Interesting People
in·ter·est·ing /ˈint(ə)rəstiNG/
dig·ni·ty /ˈdiɡnədē/
the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.
Encounters with famous people are interesting, even if they’re not really interesting people. That’s why I’ve made it a point in my career to find and write about genuinely interesting people. Some are characters, others are dignified, some young, some old, there are individuals who overcame great challenges and some are changing the world.
All are interesting. At least to me.
My first really interesting encounters after a childhood spent isolated in the Dakotas were in Rock Springs, Wyoming. In 1977, I was hired as a station agent at Frontier Airlines (the original one, not the current iteration) and sent to a place about which a magazine writer once famously wrote, “The two greatest sights in Wyoming are the Tetons and Rock Springs in your rear view mirror.”
In many ways, Rock Springs had never moved beyond its Wild West days. K Street was where all the oilfield workers went to blow off steam. As the only airline stop between Laramie and Salt Lake City, Frontier did a lucrative business carrying freight to the oil field and a steady stream of young women eager to assist the the workers on K Street in spending their paychecks on Saturday nights.
Rock Springs had a tiny airport situated on a high plateau east of town. The location made it one of the highest altitude airports in the Rocky Mountains. The plane best suited for serving Frontier’s high altitude stations was a brute of an aircraft, the Convair 580 turboprop, which held fifty passengers and all the oil drilling rock bits we could handle, some of them four hundred pounds each.
In those days, security at such a remote airport consisted of a single screener and a magnetometer, which we tested each morning by carrying a handgun encased in a block of wood through it to see if it set off the alarm.
There was no X-ray machine. At Rock Springs, screening was handled by a grandmotherly woman who I will call Jane, one of the sweetest, kindest people you could ever meet. In a classic Rock Springs relationship, Jane was married to a guy named Curly, one of the biggest gamblers in Rock Springs. But more on Curly in a bit.
Unfortunately, during my time in Rock Springs, there were several massive explosions during drilling operations at Wyoming oil wells. I lost a high school classmate in one. Because the explosions happened at remote drilling sites, most often, the casualty count was limited to those working the rig at that time.
Shortly after one of the larger oil rig explosions, I was working the ticket counter when Jane, the security screener, came up to me at the Frontier ticket counter, carrying a sealed, carboard box about four inches square.
She indicated a young woman standing at the security checkpoint and said, “That woman says her husband was killed in the explosion last week. All they found is his belt buckle, in this box. Do I have to open it?”
I respectfully took the box, examining it, gauging its heft while overcoming the shock of the situation presented to me. It was too light to contain much of a weapon. Indeed, it was about the weight of….a western style belt buckle. I looked over at the woman standing by the checkpoint. Not yet of legal drinking age in most states, it fell to me to judge her character and render a verdict on the necessity of opening the sealed box.
As a station agent, I was directly responsible for the safety of the flight and the passengers. In those days, the agents were the final authority on any matter until the passengers were aboard the aircraft. Especially in remote locations like Rock Springs, every ground worker I ever met took the responsibility with the utmost seriousness.
Even in the dimly lit, tiny airport lobby, I could tell the woman’s face and eyes carried the extreme sadness that I had only seen on those who recently lost a spouse or child, combined with the realization that she might have to open the box and experience the horror of reliving her husband’s sudden death in front of strangers.
Considering all these things in the moment, I simply said, “No, that’s OK,” and handed the box back to the screener.
Let me say that the incident would never be repeated today. For one thing, the whole episode would be successfully resolved by viewing the box in the airport’s X-ray scanner. Also, those who would harm us are much more sophisticated and would readily create such a scenario to carry out an attack. So, security experts rather then tenderfoot station agents make any needed judgement calls. But back then, things were different and for that I am glad.
As a young, single guy, Curly’s wife Jane kind of looked after me. Once, I became quite ill with a stomach virus. When I was missing from work, she inquired about me, and somehow found out where I lived.
Later that day, there was a knock on the door of the trailer I rented on the outskirts of Rock Springs. There on my steps was Curly himself, owner of one of the most notorious gambling joints in a town that thrived on them. He was holding….a jar of chicken soup.
Curly apologized for the intrusion. He related that his wife had told him to deliver the chicken soup right away, and he hoped I would get better soon. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy, which made the situation all the more surreal.
But that was Rock Springs in the 1970’s- a place of sleaze and iniquity (featured on 60 Minutes) that somehow kept a small town vibe where residents looked after each other. There are so many stories from that time, some of which I related in my Famous People essay elsewhere in this collection.
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Later with Frontier, I moved to Sioux Falls, SD, in 1981, where a couple of interesting encounters come to mind. In the first, I was working at the ticket counter. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a diminutive young man with long dark hair, just standing in the middle of the passenger terminal and watching me.
Presently, he came over to the counter.
I said, “Can I help you?”
“I just want to know one thing. Are you Jesus Christ?”
You never know what answer someone is looking for with a question like that, nor what action they’re prepared to take based on your answer. So, the first thing I did was step up into the baggage well and lean over the counter to see if he was holding a weapon.
Satisfied that he was not armed, I replied simply, “No, I’m not.”
“OK, that’s all I wanted to know.”
And he turned and walked away down the terminal. I thought for a moment about informing airport security of my encounter, but decided against it. He hadn’t threatened me in any way, nor did he seem impaired. I never saw him again, or heard of him asking such questions of other airport staff.
The other most interesting person I met while in Sioux Falls was a woman who made me ashamed of any whining or bellyaching I had ever done in my life.
First, a bit of context. In the 1970’s and 80’s, before many lawsuits by disabled people against the airline industry, the way that those needing additional accommodations were treated was often abominable. As station agents, we were tasked with helping them the best we could, but with no special training, inadequate staff and equipment to do so. We are so much better off now, because what I am about to relate would probably never occur today.
On one evening in the dead of winter, I was working the ticket counter, checking in passengers for a flight to Denver. We were furiously working to get the flight out as a big snow storm moved into the area. A bitter wind was blowing from the northwest, reducing visibility as the snowfall grew heavier, it seemed, by the minute.
My heart sank as I saw a woman being brought to the counter in a wheelchair. It sank because I knew that somehow we were going to have to load and unload the baggage, mail, board over a hundred passengers and get this woman on the plane within twenty minutes. If not, we would take a delay, which counted against the station and in this case, might cause us to cancel the flight due to the snowstorm. We had to do all that with three staff members.
My special passenger had the appearance of someone who has lived the hard life of a farmer’s wife, someone who had spent her forty years or so eating her own obviously good cooking. Her legs had both been amputated at the knee. The roughness of her hands and a kind, but no nonsense demeanor confirmed my guess about her occupation. That meant that being a double amputee was not necessarily the biggest challenge in her life.
This was a woman of the prairie, who would challenge any pity and scoff at the suggestion of special accommodation because of her condition. The only thing that seemed out of character was that she wore a blue print dress of fairly thin material and a light jacket for such weather. She was cheerful and seemed excited about her trip.
I checked the woman in and sent her and a companion on their way to security, telling them that I would meet them at the gate to help her board the flight.
Working a hundred plus passenger Boeing 737 in twenty minutes with three people was to say the least…tricky. But we had an experienced crew, and one thing I was most proud of about my coworkers at Frontier was that they always met the daily challenges with pride and resolve. No matter the mess, the plane would depart safely and on time.
Here’s how it worked- Two people checked in passengers until the flight arrived, while the third person loaded the baggage carts. In those days, we also might have up to a ton of U.S. mail to unload.
When the flight arrived, the ramp person as they were known, parked the flight and positioned the baggage belt loader at one of the cargo pits. By then, the second counter person had bundled up in his parka and boots, (It was only males for most of the time I was in Sioux Falls) and drove the baggage tug and carts out to the plane for loading and unloading. The third person, me, checked in any last minute passengers and cut across the open ramp to the concourse to load the passengers for their journeys to hopefully warmer climes.
So, on this night, with a bitter wind blowing increasing amounts of snow around us, our task was made more difficult by the fact that our usual gate with a jetway was still occupied by another flight that was delayed. We would have to load and unload the passengers outdoors, including our wheelchair passenger, using the Boeing’s own air stairs.
The forward cabin door of a Boeing 737-200 is nearly eight feet off the ground. There are fourteen steep, narrow steps up to it when using the self contained air stairs. Because of the challenge, I advised my special passenger that I would board her last, so agent number two would hopefully be finished with loading the plane by then and could assist me in using what was known as an aisle chair to manually hoist our passenger up the air stairs and to her seat.
After boarding the rest of the passengers, I positioned the aisle chair at the bottom of the stairs and went to retrieve my wheelchair passenger. By the time I wheeled her, in her lightweight clothing across the bitterly cold ramp, agent number two was nowhere in sight. I took a peek around the plane and saw that there was still a considerable amount of luggage to be loaded. I went back and told the passenger that we would have to wait until he could help.
The disabled passenger took one look at that aisle chair and realized that she would have to wait in the cold until two strangers strapped her into it and carried her up the stairs in full view of her fellow passengers and anyone watching in the airport terminal. She looked up at me, smiled and said pleasantly, “No problem.”
She didn’t say another word, but my woman of the prairie, thinly clad, whipped by the snow and bitter wind, grabbed the railing of the air stair, hopped out of the wheelchair to the frozen concrete, and proceeded to walk up those fourteen steps on her amputated legs and into the aircraft. Now, those metal steps are always cold because they’re stowed in an unpressurized part of the aircraft. On this night, they had to be painfully cold on her bare legs.
To her credit, the flight attendant at the doorway regained her composure quickly enough to welcome her latest passenger to the flight. We exchanged a glance of disbelief and a slight smile at what we had just seen.
But how can that be? Why did the flight attendant and I exchange that slight smile over an incident about which we should have been horrified?
It’s because we had just witnessed an extraordinary act of courage and character. With a smile and a pleasant, “No problem,” the passenger met the challenge of her degrading situation with grace and dignity. And conquered it. She was not going to be carried up those stairs as an invalid. I’ll bet she earned herself some extra attention when word of the incident got around among the flight crew.
So often in the moment, we don’t realize that something so brief and seemingly trivial can stick with you over forty years later. But in this case, it was a trivial incident only because of the extraordinary courage and character of a simple farmer’s wife. I am glad for the memory. I hope that I learned from all its implications of triumph and shame, and I’m grateful that my grandchildren will hopefully never have to see something like that.
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I have encountered a couple of very interesting people in my career who should perhaps be included in the “Famous People” essay, but because they would not be well known outside the Upper Midwest, I will include them here.
By the time the original Frontier Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 1986 and I stopped working in the airline industry, I was attending Augustana College in Sioux Falls part-time to finish a degree in journalism. In December of 1988, our family moved to Rapid City so I could take a job with the KELO-TV affiliate there. For the next three years or so, I was tossed into the deep end of reporting in a place that is both naturally beautiful and civically perplexing. Rapid City is where I began my real training as a journalist.
As I mentioned in my “Famous People” essay, an overarching topic of reporting in western South Dakota is Native American issues. Almost everything in the area is tied in one way or another to the historic nature of the relationship between Whites and Native Americans.
In 1990, South Dakota Governor George Mickelson and the nine tribal governments in the state proclaimed a Year of Reconciliation. I reported on the various events scheduled to celebrate that year, including the concerts featuring famous performers and the release of the movie “Dances with Wolves” in November. The year ended with the trek of the Bigfoot Memorial Riders, who retraced the path taken in late December 1890 by a band of Lakota fleeing the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota following the killing of Sitting Bull during an attempted arrest by tribal police. Their journey, for many of those fleeing, ended in their deaths on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in what is called the Wounded Knee massacre.
My reporting included meeting and interviewing the last remaining Lakota who was at Pine Ridge at the time of the massacre, and meeting and being refused an interview with the nineteenth generation keeper of the pipe and sacred bundle given to the People by White Buffalo Calf Woman.
As the 100th anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre approached, I revisited an earlier interview subject, James Holy Eagle. As an infant, James was at Pine Ridge when the massacre occurred. Therefore, he was the last person alive who had heard first hand accounts of the massacre from the victims.
James’ granddaughter, Sonja Holy Eagle, who is an artist and still lives in Rapid City, set up the interview as she had my earlier one.
James was a hundred and one years old at that point, and hard of hearing, but his mind was clear. Even though he was dressed in ordinary clothing and lived in a small, sparsely furnished apartment, James was a chief of the Lakota. His voice was strong, his gestures animated as he related the account of the abomination suffered by his people while camped on the frozen prairie on December 29, 1890. This is what he related from the stories he was told as a child by the Wounded Knee Massacre survivors.
“There was this Ghost Dance. The soldiers were afraid of that. They came to the village and were going from tent to tent, taking everybody’s guns. When they got to the last tent, there was a man who was deaf and dumb. When they tried to take his gun, he grabbed it and (clapping his hands) the gun went off. The soldiers started shooting and, (There was a long pause)... they killed almost everybody.”
James related the story of a male child, taken from his dead mother following the massacre and was raised by the tribe. He said his uncle would take James out to the massacre site each year and point out where the camp was, where the Fort Robinson soldiers fired from a hillside into the camp, and where the bodies of the victims were found. He ended his account with the spectacle of the bodies, frozen in the shapes in which they fell, being tossed into the mass grave that still exists today at the Wounded Knee cemetery.
James also mentioned his trips to Washington, D.C. as efforts were underway leading up to the passing and signing of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. He spoke of a meeting with two other Lakota chiefs and President Calvin Coolidge.
I also learned from James a concept that is now widely accepted. He talked to me about the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota tribes, and how in the media and White society, they are most often portrayed, incorrectly, as a monolithic culture. I see in my recent research that now the Sioux Nation, as it was known, is referred to as the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Oyate, or LDN Oyate. I was never comfortable using the term Sioux Nation, knowing its implications for the people themselves, so I’m happy to see the change.
I learned when traveling to Pine Ridge or one of the other reservations for stories to take along a carton of cigarettes. The individual packs were not bribes for interviews, they were given as offerings of friendship and respect before asking any questions. It also didn’t matter whether the person smoked the cigarettes or not. If not, they would eventually find their way to someone who could use the tobacco in a ceremonial pipe.
I don’t know if such offerings are still the custom for journalists these days, but they were required in the early 1990’s if you wanted people to open up to your questions. The riots in Custer and Sioux Falls, and the Wounded Knee occupation of the 1970’s were still fresh in the minds of the Lakota. All media, especially White reporters, were suspect. We also usually traveled to the reservations alone. Establishing a rapport was essential to avoid harassment and get the cooperation I needed to complete my reporting.
Which leads me to my second interesting Lakota person. Arvol Looking Horse is a chief of the LDN Oyate now. When I met him, he had not ascended to that prominence, but was the Keeper of the Sacred Pipe and Bundle given to the People by White Buffalo Calf Woman. It is the highest position among the LDN Oyate.
In December of 1990, I introduced myself to Arvol at the Green Grass community hall on the Cheyenne River reservation. We were both there because of the centennial ride of the Bigfoot Memorial Riders.
To set the scene, this was late December. The wind chills that day ranged from minus forty to minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit. I had driven the 182 miles from Rapid City across a desolate part of western South Dakota. The riders and their horses were supposed to be at Green Grass, preparing for their final push to arrive at Wounded Knee the following Saturday. I seriously considered canceling because of the potentially deadly weather conditions. If it had also been snowing, I would have, but instead, it was a brilliant, bright day with an anemic sun at its furthest south for that year. Because the Cheyenne River reservation is where Big Foot’s band joined the Lakota fleeing to Pine Ridge in 1890, I decided that aspect of the story was too important to miss. I had freelance assignments from a couple of national networks for my coverage, and on a radio reporter’s salary, you try not to turn those down.
It was in that environment, after making the potentially dangerous trek to Green Grass, that I arrived at the community center only to find out the riders were not camped there. As I tried to get more information, in came a tall, young Lakota who was pointed out to me as Arvol Looking Horse. With the prospect of interviewing the somewhat reclusive Keeper of the Pipe, it seemed like my gamble at making the trip was going to pay off. Surely, he would appreciate my effort to be there for this important story when no other reporters dared make the journey.
My enthusiasm didn’t last long. In that setting, Arvol was rather brusque and dismissive of me, the lone reporter foolish enough to make the trip to Green Grass in that weather. During our very short encounter, he said he would do no interview, that his job that day was to serve as the religious leader to the riders. At that, he turned on his heel and walked off.
Thus ended my encounter with the highest holy man of the LDN Oyate. My entreaties to those at the community center eventually produced a Bigfoot rider, who gave a great interview, and whose horse conveniently stomped, snorted and whinnied for some good natural sound. My freelance employers were pleased, and the national networks’ audiences heard why the Bigfoot Memorial Riders chose to continue their trek in such extreme cold. After subtracting the cost of fuel to drive halfway across the state, I got a few extra dollars for the holiday season.
I finished my series of stories on the ride the following week at Wounded Knee, where the wind chills reached seventy below zero.
I have been blessed with a career that lets me meet lots of interesting people and observe many significant events. One of the most interesting stories I have ever reported, though, is about two people I never met, and an event that happened before I was born.
If you are in Evansville, Indiana on Memorial Day or Veterans Day, there is no escaping the story that the first U.S. casualty in World War One was from Evansville. James Bethel Gresham is honored annually for his sacrifice.
In late 2008, I became aware of another Evansville story of World War One that was unknown to most residents, but is of even greater significance. Army Sergeant Chester Schulz of Evansville was killed in the Meuse Argonne offensive, just four days before the armistice was signed. So, Evansville also had one of the last casualties of World War One.
But the story is much more. I was introduced to Chester’s great niece, Nancy Hasting of Mt. Vernon. Nancy had become interested in learning more about her ancestor after discovering a box of letters a few years before. The letters were written between Chester and his mother Gertrude as Chester first went off to boot camp, traveled to Europe and moved through France on his way to his death.
So, a fairly complete set of handwritten letters between a soldier and his mother in World War One. That’s interesting enough to prompt a story, but then I learned about Gertrude’s celebrity as a national figure. In response to Chester’s service, Gertrude formed an organization called The War Mothers of America, which is directly connected to the present day Gold Star Mothers organization. The War Mothers’ popularity skyrocketed, culminating in its first national convention in Evansville in September of 1918. Gertrude Schulz became the first president.
Gertrude’s time in the national spotlight was short-lived, however. Less than two months later, Chester was cut down by a German machine gun outside of Sedan, France, on November 7, 1918, but official word of it did not reach Gertrude for over four months. Her final letters, which were returned, detail her anguish over not hearing from Chester as the rest of the nation celebrated.
She never recovered from the ordeal. I was able to track down the only living relative with personal memory of Gertrude Schulz, who spawned a national movement to support the war effort in America during World War One. A granddaughter, Getrude Lant, told me, “She would sit in the kitchen with my mother, and she’d say that poem, ‘In Flanders fields, the poppies grow, between the crosses row on row,’ and the tears would just roll down her face.”
I traveled with Nancy Hasting and filmmaker Brick Briscoe to France in 2018 around the time of the centennial of the armistice. We traced Chester’s steps in France, ending in a field that records show is where Chester died. We were able to determine the time of day (He had only been on the front line for about an hour and a half) and the spot where he fell based on Army battlefield burial records. Because of the records mix up that delayed information of his death in 1918, Chester’s name was also left off of the list of casualties on a monument near the battlefield. Nancy got that rectified as well. We finished our reporting as she helped install the plaque with Chester’s name on the monument.
My series and Nancy’s book on the subject helped raise awareness in Evansville so that now on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Chester and Gertrude Schulz are also remembered as significant names in Evansville’s story during World War One. Of all the stories I’ve done, and all the people I’ve covered, it was probably my proudest moment to record the day that Chester Schulz’ sacrifice was finally recognized.