Daniel Sandoval

Being famous sounds great - people giving you adulation and treating you with a respect you didn't need to earn - yet the flip-side of external validation is public scorn. Fame and infamy were in the news for the second week of May.

100 years ago

Wyoming held its Republican State Convention in Lander and the May 13, 1908, Natrona County Tribune reported that every county was represented and William Howard Taft would receive the state's Republican nomination for president.

First lady - Mary N. (Willard) Brooks, wife of Wyoming Gov. B.B. Brooks, had a profile in the St. Louis based publication National Woman's Daily and Mrs. Brooks was held up as an example of how women can raise families and make important contributions to civil society.

Not only did Brooks move as a college educated young bride to Wyoming when it was a territory, she exemplified the capable woman by helping her husband with his cattle ranch and raising five children.

There was a lingering suffragette glow in the Woman's Daily article when the profile made reference to the Equality State's "territorial days of '69" and helping to encourage women to "greater usefulness."

Arsonist - An hour after midnight, at a shearing camp a mile west of Casper, shepherds were awaken by the tell-tale orange light of fire coming from the direction of the shearing pens.

The shearers scrambled to bring barrels of water to quench the fire, but most of the structure was lost. At daybreak the men discovered oil stains on some of the surviving wood and a box of matches and kerosene can in the near-by scrub.

Ada Irwin, for reasons not reported, was the obvious suspect. Irwin was arrested and taken to jail by Sheriff Sheffner.

Namesake - C.W. Eads was headed to the penitentiary for horse theft. Eads was, in fact, a notorious horse thief who had repeatedly slipped the snares of law enforcement in Big Horn County.

Eads was finally nabbed in Fremont County. Eads was also known to people in Casper because Eadsville, the mining camp on Casper Mountain, was named after him.

75 years ago

The nightmare of the Charles Lindbergh case was still recurring a year after the kidnapping and murder of the aviator's son and the May 12, 1933, Casper Tribune-Herald published a claim that the body found wasn't the Lindbergh boy.

Major players - A Cheyenne grand jury involved in a federal investigation of conspiracy to violate Prohibition in Casper handed out indictments and three officials were named as defendants in the conspiracy.

Casper Mayor E.W. Rowell, Chief of Police Michael Quealy and Natrona County Sheriff G.O. Housley were among the dozens of people to receive true bills from the grand jury.

The Tribune-Herald was careful to attribute the report to the Wyoming Tribune-Leader because the formal report from the grand jury had not yet been released at the time of the Friday, May 12 report.

Casper Tribune-Herald readers had to endure a cliff hanger because the newspaper didn't publish on Saturdays.

The Sunday, May 14, 1933, Tribune-Herald officially confirmed that Casper's mayor, police chief and sheriff would indeed have to defend their reputations beginning at the July 17 trial.

In the bigger picture, Wyoming electors were preparing to ratify or reject the repeal of Prohibition May 15, 1933.

50 years ago

Charles Starkweather, 19, was on trial for murder in Lincoln, Neb., and the May 13, 1958, Casper Morning Star reported some grisly details recorded in a letter written by Caril Ann Fugate, 14, who accompanied Starkweather on a murder spree that ended outside Douglas.

Adolescents - Sheridan Police Officer George Owings stopped a car with three kids in it and instructed the driver to follow him to the police station. The car sped off and lost the police after a chase.

Officers of Johnson County Sheriff's Department captured the teenaged fugitives from Minneapolis. Susan Sorensen, 16, Joseph Teresti, 17, and James Letson, 16, were wanted by authorities to face charges for "car prowl and petty larceny."

Instructor - George Collins of Thermopolis was selected to be the basketball coach for the cage squad at Natrona County High School for the 1958-59 season. Collins would replace departing head cage coach Swede Erickson.

25 years ago

The May 12, 1983, Casper Star-Tribune lead story was the spring snowstorm that caused the closing of schools and roads in western Wyoming.

Legacy - The Wyoming airwaves carried the signal of the state's own public television station for the first time in the first half of May 1983. KCWC-TV was operated by Central Wyoming College in Riverton.

First serving the Lander-Riverton area, Station Manager Jerry Garber said they hoped to eventually cover the entire state with the use of translator stations.

After Wyoming joined the ranks, Montana was only state in the nation without a public television station.

"A Look Back in Time" is made possible with the help of Western History Archivist Kevin S. Anderson at the Casper College Western History Center, which is open to the public.