November 11 is Veterans Day, and WyoHistory.org invites you to learn more about some of Wyoming’s veterans by visiting these items on our website:

Bob David’s War: A Wyoming Soldier Serves in France by WyoHistory.org Editor Tom Rea. Bob David’s father managed the vast Carey ranches in central Wyoming, and Bob grew up on the ranches and later in Wheatland and Douglas. He never liked the life of privilege, though. When the chance came, enlisting to fight in World War I in France was a relief to him. His memories of warfare and the influenza epidemic that followed had a distinctly feverish quality when he wrote them down, 40 years later.

How Are You Doing in Vietnam? Audio and transcript of tapes recorded in May and June 1967. Reel-to-Reel audiotapes sent back and forth from U.S. Army Capt. Bill Graves to his family in Douglas during the Vietnam War landed in a box and were stored in a shed for more than 40 years before they were given to the Wyoming State Archives. The tapes are a living history—not only of the turbulence of the era, but also tell the tale of a family trying to stay connected ....even as they are separated by war. Graves later died when the reconnaissance plane he was piloting crashed in the jungle.

Just posted this week are two items that remind us how shockingly dangerous it was 100 years ago for workers to mine coal in Wyoming and show what the state did to make mining safer. Wyoming remains the leading coal producer among the 50 states, but production has fallen more than 10 percent in recent years and the related fall in state revenues is pressuring our politics. In that context, it’s important to understand the sacrifices miners and their families made for coal, and how difficult it was to bring a culture of safety to the mines.

And continuing our coverage of the Black 14 incident, this month we offer transcribed oral histories with two of its central participants. Mel Hamilton was one of the 14 players kicked off the University of Wyoming football team in 1969 when the players wore black armbands to a meeting with Coach Lloyd Eaton to protest what they saw as racist policies of Brigham Young University. Hamilton went on to a long career as a coach and administrator in the Casper schools. Willie Black, a doctoral student in mathematics, was chancellor of UW’s Black Student Alliance at the time. In this 1993 interview Dr. Black shares his recollections of those events, and broader thoughts on race and politics in the United States and the world.