By Laura E. Ruberto
Editor’s note: The author’s article, “An Italian painter in a Wyoming POW camp,” was published recently on WyoHistory.org.

In some way or another I’ve been curious about Italians prisoners of war since I was a child and heard my own paternal grandfather’s stories of having been captured by the British when he was in the Italian army and brought to the United States as a POW. But it’s as a scholar of Italian migration history and culture that I have come to understand the complexities and implications of his and others’ similar experiences. 

My current research into the Camp Douglas case, supported by a Homsher grant from the Wyoming State Historical Society and a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship, is part of a larger project about the approximately 50,000 Italian POWs in the United States and the art and architecture they created.  

The Western-themed murals at Camp Douglas are one example of the unique built environments and creative pieces Italian POWs made: They painted frescoes in churches, crafted small items like jewelry and toys, and built large-scale structures, such as chapels and dance halls, often using salvaged or donated materials. These constructions reflect the makers’ cultural experiences as well as the realities of their confinement, ambiguous political circumstances, and complicated relationships to communities within and beyond the borders of the camps.

For a few days in December 1892, armed men of opposing political parties filled different rooms in the Wyoming State Capitol, deep in “earnest consultation,” one newspaper reported, over whether the man in the governor’s office had any right to be there. Matters were extremely tense.

John Osborne, a Rawlins physician and a Democrat, had won the governor’s race the previous month by a comfortable margin—9,290 to 7,509. For two years, since the brand-new governor, Francis E. Warren, had resigned the governorship on being elected to the U.S. senate, the former secretary of state, Amos Barber, had been serving as an unelected acting governor. All the heat was coming now from the burning question of when it was legal for the new governor-elect to take office. 

Beginning in 1930, the world’s first airline stewardesses, as they were called then, were trained in Cheyenne by Boeing Air Transport, Inc. at the first stewardess school in the world. Boeing was a precursor of United Air Lines. The women earned $125 per month for 100 hours of flying time, or around $1,900 in today’s dollars. During the 14 years Boeing/United trained stewardesses in Cheyenne, more than 6,000 young women graduated.

By Phil White Jr.
(Editor’s note: The author’s article, “1968: Wyoming Reacts to the King Assassination,” was published last week on WyoHistory.org.)

When I agreed to provide WyoHistory.org with some notes introducing my recent article about Wyoming reactions to the death of Martin Luther King, it occurred to me to look again at the University of Wyoming student newspaper, the Branding Iron. In the April 19, 1968, issue, from two weeks after the assassination, I found a letter to the editor and poem, both by student Ken Cooper.

This paean about Dr. King joining “the ranks of fallen men of peace” seemed so heartfelt, coming from such deep sorrow and pain, that I wondered whether the author was one of UW’s few African-American students in the late sixties. My name also appears in the Branding Iron masthead on that page, listing me as sports editor. I knew the names of many of UW’s Black athletes at the time, but I didn’t recognize this name then or now, 52 years later.

So I took a shot at finding something about this Ken Cooper. I checked the UW alumni directories without success. Then I searched for his name on Facebook and turned up a 72-year-old person with that name living in Laughlin, Nev. who ran track at the University of Wyoming. Truepeoplesearch.com gave me some possible phone numbers. I left messages on two of them, and within an hour I was talking to this remarkable man and he was mentioning the names of many sixties students and athletes I knew or recognized.

Too often at WyoHistory.org when we publish articles about big events—elections won or lost, towns founded or abandoned, dams built, booms, busts and blizzards survived—we give time and space to the big picture but too seldom get down to actual stories of people’s lives.

By John Clayton
(Editors’ note: John Clayton’s article, Who gets to hunt Wyoming's elk? Tribal Hunting Rights, U.S. Law and the Bannock 'War' of 1895, was published recently on WyoHistory.org.)

One reason I enjoy writing for WyoHistory.org is that I like to imagine Wyoming high school history teachers using these stories in class. Too often history is about memorizing dates, when it could be a springboard for discussions about values. To my mind, one of the best stories for these purposes is the history behind the Herrera Supreme Court decision, published last week.

Many of us remember Wyoming’s smoky skies in the summer of 1988, when Yellowstone was ablaze. The fires started in June; at first they were small and isolated. Yellowstone National Park officials followed a hands-off fire policy that had been in place for 16 years. 

But after a wet spring, boosting growth of brush and underbrush, 1988 was the park’s driest summer recorded up to that time. However, by mid-July, only around 8,500 acres had burned. Then the fires doubled in size in a week. Park officials reversed their policy and began fighting all the fires. 

By Rebecca Hein
(Editor’s note: The author’s article, The Sticking Power of Ethel Waxham Love, was published last week on WyoHistory.org.)

In January 1924, Ethel Waxham Love’s sister, Faith, wrote to her from Denver to express her concern for Ethel’s welfare. Fourteen years before, Ethel had married John Love, a sheep rancher in central Wyoming.

“I could not see you leave the ranch soon enough,” wrote Faith. “What would you think of a man who would take me off to a desert where I saw few people, who promised I should never work & who made me his slave body & soul. … You have never complained.”

They could agree on the last part, at least; Ethel never said or wrote to anyone about wanting to leave the ranch or her marriage. Before marrying John Love, Ethel had known about some of the hardships of sheep and cattle ranching in Wyoming. When Love wrote to her during the five years he courted her by correspondence, he never withheld news about how many sheep the latest blizzard had killed.

Faith continued,  “It is John’s duty to realize his responsibility [to support Ethel and their two young sons], and … he should be made to feel that responsibility. … What does John do? How does he earn a livelihood for his family?”

By Dick Blust, Jr.
Editor’s note: The author’s article,  “The Buxton Case: An Anti-Immigrant Tragedy,” was published last week on WyoHistory.org.

When I began my research on the Buxton-Omeyc case, I saw it as a straightforward piece about crime and law enforcement: On September 14, 1919, a 17-year-old named Joseph Omeyc shot and killed Deputy Game Warden John Buxton near Rock Springs, Wyo. Buxton was the first Wyoming game warden to be killed in the line of duty. Naturally, I was interested in the details.

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, when women across America—white women, at least—won the right to vote. In the Tennessee Legislature, Rep. Harry Burn put the nation over the top on August 18, 1920, when he followed his mother’s good advice and voted Aye. But women in Wyoming, we are always proud to remember, had already been voting for 50 years.