Reminiscing
Our aunt, Margee Kountz became an aunt at a very young age…just 18 months, to be exact. Of course, I’m sure she really didn’t know about it for a while, and by the time she did know, it was simply the normal for her. Margee is not the youngest aunt in history, of course, because some kids are actually born as aunts or uncles. Still, it is an interesting fact of life for Margee. She grew up around not one, but a number of nieces and nephews. By the time Margee was eighteen years old, in 1967, she had four nieces and one nephew. Another niece and two nephews would be added in quick succession but also added to her life at about the same time, would be her own children, Dan and Sandi Kountz.
Becoming a mother was probably not all that much different from helping out with her 
nieces and nephews, except for the fact that she had to take care of her own kids full time…not going home after babysitting, like she did with nieces and nephews. Maybe that’s why Margee was such a good mom both while she was married, and later as a single mom. Margee has always had a helping heart, and a heart for kids. In reality, she is just a kindhearted person in every way. She helped raise her grandchildren and helped care for her sister, my mother-in-law, Joann Schulenberg when we needed her help during mom’s Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t know what we would have done without Margee, and it was comforting to my mother-in-law, because she knew Margee, and we didn’t have to use a home health nurse or respite care worker as much.
Those years of caring for others are behind Margee now, but she still has her health for the most part. She is the last of the siblings in her family, because her sisters, Joann and Linda are both in Heaven now. We are thankful to still have Margee with us. She is the last link to her entire generation. These days, Margee does all the common things people younger than she is, do online. She is on Facebook, she texts, and she uses a cell phone. At 76 years of age, many people have no idea how to operate in the computer age, but Margee is sharp as a tack, and she is still going strong on the tech stuff. That’s something to be proud of. Today is Margee’s 76th birthday. Happy birthday Margee!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
Having started out his life in South Dakota, and having family there, my husband’s uncle, Bobby Cole was very much at home in the rural areas of that state. That is likely why he and Aunt Linda Cole moved to Kennebec, South Dakota after they got married. They liked the small-town feel and the peace and quiet. I can understand that. The times we went for visits, were very laid-back and relaxing, although I don’t think I could live there. There isn’t much to do, and if you aren’t visiting someone with whom you can play cards or something, it could get pretty boring. We liked it, because we were just visiting, but to live there…probably not.
Bobby, Linda, and their kids, Sheila and Pat lived there until the hotel they owned caught fire after being struck by lightning. They could have rebuilt it, I guess, but the population of the area and the hotel’s distance from the interstate made rebuilding impractical. So, they moved from their beloved Kennebec to Winnemucca, Nevada. Of course, that is a much bigger place, but the reality is that home is where you are. You may not like where you are, but it is still where home is. Nevertheless, they grew to like Winnemucca. They got jobs in the casinos, and they found that they liked that. They gambled a little, and won a little, which is nice.
Bobby and Linda were always fun people to be around, and we enjoyed the visits we made to their home both in Kennebec and Winnemucca. I’m so glad that we took the time to really get to know Bobby, Linda, and their kids. We always felt like we had been a blessing to them, as they were to us. Bobby left us eleven years ago on May 30, 2014, following a courageous battle with cancer. He passed away in Colorado Springs, Colorado while seeking treatment. Today would have been Bobby’s 82nd birthday. Happy birthday in Heaven, Bobby. We love and miss you very much.
Normally, we think of tornadoes or cyclones as a summertime event, but there is a different kind of a cyclone, known as a bomb cyclone, that can happen in the winter too. The Burns’ Day Storm, which began as Cyclone Daria, was an extremely violent windstorm that took place on January 25-26, 1990, over north-western Europe. Daria was one of the strongest European windstorms on record. It caused many fatalities in the UK and Europe. Because Europe has no official list of storm names, this storm was given several names. Cyclone Daria started on the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns, so it was dubbed The Burn’s Day Storm. It caused widespread damage and hurricane-force winds over a wide area. The storm was responsible for 47 deaths according to the Met Office (the United Kingdom’s national weather and climate service), although figures have ranged from 89 to over 100 deaths across Europe.
The storm began as a cold front over the Northern Atlantic Ocean on January 23rd. By the 24th, it had a minimum central pressure of 992 mbar and began to undergo explosive cyclogenesis, sometimes referred to as a weather bomb. That is what makes it so dangerous. Cyclone Daria made landfall on the morning of the 25th over Ireland. It then tracked over to Ayrshire in Scotland. The lowest pressure of 949 mbar was estimated near Edinburgh around 4:00pm. After pounding the United Kingdom, the storm tracked rapidly east towards Denmark. Thus, causing major damage and 30 deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Cyclone Daria’s strongest sustained winds recorded were between 70 and 75 mph, which is basically a weak Category 1 hurricane or Hurricane-force 12 on the Beaufort Scale. Strong gusts of up to 104 miles per hour were also reported. It was these strong gusts caused the most extensive damage. During the Great Storm of 1987, many anemometers stopped recording due to power outages, breakages due to excess wind speeds and measurement maxima being exceeded, but by the 1990 Cyclone Daria, the meteorological community had newer devices that remained independent of external power and could measure higher wind speeds. It is believed that wind speeds measured during the Burns’ Day Storm provided an accurate picture.
The Burns’ Day Storm of 1990 has been given as an example of when the Met Office “got the prediction right”. We often joke about the weather service, and just how famously inaccurate they can be, but we do appreciate them when they get it right, if we heed their warnings anyway. In this case, the model forecast hinged on observations from two ships in the Atlantic near the developing storm the day before it reached the UK.
During the day of the storm the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) increased warnings to force 11 and then to hurricane force 12. Research has shown that most of the general public simply couldn’t comprehend just how bad this storm was. Cyclones, after all don’t usually happen in winter. While unusual, the aftermath of this storm led to more awareness about the understanding of storminess among the public by the KNMI (Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut), who started a teletext page and the introduction of special warnings for extreme weather events in reaction to these findings.
The casualties in Cyclone Daria were much higher than those of the Great Storm of 1987, partly because the storm hit during the daytime. More people were out and about. The storm caused extensive damage, with approximately 3 million trees downed, power disrupted to over 500,000 homes and severe flooding in England and West Germany. The storm cost insurers in the UK £3.37 billion, which was the UK’s most expensive 
weather event to insurers. Most of the deaths were caused by collapsing buildings or falling debris. There were a few miracles too, however. In one case in Sussex, a class of children was evacuated just minutes before their school building collapsed. Actor Gorden Kaye was also injured during the storm, when a plank of an advertising board was blown through his car’s windshield.
Apparently, earthquake documentation began about 4,000 years ago. That is a fact about which I had no idea. I’m sure the early documentation was somewhat primitive, because they would simply have to be recorded in journal of sorts. Many don’t realize that the process of measuring began nearly 2000 years ago, with the invention of the first actual seismoscope in 132 AD by a Chinese inventor called Zhang (‘Chang’) Heng. The device was remarkably accurate in detecting earthquakes from afar, and did not rely on shaking or movement in the location where the device was situated. Of some of the earliest recorded earthquakes, the deadliest occurred in China on January 23, 1556. While this quake was not the largest ever recorded, it was a powerful quake that rocked the province of Shaanxi and the neighboring province of Shanxi. The reason it was such a deadly quake was not the size, but rather the death toll, which was an estimated 830,000 people.
The 1556 Shaanxi quake was historically referred to as the Jiajing Great Earthquake because it occurred during Emperor Jiajing’s reign in the Ming dynasty. While death tolls might not be as accurate as they are today, the approximate death toll comes from local annals that also tracked 26 earthquakes in the region. Those records described the earthquake as being “starkly different” from others, saying that it leveled mountains, caused floods and fires that burned for days, and a drastically altered landscape. The annals estimated that some counties lost about 60% of their population.
Due to the inability to have accurate fatality recordings, the death toll is in question, but no one questions the 
fact that the Shaanxi earthquake is considered the deadliest earthquake, because it is certain that the casualties are much higher than any other disaster. Following the Shaanxi quake, the second deadliest recorded earthquake was the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed an estimated 230,000 people across Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. It is amazing to me that the next deadliest quake took so long to occur, considering the fact that making earthquake resistant structures didn’t begin immediately. Still, it is a blessing that many earthquakes don’t bring those huge death tolls.
In the 1930s, the Richter scale was developed, and the magnitude of quakes became much clearer. Scientists theorized that the Shaanxi earthquake was likely between 8.0 to 8.3 in magnitude…definitely not the strongest ever recorded, but no less destructive. The most powerful earthquake recorded on the Richter scale was the 9.5-magnitude Valdivia Earthquake that struck Chile in 1960, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). The seismic event created a tsunami which together killed an estimated 5,700 people…a far lesser number than the Shaanxi quake…amazingly. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami registered a 9.3 magnitude. So, the size of the quake cannot totally correlate to the death toll. The death toll is based more on the population in the area and the quality of the structures.
As to the Shaanxi quake, while it wasn’t the strongest recorded earthquake, its high death toll likely resulted from the destruction of the area’s densely populated communities and poorly constructed stone buildings. The people of the Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces responded to the disastrous quake by rebuilding in ways that would 
lessen the impact of future earthquakes, according to local records. Rather than us stone to rebuild, they used softer materials like bamboo and wood, which were more resistant to tremors and would cause less damage if knocked down again. They knew that they couldn’t prevent earthquakes, but they could make their impact less severe.
“At the very beginning of the earthquake, people indoors should not go out immediately. Just crouch down and wait for chances. Even if the nest is collapsed, some eggs in it may still be kept intact,” said earthquake survivor and scholar, Qin Keda, who wrote about his experience and came up with safety tips for people to follow in the event of another disaster.
The next time you are upset about short winter days, think about Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska…why do they keep changing the names of everything. The residents of America’s northernmost town had their final sunset last year on November 18, 2024, at 1:27pm. They will not see the Sun again until January 22, 2025, at 1:15pm. For those wondering, that is 65 straight days, or 1,560 hours, of darkness! If you happen to suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), you know that the shorter winter days can feel depressing. So just imagine having no sun at all for 65 days!!
For most of us, it would be hard to imagine, going through that once, but every year? Yes, in Utqiagvik this is a yearly event. The reason is that everyone who lives above the Arctic Circle, will experience a day when the Sun sets for the rest of the winter. It is a fact of life, and those people who live there year-round, either like it and the novelty of it, or they accept it as a fact of life. Of course, on the flip side, the opposite event is also true, and the sun will return, and eventually will not set for days on end.
Due to its location, just 1,300 miles south of the polar North Pole, Utqiagvik experiences this long polar night. 
Another contributing factor is the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun at a 23.5° tilt. During winter, areas near the poles tilt away from the Sun, leaving them with little or no sunlight. For the North Pole, this period lasts from September to March, so during that time, their daily amount of sunlight is limited, and at some points, severely limited, or nonexistent.
While Utqiagvik residents did not see the Sun during this polar night period, they did still have some light during the day. This is due to the strange phenomenon known as “civil twilight” or the bending of the Sun’s rays around the Earth, so that they appear just above the horizon. The “civil twilight” creates beautiful blue, orange, and pink hues as the Sun’s rays scatter through Earth’s atmosphere. Initially, this twilight will last for about six hours each day. But by mid-December, it will shorten to just three hours as the North Pole tilts further away from the Sun.
Because of its location, Utqiagvik is the first Alaskan town to experience a polar night each year. Nevertheless, it is not the only one. In the late weeks of November, residents of Kaktovik, Point Hope, and Anaktuvuk Pass will also say goodbye to the Sun for a few months. Northern regions of Finland, Norway, Sweden, and parts of 
Scotland also experience this phenomenon, though for shorter periods of time.
While the lack of sunshine would seem punishing for most of us, there is a consolation prize for these hearty residents of the most remote parts of the planet. While the “polar night” is an annual phenomenon, so is the “midnight sun.” The “midnight sun” is their reward for their endurance of the “polar night.” During the summer months, they get to enjoy the “midnight sun” from May 12, 2025, to July 31, 2025, during which time the Sun remains visible both day and night. For Utqiagvik, this will mean no sunset for 82 consecutive days!! The good news…their days of sunshine are actually more than the days of darkness.
My uncle, Bill Spencer was a unique character. He liked things that some people might find boring, but then again, lots of people would really enjoy. When he was just eight years old, he discovered his mother’s “little black book” in which she kept the names of her ancestors as she knew them up to that time. He really became obsessed with the book and the wealth of family history information he found there, but that was not enough for this young family historian. He began to work on finding more sources for information. He talked to anyone he could think of. He check places like libraries, church records, court houses. He looked for things like land records, baptisms, birth certificates, death records, and census records. There were no computers with which to search in those days, so it was not a job for the faint of heart. You really needed to be dedicated, and he was dedicated.
Uncle Bill’s obsession with family history remained a lifelong project for him. He traveled to a number of places in search of the graves of ancestors. Some of his greatest treasures were pictures of him with the headstone of an ancestor he had tracked down after a long search of a cemetery. Those pictures, and the detail they contained, became treasures to me too, and in one instance they helped me walk right to the grave of my 2nd 
great grandfather, Allen Spencer (misspelled on the stone as Spenser). I was in the cemetery, and didn’t have any other information, but a hillside and a building made me take a little walk, because it just looked right. It was. I was amazed. Once again, Uncle Bill’s attention to detail saved the day.
Uncle Bill photocopied pictures, documents, and records, and made an ancestor information page for each ancestor he found. As I said, computers didn’t come out until much later on. Much of Uncle Bill’s information is handwritten, which he has always felt was better anyway. Uncle Bill considered the handwritten words almost as much a treasure, as the words themselves. I began to understand what he meant by that, the first time I saw a document with the signature of an ancestor on it. Just knowing that my ancestor had actually signed the very document that I saw, was stunning. Still, while I saw the value of the handwritten letters and such that my uncle wanted, I found it hard to accommodate his desire for letters. Those I wrote were often typed on my computer. I guess it was a side effect of my techy mentality.
Family history, and history in general, wasn’t Uncle Bill’s only area of interest. He loved antiques, collecting and selling them. He also was a gun dealer, and he loved all kinds of guns. That may have started when he found out that the Spencer rifle was invented by his 2nd great grandfather (my 3rd) Christopher Spencer, who actually demonstrated it to President Abraham Lincoln on the White House lawn…an unheard-of idea these 
days. And Uncle Bill was a bit of an inventor…or maybe re-inventor to be more precise. He built a tractor to be used on the farm, using a 1927 Dodge 4-cylinder engine with a 6-volt electrical system, truck tires, and a 1915 5-ton Wilcox pickup body. It was interesting to say the least. Still, I’m sure that because it did the job he wanted it to, he felt like it was quite the accomplishment. Today would have been my Uncle Bill’s 103rd birthday. He went to Heaven on Christmas day 2020, just one month short of his 99th birthday. Happy birthday in Heaven, Uncle Bill. We love and miss you very much.
It is a tradition in the United States, that every four years on January 20, there is a transition of power. The incoming president is sworn in and afterward, the outgoing president leaves the White House…or sometimes the outgoing president leaves before the swearing in of the new president. Unfortunately, not every transition is an amiable one or even a peaceful one. I suppose that is because neither side likes to lose. In fact, when the opposing party takes over the White House these days, it usually isn’t a peaceful transition. Often there are protesters and sometimes things get out of hand…and of course, there is plenty of blame to go around. The truth is often very obscured, and the blame is laid on the wrong party. You can like what I say, or not, but the reality is that there is plenty of proof concerning the January 6th event of 2021, and the wrong people were accused.
We all have our own opinion on the 2020 election, and I won’t dispute that or its outcome, but now the people of this nation have spoken…again, in a truly fair election, and we are about to put President Donald J Trump back in the White House. The transition actually began when he won the United States presidential election on November 5, 2024, becoming the president-elect. Because of our system, his formal election came when the Electoral College voted on December 17, 2024. The results were certified by a joint of Congress on January 6, 2025, and the transition is scheduled to conclude with Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025.
I think this country is so ready for the changes President Trump will bring back. His first term in office showed 
the people just how prosperous the country could be. We were almost energy independent; gas prices were low, patriotism was high, and things made sense. All that went away when Biden took office. It was as if the whole country went crazy. Now that President Trump is coming back, things are turning around so quickly that it is awe inspiring. The whole feel of things in this country is taking a 180° turn…overnight. It is amazing. The people he has chosen for his cabinet totally add to the air of excitement. And of course, we are very excited with his vice-presidential choice. Vice President JD Vance came up from poor roots, but worked hard to make something of himself, and I think he will be an amazing vice president. This president will bring back common sense.
Trump became the presumptive nominee of his party on March 12, 2024, and formally accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention in July. On August 16th, Trump announced the formation of the transition team with Linda McMahon, Trump’s former head of the Small Business Administration, and Howard Lutnick, the billionaire CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Group, officially named as co-chairs. Vice presidential nominee JD Vance, along with sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, were designated as honorary co-chairs. The effort beginning at this time was considered unusually late, as historically, most transition efforts start in late spring. Nevertheless, this team is very capable, and they will have everything in readiness. Attorney Robert F Kennedy Jr and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard were added as honorary co-chairs on August 27th. Both are former Democrats who had recently endorsed Trump. Kennedy had initially launched an independent presidential campaign before withdrawing to endorse Trump. Kennedy is reportedly in for a Cabinet position in this administration.
Watching the inauguration today felt like the opening of prison doors. The nation has been under such oppression, and negativity. The future seemed hopeless, but all that changed at 12:01pm in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC. President Trump outlined the things he plans to do, and with each on, we began to 
feel hope again. He is so sharp, and when he sees something that is wrong, he goes after it. He works to correct the problem and repair the situation. President Trump is a very hands-on, go get ’em kind of guy, and he is not politically correct, an action that has had a crippling effect on this nation. With President Trump’s return to the White House comes dignity, hope, patriotism, transparency, honesty, and truthfulness. I say bring it on President Trump. We are ready for you!!
Hedy Lamarr was often called “the most beautiful woman in the world.” In September of 1940, she was a 26-yr-old actress was thriving in Hollywood, starring in such films as Tortilla Flat, Lady of the Tropics, Boom Town, and Samson and Delilah, with actors like Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey. Lamarr was a Jewish immigrant from Nazi-occupied Austria. She had been making America her home since 1938, and enjoying her new-found freedom and safety, when the world…or at least the Nazi part of the world came crashing down on her. Lamar was still living in safety, but she heard about an op in which Nazi U-boats hunted down and sank a cruise ship trying to evacuate 90 British schoolchildren to Canada. The sinking took the lives of 77 children who drowned in the bleak north Atlantic. Lamar was outraged and vowed to fight back.
Lamar was more than just a pretty face. She was a talented engineer and had the 
skills necessary to develop a sonar sub-locator which was used in the Atlantic for the benefit of the Allies. The principles of her work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi, CDMA, and Bluetooth technology, and this work led to her to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, the only child of Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler née Lichtwitz and Emil Kiesler. As a child, Lamarr was interested in acting and was fascinated by theatre and film. She also won a beauty contest in Vienna, when she was 12. Her father wanted her dreams to come true, but he wisely wanted her to know more. They began to take long walks during which he would explain how technology worked.
On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married a rich admirer named Friedrich Mandl at the Karlskirche. She was 18 years old, and he was 33. As marriages go, this 
was her biggest mistake. Mandl was controlling and made her quit acting. He controlled her life is many other ways too, but while she felt like a virtual prisoner in their castle, he did take her on business trips where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. The meetings became her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science. Mandl had close social and business ties to the Italian government, selling munitions to the country, and although like Hedy, his own father was Jewish, had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany, as well. Lamarr was no longer able to tolerate her husband’s controlling ways and eventually made her escape from her unbearable marriage to Mandl. By 1938, she had made her way to the United States, and it was there that she was able to pursue both her acting career and what would become her contribution to the world…the sonar locater. Lamarr died Casselberry, Florida of heart disease on January 19, 2000, at the age of 85. Her son Anthony Loder spread her ashes in Austria’s Vienna Woods in accordance with her last wishes.
Winter counts, known to the Lakota Sioux as waníyetu wówapi or waníyetu iyáwapi, are pictorial calendars, but not in the traditional sense. For the Native Americans, they were really more a historical record of each year, as it went along. They were tribal records and events that were recorded on buffalo skins. The Blackfeet, Mandan, Kiowa, Lakota, and other Plains tribes used winter counts extensively. There are approximately one hundred winter counts in existence, many of which are duplicates.
Winter counts were traditionally painted on bison hides. They displayed a sequence of years by depicting their most remarkable events. Waniyetu translates to ‘winter’ while ‘wowapi’ refers to “anything that is marked and can be read or counted.” Most winter counts have a single pictograph symbolizing each year, based on the most memorable event of that year, which would indicate that the winter counts would be painted at the end of the current year or the beginning of the coming year. For the Lakota people, years ran from first snowfall to first snowfall, making the Lakota years a variable timeframe. If the snow came early, the year might be longer, and if the snow came late, the year might be shorter. Kiowa winter counts usually feature two marks per year…one for winter and one marking the summer Sun Dance. The glyphs representing significant events would be used as a reference that could be consulted regarding the order of the years.
Similar to other traditions among the Indigenous nations of North America, winter counts used as mnemonic records to structure fuller accounts of history that would be passed on orally. (Mnemonic is a device such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations that assists in remembering something, for example Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain for the colors of the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)). The Indigenous peoples of North America had many ways of recording history during the pre-contact period, and they did not depend on alphabetic writing. Since they didn’t use written records, oral tradition became an extremely important aspect of Indigenous lifeways. In fact, it was the main way that knowledge was passed from generation to generation. Oftentimes, pictorial or other mnemonic devices were used as guideposts for 
these practices. This is significantly present in the Sioux cultural tradition of oral history preservation through the form of winter counts. Located in the Northern Great Plains, Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota people physically recorded yearly events on various materials before and continuing past the point of contact with settlers.
While winter counts reveal the year number when studied and compared to other sources, the similarities between some winter counts also demonstrate inter-band relations. Some bands in the Great Plains region had close ties through alliances, their winter counts could often be very similar. Scholars have noted that the Lone Dog, The Flame, The Swan, and Major Bush winter counts are so similar for this reason. These bands lived close by and often interacted with each other, so it stands to reason that many of their experiences would be the same, or similar.
Lakota winter counts reveal deeply rooted historical ties with European traders that predated the Lewis and Clark Expedition. These reveal a period that foreshadowed the extreme marginalization and oppression of Indigenous People in America. This period exemplifies a history that highlights the relationships between bands and settlers, along with their political social dynamics. By the late 1870 to early 1880s, copies winter counts, such as those by American Horse, Cloud Shield, Battiste, were commissioned by European collectors as Indigenous ethnographic objects.
Traditionally, each of the bands would choose a single keeper of the winter count. These keepers were always men, until the twentieth century. They would consult with tribal elders to reach a consensus for choosing a name for the year. The keeper was then allowed to choose his successor in recording the count. That person was often a family member. In many cases, winter counts were buried with their keepers when they died, so that many winter counts were recreated copies done by an apprentice or collector, which is why so few of the original winter counts are available today.
Buffalo hides were used for winter counts until the late 19th century, at which time buffalo became scarce. Then, keepers resorted to using muslin, linen, or paper. Generally, the annual pictographs began on either the left or right side of the drawing surface. From there, they could be run in lines, spirals, or serpentine patterns. Epidemic diseases were commonly depicted in winter counts, a fact that provided some historical record of the effects of illnesses among tribes. By studying written accounts from fur traders, missionaries, and military 
personnel from a winter count’s time and place of origin, scholars have been able to gain a broader understanding of the effects of epidemics.
These days, winter counts serve as valuable historical sources for those studying the history of the Great Plains peoples, as well as their experiences with colonialism. During the nineteenth century, settler colonialism led to the marginalization of many groups of Sioux people. This happened because many Indigenous groups were not literate in a European sense, so their story was largely omitted from an American history that was predominantly dependent on written source material. That is very unfortunate indeed.
On January 17, 1950, eleven men conspired to steal over $2 million, which is equivalent to 29 million today, from the Brink’s Armored Car depot in Boston, Massachusetts. It was nearly the perfect crime, because the culprits were not apprehended until January 1956, just days before the statute of limitations for the expired. I guess, there really is no such thing as a perfect crime.
The Brink’s robbery was masterminded by Anthony “Fats” Pino, who was a career criminal. Pino recruited a group of 10 other men to stake out the depot for 18 months to figure out when it held the most money. Pino’s men then managed to steal plans for the depot’s alarm system, returning them before anyone noticed they were gone. This operation was one of patience and perseverance.
On January 17, the thieves entered the depot with copied keys. They were wearing navy blue coats and chauffeur’s caps, that were similar to the Brink’s employee uniforms, and they wore rubber Halloween masks. Their costumes surprised the employees, and the thieves tied up several employees inside the company’s counting room. They filled 14 canvas bags with cash, coins, checks, and money orders, for a total weight of more than half a ton. The men were out and in their getaway car in about 30 minutes. Their haul? More than $2.7 million, which was the largest robbery in US history up until that time.
The robbery was carried out with perfect precision. No one was hurt. Virtually no clues were left behind by the thieves, with the exception of the rope used to tie the employees and one of the chauffeur’s caps. Following the robbery, the gang promised to stay out of trouble and not touch the money for six years in order for the statute of limitations to run out. Once the statute had passed, they were home free. They might have made it too, except for the fact that one man, Joseph “Specs” O’Keefe got into trouble, and left his share with another member in order to serve a prison sentence for the other burglary. While in jail, O’Keefe began to break. He began to write bitter letters to his cohorts, demanding money and hinting he might talk if they didn’t get him some. They were getting so close to their goal, and they couldn’t let O’Keefe mess that us for them, so they decided to send a hit man to kill him, but the hit man got caught before completing his job. Knowing now that he had been betrayed, and the wounded O’Keefe made a deal with the FBI to testify against his fellow robbers.
Their perfect crime was quickly unraveling now. Eight of the Brink’s robbers were caught, convicted, and given life sentences. Two more died before they could go to trial. Only a small part of the money was ever recovered, with the rest said to be hidden in the hills north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, which would be impossible to locate. So ended the perfect, but not so perfect Brink’s robbery. The money wasn’t recovered, but the robbers didn’t get it either.
