A Look Back in Time
Posted: Monday, February 12, 2007 12:00 am
Daniel Sandoval
Skulking about in the shadows surrounding our world of sincere friends, reliable associates and stubborn opponents, there are phantasmal figures who do not wish to or cannot be seen. Phantoms were in the news for the second week of February, with expletives in 1907, a president in 1932, parents in 1957 and a legislator in 1982.
100 years ago
Stubbed toe - Circumstantial clues led authorities to believe that a bank heist in Casper was interrupted in the first half of February 1907. As reported by the Feb. 13, 1907, Natrona County Tribune, someone secluded himself in the Richards and Cunningham store and emerged from hiding just before midnight.
He was not alone. Clerk C.P. Johnson peacefully dozed in the store until he was awakened by the sound of an intruder, an interloper who sounded as if he had stumbled into a piece of furniture in the shoe department and expressed displeasure with a long string of curse words.
Johnson did not immediately intervene or summon the law. The clerk waited and listened as the unseen person secured himself a lamp, descended into the cellar of the store, clunked around, re-emerged to the ground floor, then went into the hardware department of the store and commenced to equip himself for unknown deeds.
The extended activity was enough to surmise that the intruder was not in the darkened business by accident, so Johnson left the store to go and find the town marshal. When Johnson returned to the store with Marshal Jones, the would-be burglar lit out the back door.
Nothing was taken from Richards and Cunningham, but by a keyhole saw and a carpenter's brace abandoned on a counter by the intruder, and by his foray into the cellar, investigators realized that a person could gain access to the bank adjoining the store by going through the cellar and sawing through the floor.
Out of the pan - A convict was teased by mere seconds of freedom as he finished his prison sentence in February 1907. Jim McCloud served his four-year term in the Wyoming State Penitentiary, but upon his release, J.W. Parsell arrested McCloud.
McCloud owed the state of Kansas two years and nine months of five-year sentence for robbing a Topeka post office, and Parsell, a prison guard from Leavenworth, was in Wyoming to collect. McCloud escaped Leavenworth in 1898.
Leavenworth wasn't McCloud's only escape from custody. In 1902, McCloud escaped from the Laramie County Jail with the notorious Tom Horn as a fellow jailbreaker.
Loose ends - Two lingering questions in Casper got their answers in February 1907, and the outcomes ran the gamut from triumph to tragedy.
Prizefighter Jimmy Martin was scheduled to fight Jack Moore in mid-April. This was welcome news because Martin was wounded in a knife attack the previous December and it was feared the wounds would end his boxing career.
George Moore, the man who had fallen asleep at the stockyard east of town, died. Moore had spent a December night in bitter cold and, by the time he was discovered the following day, a hand and foot were frozen. He was revived but never truly recovered from his injuries.
75 years ago
Emancipator - Republicans and members of the Natrona County chapter of the Lincoln Club held their annual meeting at Casper's Gladstone Hotel Feb. 12, 1932. During the gathering, they eulogized and paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln for the principles of equality that defined the nation's martyred president.
In subtle irony to Lincoln's nickname as the Great Emancipator, the Valentine's Day, Sunday morning edition of the Casper Tribune-Herald printed an article about the Lincoln Club meeting, and the news story begins with two paragraphs of platitude surrounding the 16th president and the 123rd anniversary of his birth.
Separated from the Feb. 14 front-page Lincoln Club story by the width of a single column was a news blurb headlined, "Negro admits killing girl." Newspapers in 1932, and for decades afterward, made a special point to identify the race of people who were not generally known, photographed, or were not white.
Words travel - A Casper resident received a letter from China in the second week of February 1932. Florence Ellenberg received a letter from the Rev. and Mrs. E. Riedel, who, along with their children, were living in the French Concession of Hankow, China.
The Riedels were part of a missionary and education effort in China, and word was welcome because of the expanding war between China and Japan. The Rev. Riedel was known to many people in Casper from his time as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church.
50 years ago
Missing parents - A reformatory school parolee was sent to his hometown only to be returned to Casper in the first half of February 1957. Authorities hoped for a happy ending when they paroled a 15-year-old youth from the Boy's Industrial Home in Worland.
The youth was sent to York, Neb., where his parents supposedly lived. In York, his parents could not be located, so the boy was shipped back to Casper like mismarked mail. Arrangements were being made to return the youth to Worland. As he waited, he resided in the Casper jail.
25 years ago
Ghost legislator - A mysterious vote got recorded in the Wyoming Legislature unbeknownst to the state representative under whose name the vote appeared in the second week of February 1982. Cynthia Lummis, then a representative from Laramie County, was concentrating on a discussion at the rear of the House chamber when a voice vote ensued.
A mysterious "aye" sounded when Rep. Lummis' name was called. When Rep. Lummis went to record her vote, it was "nay." The House, moments before the spectral vote, had rejected a measure that would have introduced electronic voting.
"A Look Back in Time" is made possible with the help of Kevin S. Anderson, archivist for the Special Collections Library at Casper College, which is open to the public.