Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Everything was going fine, until gravity..."}]

Darwin 5 2 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Everything was going fine, until gravity...

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, May 2, 2023

 Everything was going fine, until gravity...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

LANDER — People who want to play the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” trivia game have a surprising way they can boost their personal score to a mere two degrees. All it takes is a simple coffee run to the Lander Bake Shop anytime the owner happens to be taking orders or chatting with customers.

Brian Harms recently bought the Lander Bake Shop, a classic small-town hangout where locals trade gossip over lattes and hikers fuel up on croissants. 

It’s a town better known for trailheads than red carpets, but Harms’ resume reads like a Hollywood highlight reel. He spent decades in television and film, including stints as art director and production designer, with a front-row seat to making some of America’s most-watched shows. 

Now he’s pouring all that experience into coffee, croissants and building community back home in Lander.

That’s high-caliber, creative talent returning home to invest in Main Street, but you won’t see any sign of the Hollywood plot twist as Harms cheerfully takes your order or asks you how your food was. He is low-key about his Hollywood years. 

You’d have no clue he once worked directly with Kevin Bacon for three weeks on the television series “The Closer” while he was its art director. 

Or that he spent more than a decade shaping the entire look and set of “Grey’s Anatomy,” America’s longest-running primetime medical drama, which recently clinched its 23rd season.

Other movie credits Harms can claim during a 20-plus-year career include the independent film “Life of the Party,” television movie “Protect and Serve,” NBC drama “Las Vegas,” and TNT crime drama “Leverage.”

Harms is not a Hollywood transplant, however. He’s a native son, born and raised in Lander. 

He grew up doing music, football, basketball, and track when he was in school, and skied at Jackson Hole any chance he got.

“We would mow lawns all summer to afford the season pass in Jackson,” Harms told Cowboy State Daily. “And then we’d drive to Jackson to ski.”

Coming out of high school, Harms figured his best bet was to shoot for a job with Wyoming Game and Fish.

“I wanted to be outdoors,” he said. “I wanted to be active. So I majored in biology resource management.”

But he also happened to earn a music scholarship from Central Wyoming College in Riverton, which put his feet on an entirely different path.

“I was a biology major doing all these music classes and groups to fulfill the scholarship requirements,” he said with a chuckle. “I was in the concert band, the jazz band, and the jazz choir. And then working in the recording studio and doing sound for the theater.”

Once the theater program found out his dad was the woodworking teacher for shop classes in Lander, Harms was drafted for set building. 

That’s when he began to realize where his true interests might lay. 

“I had almost enough credits to graduate biology, but more than enough to graduate music,” Harms said “So I got my degree in whatever that was, general arts and sciences with the music concentration.”

That summer, he worked for the Idaho Repertory Theater and then went to Missoula, where he built a set for the Montana Repertory Theatre.

Still, it’s a long way from the Idaho or Montana Repertory Theater and television shows like "Grey’s Anatomy."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Grit Than Glamor"}]

There were no great leaps to fame or fortune for Harms. Instead, it was a series of small, incremental steps — more grit than glamor. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It also took a huge leap of faith. "}]

After his first summer gigs went so well, Harms kept chasing opportunities to stretch his skills and widen his world.

He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Missoula with a focus on scenic design, then packed up his portfolio for a major job fair in Chicago.

It was run like a science fair. Harms set up a display of his work, then left the room. It was a cattle call where you only met anyone if they chose your table. 

Harms was nervous the entire time this was going on. But he ultimately got a call back for 13 different grad schools.

The one he picked, though, wasn’t the one who wooed him the strongest. It was the woman who made him explain all his decisions and talk about his process.

“It wasn’t like interrogative,” Harms said. “It was inquisitive. So it was a really great conversation.”

Finally she told Harms that she would allow him to come to her school only on one condition. He had to come visit it first.

That spring break, Harms did just that. He drove all the way to Pennsylvania from Montana — and broke down partway there.

“I had to rent a car in Kansas City to finish the trip,” he said with a chuckle. “So I went to Penn State, and it was fantastic, It was just the best program. I just won an alumni award last year where they flew me and my wife out for a big, big award.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Naive Leap Of Faith"}]

After grad school, Harms did regional theaters in Illinois and New York. Then he returned to Montana, where he met his wife. 

By now, the itch to try Hollywood was too strong to ignore. The couple saved $4,000 then loaded up their car and moved to California.

“It’s funny looking back just how naive and hopeful we were,” Harms said. “That $4,000 barely got us into an apartment there. By the time you paid the deposit — they want first month’s, last month’s rent and that was about all in just to get into the apartment.”

Hollywood, meanwhile, did not roll out any sort of red carpet for Harms. He started out with jobs that don’t make any headlines. He drafted for other designers, did some model building, and took as much non-union television work as he could get.

All of the jobs were long on hours and short on certainty. 

“I would do three days of drafting for this show,” he said. “They would do like two weeks of model building.”

His first big break was a show filming under the title “Glory Days,” as an independent film.

“I wasn’t in the union, so I wasn’t eligible to work on union shows,” he said. “But that small film started non-union and I was on it for more than 30 days before they flipped.”

It was a common industry tactic to start non-union to save money, Harms learned, then flip once filming began to avoid picketing. 

And it finally gave Harms his ticket into the union. All he had to do was pay six weeks of his salary for his initiation fee. That was a tough leap considering Harms’ work to date had been mostly odd jobs. 

“But all the guidance was when you get the opportunity, you better take it, even if it’s going to be a big financial hit, because it’s going to pay off,” he said. “And coincidentally, that movie starred Ellen Pompeo.”

The movie was one of the last things she did before taking a role with "Grey’s Anatomy."

“From that point on, I was eligible to apply for all of these jobs,” Harms said. “And my first union TV job was what we call blue-collar TV, like with Jeff Foxworthy.”

The Kevin Bacon connection came a little later on the set of the “The Closer.” Harms had been brought on as an art director in 2006, which stars Kyra Sedgwick, who is married to Kevin Bacon.

As a result of that, he met Bacon many times. But he also worked with him closely for three weeks when Bacon directed one of the episodes. 

“It was a fun one,” Harms said. “Because the episode had like a kind of car chase scene. It wasn’t like a high-speed car chase, but it was just one car cutting off the other car. So we were trying to work through all the logistics of the scene and the camera angles.”

Harms built out the entire set first using Matchbox-size cars, which had him calling it Matchbox Theater from that point on.

Being the art director meant Bacon wasn’t just a name in a party game. He was someone Harms worked with every day on the complex production puzzles they were trying to solve day by day. Sets had to be built, dressed, and redressed and locations transformed into believable backdrops for tense interrogations and high-stakes chases.

Working on the set of “The Closer” helped establish Harms in Hollywood, but has also created a fun piece of trivia that few people can match. He’s just one degree from Kevin Bacon. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Shot In The Dark"}]

The COVID-19 pandemic put Harms out of work — like a lot of others in the film industry. 

“I went back to my portfolio and put together a mailer — a little mini portfolio with a DVD of some of the stuff I’d done,” he said. “And I spent quite a bit of money to put all this together and to send them out to try and get some new introductions and get a job.”

Harms waited weeks and weeks, but nothing seemed to come of it at all. 

“Eventually, I got back to some work,” he said. “Then, one day, I get a phone call from this gentleman who said he’d been holding on to this thing for a while.”

Harms hadn’t sent the portfolio to this individual originally, but someone else had shared it with him. 

The man turned out to be with "Grey’s Anatomy," and he invited Harms to consider joining the production design team.

“They were replacing their art director,” Harms said. “And they had just finished season five, so I came in and had the interview and had a second interview with their producers and then got hired. So I started season six as the art director.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Domino Days"}]

As “Grey’s Anatomy” Art Director, Harms worked on roughly 150 episodes before stepping into a larger role heading up Production Design, where he did at least another 150 episodes before deciding it was time to return home to Lander to help care for his aging parents.

The schedule for the show was relentless. A typical episode was shot in about 10 days, but a new shoot started every eight days. 

“So you’d have a crossover of double days where you’d have two film crews and sometimes more,” he said. “So you might have one crew out on location, one crew on this stage, or this crew’s on this stage, and their next set’s being finalized here.”

With seven sound stages, that gave Harms just enough room to stay ahead of an ambitious shooting schedule set up like a series of dominos. Tip one over, and they’d all fall down.

“These were massive, massive spaces with  multiple sets on stage,” he said. “So the moving pieces — it’s enormous.”

Bacon’s not the only ultra famous star Harms worked with during his long-running Hollywood career. 

“You never knew who might walk onto the set,” Harms said. “So one day, I walk in and there’s Lenny Kravitz sitting in the director’s chair.”

Kravitz is a Grammy-award winning American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and actor.

Harms couldn’t resist saying, “Hey, you’re Lenny Kravitz!”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Kravitz said simply, “I know.”"}]

Another person he saw frequently was Debbie Allen’s sister, Phylicia Rashad, best known for her iconic role as Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show.

“The only other person I’d say was as famous or more famous than Kevin Bacon was Denzel Washington,” Harms said. “He directed an episode of 'Grey’s,' so I got to spend weeks with Denzel.”

Working with Washington was an amazing experience, Harms said.

“He’s a storyteller to his core,” he said. “Like he would — because again, I spent like full days with just hours and hours with him — and we’d like walk through a set and we’d be waiting for Debbie to finish filming something. So we’d just be hanging out.”

While they were waiting, Washington would often tell stories to pass the time.

“He’d talk about an uncle of his, but you’d see, as he’s telling the story, he just transforms,” Harms said. “It’s just natural to him. So I would just be transfixed.”

Bacon, in contrast, was higher energy, “just a positive fun guy.”

“He played for our wrap party for ‘The Closer,’” Harms said. “So like at the end of the season, they had a talent show. So you could go and perform your talent, but you were up against Kevin Bacon and the Bacon Brothers.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Place In History"}]

Harms describes his Hollywood days as a mix of adrenaline and hyper-focus. 

Working with people like Washington or Bacon didn’t change the fundamentals of his job, but it still added something of an edge to everything, sharpening his focus.

As did the knowledge that he was working on a show like "Grey’s Anatomy," which is still a cultural touchstone in America.

“I think the nice part about it is, we knew it while we were in it,” Harms said. “And what was fun was we used to have a Thursday lunch screening every week and the crew, we’d cater lunch, and show the episode on a big screen. That way we could enjoy how it turned out with the team.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It was a celebration each time. "}]

“From what you originally built and intended, it only gets enhanced at every level,” Harms said. “Like when the visual effects are applied, when you get all of these components coming together, it’s very rarely a disappointment. It’s like ‘Wow, that really came together.’ And you add the music, and it’s always that much more evocative.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sometimes You Can Go Home"}]

Harms didn’t forget his roots in Hollywood, though. He came back home regularly, including every summer. 

It was while sitting with his dad on the back porch one summer night that he realized it was time for a change in his life.

Brian Harms 20260715 125938 7 26 26

<title>Wyoming Native, Now Small Business Owner, Spent 13 Years On TV’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Brian Harms is a Lander native who spent 13 years designing the look of TV's hugely popular "Grey's Anatomy." Harms, who recently bought the Lander Bake Shop, has dozens of other film and TV credits to his name in his 20-plus-year Hollywood career.

Wyoming Native, Now Small Business Owner, Spent 13 Years On TV’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

CASPER — By the time Rick Knigge died last September, he had spent decades turning 20 acres outside the city into a gearhead's paradise.

He had Camaros and Chevelles. Prewar Ford hot rods. Corvettes. A 426 Hemi-powered Plymouth GTX. Monster trucks. Speed boats. Race engines. Shipping containers packed with parts.

[{"type":"text","text":"If it was loud, fast or had the potential to be, Knigge wanted it."}]

The Casper-area oil field worker spent a lifetime hauling home muscle cars, hot rods, vintage trucks, race engines and enough performance parts to fill shelves, sea cans and storage units. 

Nearly every evening after work ended the same way: he'd settle into his chair and spend an hour combing through classifieds, searching for the next great find.

"He was obsessed with it," his wife, Stephanie Knigge, told Cowboy State Daily. "That was probably an hour process every night, just going through all the ads to see if there was anything he was missing out on." 

When Knigge died unexpectedly at 65 on Sept. 10, 2025, he left behind more than memories.

He left a sprawling automotive collection so large it drew bidders from across the country to a massive July 18 estate auction near Evansville for his "Go Fast" collection.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Born To Build"}]

Long before the rows of classic cars filled his property, Knigge was working.

He started driving trucks as a young teenager after his family launched an oilfield water service business. 

Eventually, he and his brother helped build Melco Inc., an oil tank cleaning company that took them across much of the United States. He later became vice president, a role his family said he took great pride in. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Those work trips often turned into treasure hunts."}]

"He got a lot of opportunity to drive around and see what was around and collect stuff," Stephanie said. "So that's how I think it all started." 

By the time she met him in 1989, the collecting bug had already taken hold.

"That's why he started working in the first place — because he wanted parts for cars" she said. 

As the years went on, the collection evolved with whatever captured his imagination.

Some years it was 1930s-era Ford hot rods. Other times it was vintage Jeeps, Broncos or speed boats. If it looked like a bargain, Knigge usually found room for it.

"He would kind of get on a kick every now and then," Stephanie said. "He was always looking." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Twenty Acres "}]

Things really escalated after the family moved to 20 acres outside Casper.

"He really went crazy with it," Stephanie said with a laugh, "because he had the room to park all of it." 

[{"type":"text","text":"Before long, the collection had grown so large the county took notice."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Knigge's solution wasn't to stop buying cars."}]

It was to buy shipping containers, rent storage units and devise an organizational system only he truly understood.

"His brain was pretty intense," Stephanie said. "If I would have had all of that going on in my brain, my mind would explode." 

Eventually, the property held roughly 220 vehicles, along with countless engines, body panels, race parts and automotive memorabilia.

VanDerBrink Auctions dubbed it the "Go Fast" collection. The catalog ranged from 1932-1940 Ford, Dodge, Plymouth and Chevrolet hot rod bodies to Camaros, Chevelles, Corvettes, monster trucks, Humvees, speed boats, racing engines and shelves of vintage speed parts. 

Ironically, Stephanie said her husband rarely had time to enjoy many of his favorite vehicles.

"He didn't even really have the time to enjoy it," she said. "He just worked until he died. He had all these plans." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'You're Burying Me Alive'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Living with more than 200 vehicles wasn't always easy."}]

About a year before his death, Stephanie finally tried to slow the collection's relentless growth.

"I was like, 'Honey, you are kind of burying me alive with all this,'" she recalled. 

[{"type":"text","text":"It didn't work."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"He just did what he wanted,\" she said with a laugh. "}]

Despite the occasional frustration, she understood exactly why he kept collecting.

[{"type":"text","text":"It made him happy."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And sometimes, it paid off."}]

Buying and selling cars over the years helped finance construction of the couple's home, she said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Little Things"}]

Knigge died after complications related to diabetes and previously undiagnosed heart disease. What he initially thought was heartburn quickly became a medical emergency, Stephanie said. 

Without a will or trust, the family eventually concluded selling the collection was the only practical option.

"There just wasn't a choice," Stephanie said. "We had to be able to pay the bills, keep this place going." 

Rows of hot rods, muscle cars, speed boats, race engines, body panels and carefully cataloged parts stretched across the property as bidders wandered from lot to lot, loading trailers with pieces of a collection Rick spent decades building. 

By day's end, what had once been one man's automotive playground was dispersing across Wyoming and beyond.

[{"type":"text","text":"Watching it happen proved more emotional than Stephanie expected."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It was the little things."}]

Pallets stacked with mirrors, headlights and decades of carefully gathered parts sold off in bulk.

"I'd just be thinking, 'Oh my gosh, he would be rolling over in his grave,'" she said. "He put a lot of time and energy into even the little details." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Cars"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Some moments brought comfort."}]

A family friend bought one of Knigge's Camaros. Her nephew purchased a pair of racing engines she believes Rick would have wanted him to have. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Others marked the end of an era."}]

One longtime auction-goer told the family it was the biggest auction he had ever attended. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Today, much of the collection is gone."}]

A few keepsakes remain, but Stephanie hopes people remember more than the hundreds of cars that once filled their property.

Her husband, she said, was a successful businessman, a devoted husband of 36 years, a father, grandfather and great-grandfather who loved fishing almost as much as fast cars. 

Friends and family remember him as generous, quick with a joke and always willing to lend a hand without expecting anything in return.

Rick and Stephanie Knigge inset 7 26 26

<title>Finding New Homes For Casper Oil Field Worker's 220-Car Collection Of Hot Rods | Cowboy State Daily</title>

By the time Rick Knigge died last September, he had spent decades turning 20 acres outside Casper into a gearhead's paradise. The oilfield worker spent a lifetime hauling home muscle cars, hot rods and vintage trucks. Now they are all finding new homes.

Finding New Homes For Casper Oil Field Worker's 220-Car Collection Of Hot Rods

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

In the early 2000s, Zariah Whiteplume recalls how she would have to go to the "water hole" on the Navajo Reservation just so her family could wash dishes and have water to drink.

“I remember visiting my great-grandmother in New Mexico and we barely had any electricity,” Whiteplume said. “We had no running water, and it's so crazy that we used to go in an outhouse, and haul water.”

Whiteplume, 22, has known poverty all her life in two places: The Navajo and Wind River reservations. The experiences have led her on a quest to make life better for both her tribes, the Northern Arapaho and Diné (Navajo).

“I know there's still so many tribal members who live like that out on the reservation,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “I feel like I came a long way but when you're young you don't really realize that you are poor. It’s just the way it is.”

Whiteplume wanted to change that, so she began 

lectrical engineering degree with a focus on renewable energy. 

Members of her Diné family attended United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota, and persuaded her to visit. 

discovered her love for math was a strong asse

as recruited to the engineering program. 

[{"type":"text","text":"This past spring, she graduated with her pre-engineering degree."}]

“It's a very demanding degree, but I'm also proud to say that I'm one of a few of the young women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math),” Whiteplume said. “United Tribes brought me opportunities I thought I would never have.”

Thanks to her Diné connections, Whiteplume was able to intern at the Los Alamos Nationa

o summers. This year, she transferred to the Sandia National Laboratori

“I want to come back to my community and engage with the youth,” she said. “We need to introduce more of our kids at earlier ages to the sciences but also incorporate our cultural ways.”

Whiteplume said she hopes to build a bridge between h

This process is called Traditional Ecological Knowledge, or TEK, and can be used to ensure proposed renewable energy fits community priorities, respects culturally significant places, and meets local needs rather than imposing outside solutions.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sharing Her Culture"}]

As she pursues her education and dreams of a future sharing her passion of math and science to children on the reservations, Whiteplume is also staying in touch with her cultural identity through hoop dancing.

She has performed before various audiences, including

“The elementary kids from around the Bismarck school districts get most excited whenever I come out,” Whiteplume said. “That means a lot to me.”

Whiteplume was 8 when she first began learning to hoop dance with Jasmine Bell and her team of young girls on the Wind River Reservation. Over the years, she has had numerous mentors. In middle school, her teacher was Ann Abeyta in Fort Washakie. 

“Hoop dancing is a healing dance and people enjoy watching because of how skilled you have to be to do the dance,” Whiteplume said. “When I dance, I pick up the hoops with my feet and I don't ever bend down to pick up the hoops off the ground.”

Whiteplume said what makes the dance so special is telling her own story. Each year, she adds a hoop; she 

“I always get nervous before I dance and my parents always remind me that when I dance I'm not only healing myself but I'm healing everybody else around me and to keep my family members in mind,” she said.

Whiteplume said she makes a purposeful effort to always have positive vibes when dancing. Once she begins, rather than concern herself with the technical aspects, she pays attention to the drum group and its music while keeping her thoughts centered on family.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It just flows naturally,” she said."}]

Whiteplume spent her early years dancing around Lander and the Wind River Reservation. After she graduated, she said it was heartwarming to hear from locals who said they had watched her grow up through her hoop dancing.

When Whiteplume was in high school, she was asked to hoop dance for the opening of a show.  Red Berry Woman, a contemporary fashion design company owned by a Hidatsa Sioux. Assiniboine and Crow woman named 

Zariah Whiteplume grew up without running water or much electricity on the Wind River and Navajo reservations. This summer, she was hoop dancing and modeling in Tokyo. “I want to come back to my community and engage with the youth,” she said.

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, May 2, 2023

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