number of small villages dotting the plains serving local cattle operations. As in most frontier towns, the standard businesses were quickly established…four saloons and restaurants, three livery stables, one grocery store, and two general stores. As was also common, most buildings were frame construction. At that time, there were fewer than a thousand people living in the town. Marvin Lord Bishop Sr moved to Casper, Wyoming on September 1, 1892, after being appointed postmaster by President Grover Cleveland the 22nd President of the United States and a member of the Democratic Party. He later changed his affiliation to the Republican Party. His party affiliation resulted in his appointment to this prestigious position of postmaster in the developing community of Casper. While he was not the first postmaster, he was the first person to stay in the position for more than two years and is credited with bringing stability and permanence to the office as the fledgling community developed. The postmaster was on duty from 7:00am to 9:00pm…so much for bankers hours there. The salary ranged from $50.00 to $100.00 per month which would be between $1750 and $3500 today…not a bad wage, especially considering that little mail was handled in those early days. Trips to town were not an everyday occurrence for the ranchers, so when they came in, about every four months, their first stop was often the post office to get the mail that had accumulated since the last visit or since a neighbor had last brought it to them.
In addition to the post office, Mr Bishop also had a small store attached to the post office, that he also operated. It was called M. L. Bishop’s Cash Store for “Fine Family Groceries” and was one of the few businesses established in Casper in the 1890s. Bishop also helped to establish one of the earliest churches in Casper, the First Methodist Episcopal Church, now known as the First United Methodist Church. He was one of five men in Casper who met in the early spring of 1893 to discuss the importance of establishing a religious community in the developing town of Casper and to formulate plans for the formation of this church. In 1896, the church had 22 members, out of which the Bishop family, now numbering six, held a significant presence.
Because the position of postmaster was a political patronage position, Bishop began to make plans for his future, in the event of a political climate change. In May 1894 he entered into sheep ranching, purchasing land from Edward T David, another early pioneer and foreman for the Carey Ranch. His resignation as Postmaster in August 1898 began a period of 40 years when M L Bishop became a woolgrower with holdings in the Pathfinder Dam area southwest of Casper and the owner of the sheep shearing pens located at Casper Creek. Over the years, and due to some twists of fate, like the Civil War, and the movement of wool growing from the East to the Western plains and mountains, brought much wealth to the Bishop family. With Bishop’s businesses were thriving and he decided to purchase land at 818 East Second Street for a new home in 1906. He bought two adjacent lots on East Second Street in Casper in the Capitol Hill Addition from another early pioneer, Robert White. The contractor for the Bishop Home was W T Evans, founder of Evansville, Wyoming. Mr Evans built numerous other buildings in the burgeoning town of Casper such as the Town Hall in 1890 and the Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in 1891. In addition, he built the first one-story, four-room brick home at First and Wolcott streets for his daughter and son-in-law in the late 1890’s. This home was considered one of the largest homes in Casper until Mr. Evans built the two and one-half story Bishop home with fifteen rooms. The Bishop house, built in 1907, is believed to be his first venture into large-scale, multi-story family homes.
By 1929, the year the stock market crashed, the oil boom was coming to an end, also. The boom had been furious, powerful, and seemingly endless, and before it faded from sight, that boom had made Casper, Wyoming what it was and largely what it remains today. Always a “boom and bust” town, Casper would survive whatever came its way.
In 1938, Bishop was elected County Commissioner and his years of accumulated knowledge of sheep ranching were recorded that same year by the Wyoming Works Progress Administration (WPA). He died the following year. With his death, the strains on the economy from the great depression, and the decline in the Wyoming sheep production, the family could not maintain the ranch and shearing pens. Wyoming. Bishop’s wife, Leona, continued to live in the home until her death in 1948. In total the couple had ten children. All children resided in Wyoming and were prominent in their communities with the exception of one daughter who died in infancy. T
heir youngest daughter, Lucile L Bishop, lived in the family home from the time of her birth in October 1908 until her death in 1997. Then, the M L Bishop House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its association with the development of Casper and the surrounding area from a small village to a livestock center, and eventually, to an oil town. The home is still open for tours, and I plan to go in the near future.
Not every soldier that stormed the beaches at Normandy, France on D-Day (June 6, 1944), carried a gun…or any other weapon. I’m not saying these men were more brave that their armed counterparts, because all of those men were targets. They all knew, going in that it was very unlikely that they would come home again. They were running onto an armed beach in broad daylight, with the plan of taking down the strongholds that existed there. The main difference between the armed soldiers and the medics was the inability to protect themselves. The medics weren’t there to fight. They were there to save. The were the only thing standing between the armed soldiers and certain death. Just the thought of that brings tears to my eyes. All the men who stormed those beaches faced almost certain death, and yet they knew they had to go. They couldn’t live with themselves if they didn’t do their best, be it killing the enemy soldiers or saving the wounded soldiers.
Most soldiers are trained to shoot, fight, and kill the enemy, but a combat medic is very different. He is trained to do the exact opposite. The medics had no guns. They went in to “battle” unarmed, and their mission wasn’t to attack the enemy, it was to dodge the bullets that were flying everywhere and get to the soldiers who had been wounded. Then they tried to get them off the battlefield so they could treat their wounds, and hopefully save their lives. Sometimes, they had to treat them where they were. Bullets don’t distinguish between a soldier and a medic.
There are, of course, far too many medics who have bravely gone in to try to save other soldiers at the risk of losing their own lives. While the armed soldiers fight the battles, medics pick up the pieces during and after the battle. It’s the medics who gather up the belongings of those they cannot save, so they can be returned to the families. They don’t really have much time before they must move on to the next wounded soldier, and so often they grab the dog tags, because it is the only true way to know who this soldier was. It’s the only way to let their family know that their brave soldier gave the ultimate sacrifice in battle.
My dad, Staff Sergeant Allen Spencer was a top turret gunner and flight engineer in one of the B-17s that 
provided cover for the men as they stormed the beaches of Normandy that fateful day. My uncle, Jim Wolfe was one of the men below, storming the beaches. I don’t know if they knew each other then, but they would later, when my Uncle Jim married my dad’s sister, Ruth. It’s very hard to think about this battle, because so many lives were lost. I don’t know how anyone made it onto that beach without getting pelted with a barrage of bullets, but I am thankful for the medics who were there to try to pick up the pieces. Today marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day. From a grateful nation, we honor all who fought in that horrific battle. Very brave men all!!
