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[{"type":"text","text":"In case you needed a new way to put on pants..."}]

Darwin 5 6 23

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Saturday, May 6, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In case you needed a new way to put on pants...

Daily Darwin: Saturday, May 6, 2023

 In case you needed a new way to put on pants...

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

CHEYENNE — The day after Gene Holthus’ home in Cheyenne’s Buffalo Ridge subdivision was gutted on July 16, 1979, he stood outside taking photos of the destruction. 

His three sons were busy trying to salvage anything they could from the house as Wyoming National Guard helicopters flew overhead to protect the neighborhood from looting.

Holthus told the Wyoming State Tribune that he was at work at the Wyoming Highway Department when he saw the huge twister rip past the Game and Fish Commission.

“I immediately called my wife, Alta, and told her to get in the basement,” Holthus said. “She didn’t know a thing about it.”

He said the next few minutes were terrifying as he waited for a chance to get home. Holthus learned that a gas main had broken in his basement.

“Somebody called the fire department and within about five minutes they came and dug my wife out of the basement,” he recalled. “Thank God she only had a few scratches.”

As Holthus continued talking to the reporter, one of his sons came running up and handed him an envelope he’d found several blocks away. It contained vivid color photographs of the family’s garden, which was now buried under rubble.

Holthus looked at every one of the photos. 

“I just can’t believe that something this small could remain intact while bigger things were totally destroyed,” he said. 

The reporter told him he was sorry about everything his family lost. Holthus turned around and pointed at the house.

“This can all be replaced,” he said. “We survived. And I’ll treasure these photos and all the memories.”

Holthus died in 2015, but he and his family had survived what 47 years later is still the most destructive tornado ever recorded in Wyoming. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"9-Mile Path Of Destruction"}]

The tornado that touched down was not only rare for the capital city, Cheyenne had never had one within city limits prior to July 16, 1979. 

The tornado was officially an F-3, using the EF scale that ranks tornados by damage intensity. But some scientists believe it was even more fierce, an F-4, based on the intensity of destruction it left behind.

The tornado first formed around 3:10 p.m. near the intersection of Vandehei Avenue and Valley View Road. Peak winds were estimated between 136-165 mph.

Its path through the city was 8.8 miles, which it traveled in about 30 minutes. 

The massive twister was 80 yards wide, or four-fifths as long as a football field.

It was the most destructive tornado in Wyoming’s history, and it caused one death: 14-month-old David McKinnon, who the Laramie County coroner at the time said died instantly from head injuries when his family’s trailer was ripped apart by the black funnel cloud.

Damaging about 400 homes, including 140 that were destroyed, the total property damage was estimated at $25 million, which is the equivalent to 

As people dug through the rubble, called insurance adjusters, and talked to friends and family about their ordeal, one thing about the natural disaster seemed universally described by survivors as miraculous. 

How could such an enormous tornado wreaking havoc for such a long time have not killed more people?

“This was my first major crisis,” Don Erickson, Cheyenne’s mayor from 1977-1989, told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday as he recalled the challenges he faced when the tornado hit the northern part of the city. 

“We had to show the community a lot of confidence, that we were doing the best we can,” he said. "And we did. We had a great team.”

Erickson, 89, can vividly describe everything he saw happen the day the tornado hit.

“I was sitting in my office with my risk manager looking through this great big window,” he said. “I thought, ‘My God, it looked kind of weird out there.’ Big black clouds coming around, and I said, ‘Let’s go up on the roof and see what’s going on.’”

Within 10 seconds of arriving on the rooftop, Erickson said that, “There was a big blast north of City Hall. Later on, we found that a transformer over by the governor’s mansion had been struck by lightning.”

Dave Guille, the head of civil defense for the city, called to tell the mayor that a tornado had hit the north side of Cheyenne.

Erickson, who had just dealt with one shock, called Cheyenne Police Chief Byron Rookstool, and together they made a hurried trip to the scene.

“The rescue effort was underway, and the devastation was amazing,” Erickson said. “We were so lucky that people were working and the kids weren’t quite home yet.”

He flew in a National Guard helicopter to see the path of destruction. 

“We’re fortunate that the Frontier Mall wasn’t built yet on Dell Range. It would have had a tremendous amount of damage,” he said.

Erickson said Gov. Ed Herschler immediately declared Cheyenne a disaster area.

Erickson said the entire city rallied to help take care of anyone impacted by the disaster. Scores of people opened up their homes to those who had lost theirs. 

Esther Howard formed the Interfaith Task Force, which brought local organizations together to coordinate how they could help anyone who needed it.

Erickson resurrected the group when had his next big crisis, which also involved disastrous weather that Cheyenne had never seen before: the Aug. 1, 1985, flood, which killed a dozen people and caused more than $51 million in damage. 

He said he took what he learned from the tornado tragedy, and that it helped prepare him for the even bigger disaster.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lucky For Him"}]

Tom Reed was a high school junior spending the summer of 1979 working for a construction company that was putting the finishing touches on a new house in his Buffalo Ridge neighborhood. 

On the afternoon of July 16, he was the last person at the site, cleaning it up so the house would be ready for the family that would move in soon.

He went across town to do the same thing at a house on the south side. That’s when he looked north and spotted the tornado.

“We were up pretty high so we could see it across town,” Reed said. “At first I thought it was a fire, but then I saw it move and realized what it was.”

He made another stop at the construction company, where someone told him that a twister had been heading right through his neighborhood. He raced home, but had to walk part of the way because of all the debris covering Roundtop Drive.

He said he spotted his mother, Becky Reed, outside their now heavily damaged ranch-style home doing what everyone else in the neighborhood was doing: trying to assess the damage and figure out what in the world to do next. 

Some people were looking for their pets, but his family dog was inside, unharmed.

Reed said that unlike some of their neighbors whose two-story and multi-level homes were severely damaged, with roofs blown completely off, the Reeds’ single-level house was still standing.

“The roof was kind of peeled back from where it met the west wall,” he said. “If you looked up in the family room you could look straight up to the sky.”

Reed said a lot of windows were broken, and the strong winds blew open the refrigerator door and the contents were tossed all over the house. The hallway walls were covered with ketchup and mustard.

But unlike about 1,000 other Cheyenne residents, the Reeds weren’t homeless that night. 

In fact, they never left. He said he and his father, Tom Reed Sr., who also worked for the same construction company, fixed everything themselves over time.

Reed, who has spent the last 30 years working for ESPN and living in Connecticut, talked to Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday from Dallas, where he’s on vacation. He’s headed to Cheyenne for Frontier Days.

Once he found that his mother was shaken but not hurt, Reed walked to the construction site he had left only an hour before. 

“The house was just gone,” he said. “There was nothing left but the foundation, and the furnace and a few other mechanicals in the basement. Not a stick of the house was left.”

Reed said it took him a while to process the scene. Talking about it 47 years later leaves him amazed and grateful that he got out of the area in time. 

“If I’d stayed a little longer, I would have been hiding in that basement,” he said.

Reed’s mother had been home alone working on her sewing machine when she heard the wind and realized some of the windows were open. When she looked out, she was staring at the tornado headed straight for her.

Becky Reed and the dog made it to the basement, where they went to her son’s room and pulled the mattress over them. She heard the sounds of destruction all around her as the twister plowed into homes.

“When she thought it was over, she went upstairs and out to the porch, only to see  the tornado roaring past her,” Reed said. “She told us later she thought, ‘I might have jumped the gun a little bit.’”

Reed said he’s still bewildered by what transpired that day, seeing some houses look untouched while their next-door neighbors’ homes were reduced to piles of rubble. 

Then he remembered something he said he hadn’t thought about for a long time.

“We had a coffee maker on the kitchen counter, with a pitcher and a panhandle with a metal ring around it,” Reed said. “The coffee maker was gone, but we found the handle out in the front yard. Sitting right next to it was a little dish that had $50 under it. That was just bizarre.”

Kerry Drake can be reached at: Kerry@CowboyStateDaily.com

Tornado 7 16 23 v8

<title>Most Destructive Tornado In Wyoming’s History Leveled Cheyenne 47 Years Ago | Cowboy State Daily</title>

It was 47 years ago on July 16, 1979, when a massive tornado ripped through Cheyenne, leveling hundreds of homes and killing a 14-month old. Decades later, it’s still the most destructive tornado in Wyoming history.

Most Destructive Tornado In Wyoming’s History Leveled Cheyenne 47 Years Ago

This is a story about old-school journalism when photographers used what is now considered ancient equipment to capture dramatic images of incredible events, like 

 as it tore across north Cheyenne on July 16, 1979, destroying everything directly in its path.

It’s also the tale of two guys who found themselves in the right place at the right time, journalistically speaking, though we did nothing to put ourselves there. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Let’s call it what it was: dumb luck."}]

I was half of this team; my friend Jerry Johnston was the better half. 

Jerry wasn’t a news photographer, but he was a great one that day because he accomplished what all of us in the business want: a front-page photo in newspapers across the country.

I was a reporter/photographer for the Wyoming State Tribune, Cheyenne’s afternoon daily newspaper. Our paper went to press at about 1 p.m., so anything I did after that would have to wait until the next day’s edition.

There wasn’t much on my plate as I drove to my volunteer job at the American Cancer Society-Wyoming for a meeting of its public relations committee, which I chaired. 

The weather was what everyone in Cheyenne expects on a typical mid-afternoon about a week before 

Frontier Days — a dark, foreboding sky that promised to soon dump a healthy amount of 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Almost Everyone Fled"}]

As I arrived at the ACS office in the Melton Shopping Center, the meeting was already breaking up. 

A secretary informed us that it was looking dangerous outside, and that it was probably a good time to leave. Everyone rushed to their cars except Jerry, who was a staff member, and me. 

[{"type":"text","text":"We went outside to see if it was really that bad."}]

I got together with Jerry this week to talk about what happened that day, like I knew I would when I was assigned to write a retrospective on the most destructive tornado in Wyoming’s history. 

Although we hadn’t seen each other in many years, there’s no one I’d rather reminisce about a day 47 years ago that, as Jerry said, 

I had forgotten a few details that Jerry recalled, but our accounts were virtually the same for most of the events.

I remember seeing a large, black mass off in the distance west of us. I wondered what could be on fire — maybe the National Guard headquarters? — until I noticed in horror that it was slowly moving east. 

And at that moment, even though I had never seen a tornado live, I knew what it was. 

I believe my response was, “Holy shit!” If I didn’t say it outloud, it’s what I was thinking.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Shocking Discovery"}]

I went to my car to grab my camera, which I took with me everywhere, because it was essential to my job.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It wasn’t there. "}]

My heart sank when I realized I had likely left it on my desk in the newsroom, and that's exactly where I found it about an hour later.

The funnel cloud kept moving, and though it wasn’t on top of us, it was getting much too close for comfort. 

My first concern, though, wasn’t about safety, even though the ACS office didn’t have a basement, so there was nowhere to immediately go if it veered in our direction.

No, my first freak-out was that the most dangerous weather phenomena I’d ever seen was smack-dab in front of us, and I was powerless to document it.

But Jerry, thank God, had a 35 mm Pentax camera he retrieved, so we were in business after all. I remembered he’d taken photography classes when we were at Laramie County Community College, so I felt things were in control. Except perhaps me.

“You kept yelling at me to ‘shoot, shoot, shoot!'” Jerry recalled. 

Yes I did, because there was nothing else I could say to convey how important it was to keep clicking the damn shutter. Jerry assured me that he had just loaded a huge roll of film, so things were cool.

But what was happening in front of us was terrifying. 

There were houses in the twister’s path, and I could see what looked like doors, maybe pieces of roofs and tons of debris being whisked up into the funnel cloud, then slammed to the ground.

“It didn’t have a classic tornado look. It looked like 

,” Jerry said, jabbing his finger at the copy of his photo that I brought to help stimulate our conversation and, hopefully, to illustrate this notebook. 

This time I remembered to bring my camera, which is actually a phone, which is all I use in this modern world.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘We Were Idiots’"}]

The photo depicts the closest we ever were to the tornado, and it was the one we eventually used. 

I chalked that up to great timing, but Jerry had a different description.

“We were idiots,” he said. "We didn’t know if that thing was going to come over the hill and right at us. But what it did was ride that ridge line all the way down, and we got lucky.”

Jerry’s right, we were idiots, but being lucky idiots wasn’t a bad thing. 

When push comes to shove, sometimes the thing that separates a run-of-the-mill photo from a great one is having luck on your side as something extraordinary passes right in front of you.

So, Jerry got his shot and it was time to rush back to my office so we could literally scoop every other media outlet with the first photos of this tragedy. Right?

Nope. That would have been too sensible. Or lackluster. Or wimpy. There was only one thing to do.

“We got in your car and we drove up and around Mylar Park and up to Powderhouse Road, and then we just kind of started following it,” Jerry recalled.

I think our adrenaline mutually kicked into gear, because this wasn’t an idiotic move at all. We were quite a distance behind the twister, and we could see what kind of damage it was doing.  

“As we drove on Powderhouse there was junk all over because it had thrown prairie all over, and it was getting worse,” Jerry said. “And that’s where we stopped. 

"We talked to some people who were in extreme shellshock. A woman showed us that half of the roof on the back side of her house was gone.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That was the end of our journey."}]

“You were like, ‘I don’t think I want to drive in there any further,’ and at that point it was wise because that’s when all of the emergency crews were trying to get there,” he added. “Powderhouse became a big route, and we were pretty much stuck.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Give Me That Film’"}]

Jerry remembers shooting some pictures from a distance over toward Buffalo Ridge, which was the most heavily damaged. 

“And then we booked it back,” he said. “And you immediately said, ‘Give me that roll of film, I don’t have time, I’ve got to get this out.’ And you took off.”

Now, if this catastrophic event happened today, I wouldn’t have had to speed back, develop the film, wait for it to dry and then run it through our photo processor to get an image. 

Since our cheap, unreliable photo processor typically jammed a few times, it was a long process.

Today, we would have had a digital camera — well, I probably would’ve forgotten mine, but Jerry would have one — and it would be click away, select the best shot, send it electronically, then leave to chase the tornado.

I knew the wire services would want what Jerry shot, and I quickly found what looked like the best photo to tell the story. 

United Press International (UPI) was the wire service my paper used, and was conveniently next to our newsroom.

The Associated Press was located downtown, so I dropped a copy of a slightly different shot there. 

Both services said they’d send it out with a mandatory credit, so at least Jerry would have some reward for his hard work and putting up with my insistent order to shoot, shoot, shoot.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Morning After"}]

The next morning, Jerry started getting calls from friends and family all over, including Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. 

“A former college roommate living in Wisconsin told me, ‘You’re on my front page!’ Jerry said. “It was kind of spooky.”

Jerry and I both laughed when he told me his son asked if he got rich from his historic photo that was seen throughout the country, and perhaps much of the world.

“About a year later, AP sent me a check for $53,” Jerry said, shaking his head. “And UP sent me about $60. My son said, ‘How much money do you think they made?’ And I said, ‘A hell of a lot more than what I did.'

“In today’s media, it might have made some money,” he added. “But honest to God, that was such a small part of it.”

What does he remember most about that day? 

“How dark it was,” Jerry said. “The photo, which is really dark, doesn’t even do it justice. I’ll never forget that, it’s etched in my memory.”

It was indeed a dark day, both in the eerie sky above and for all of the people whose homes were destroyed and lives overturned. 

That’s what I think we should commemorate on this 47th anniversary. Cheyenne was filled with brave and caring people to help their neighbors get through the tragedy.

Personally, I also think about what it was like to be part of an unlikely team that managed to work together and get the first photo of the major news event of the day on both wire services — quite a mean feat. 

It hasn’t happened to me in the 47 years since, and it won’t ever again because, as Jerry remind me, “We’re ancient.” 

And at times that day, we were too reckless for our own good. 

But we got the job done, in a far different — and I would say more challenging to navigate — media environment. 

People relied on local newspapers to inform them, not 24-hour cable news channels, talking heads, high-tech websites, apps and artificial intelligence. 

I didn’t know it then, but those were some of journalism’s best days. I was glad to be a part of it.

1979 tornado Kerry notebook 7 15 26

<title>Reporter’s Notebook: How Photo Of 1979 Cheyenne Tornado Made National News | Cowboy State Daily</title>

It took a team effort by a camera-less photographer and a buddy who had one on Juyly 16, 1979, to get photos of the most destructive tornado in Wyoming’s history to news wire services. The dramatic and devastating photos made front pages across the U.S.

Reporter’s Notebook: How Photo Of 1979 Cheyenne Tornado Made National News

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Legislature

A Wyoming state lawmaker pleaded guilty Wednesday to driving drunk in Buffalo in late December, and was sentenced to probation and a $500 fine.

Rep. Bill Allemand, R-Midwest, took a plea agreement offered by Johnson County Deputy Attorney Joshua Stensaas, and gave his guilty plea in Buffalo Circuit Court at a Wednesday hearing.

He was arrested Dec. 28 in Buffalo. Stensaas has said Allemand’s blood-alcohol concentration was 0.24%. That figure is contested, Buffalo Circuit Court Magistrate Judge Jeremy Kisling noted during the Wednesday hearing.

A flurry of disputes over the chemical blood test were still in play when Allemand’s case settled.

Kisling sentenced Allemand to 90 days in jail — less the two he served when arrested — but suspended that sentence in favor of one year of unsupervised probation.

That means Allemand has a year of probation ahead of him, and if he fails probation, he may be sentenced to the remaining 88 days in jail.

For the first six months’ probation Allemand is required to submit to chemical testing between once and twice a month. He could be tested upon a law enforcement officer’s reasonable articulable suspicion as well, Kisling noted.

Under probation, Allemand is also required to stay out of bars and liquor stores, not violate any laws, complete his counseling or treatment as recommended, and pay his fines and fees. 

Kisling fined Allemand $500 but said he’d credit up to $200 upon a showing that Allemand had purchased a treatment evaluation as required.  

Kisling imposed other costs and fees: $70 in court costs, $150 for victim’s crime compensation fund, and $50 for the drug court surcharge.

Stensaas had recommended those terms, except he left the potential jail sentence length open to the judge’s discretion. 

Both the prosecutor and the magistrate said they were working to treat this case like any other first-time DUI featuring a high blood-alcohol concentration.

“Mr. Allemand I know there’s been a lot of to-do around this, and at the end of the day this court ignores the to-do,” said Kisling, adding that he’s treating this case like others of its nature.

He said he wishes Allemand luck, recognizes he’s working on the alcohol issue.

“Continue to maintain that sobriety… and put this behind you,” said Kisling.

[{"type":"text","text":"Allemand did not give a speech when it was his chance."}]

He did not immediately respond to a late-day voicemail request for comment after the hearing.

Allemand is running against Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer for the GOP nomination at the Aug. 18 primary election. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Next, The Lawyer"}]

At the same hearing Wednesday, Allemand’s attorney Mike Vang pleaded not guilty to a separate charge alleging 

Kisling ordered Vang to appear in court Wednesday to answer why he missed a hearing that had been set for July 8, where Vang had been slated to argue his claims that the prosecutor deprived him of key evidence.

Stensaas has called those claims false. He recommended another contempt charge Wednesday due to the “heavy interplay” amid those claims, and said “that may be something that is filed.”

But Kisling said as far as the judge’s contempt action — which a court can advance — he’ll stick with a series of other issues he deemed problematic. Those were, according to Kisling:

• Vang appeared three minutes late and in a blue T-shirt for a January virtual hearing;

[{"type":"text","text":"• Vang missed the July 8 in-person-only hearing;"}]

• When asking to reschedule his July 15 contempt hearing, Vang cited a conflicting hearing in Albany County’s Laramie Circuit Court that was not actually set;

• Kisling had earlier issued an order telling counsel to be prepared and exercise due diligence in discovery, “but in summary, all orders would be taken seriously.”

Kisling noted that in light of a Wyoming Supreme Court case on these types of cases, he’d start a new criminal case, apart from Allemand’s case, for the contempt proceedings.

Vang said he’ll hire an attorney in this matter, and Kisling said he doesn’t need to set a bond for Vang.

“I can tell you I’ve never been in these shoes, so it’s not something I’ve dealt with," said Kisling, who had earlier said this action gives him “no pleasure.”

Vang had raised a protest in one of his motions, against the Johnson County Sheriff's Office's release of Deputy Caleb Campbell's body camera video of Allemand's arrest - days after Kisling ruled that 12 minutes of it 

couldn't be part of the prosecutor's main case.

[{"type":"text","text":"That issue remains unsettled since Allemand's case is concluded. "}]

Campbell had stopped Allemand on claims that after stopping at a stop sign just off Interstate 25, Allemand lurched forward, nearly hit another vehicle, then stopped abruptly.

This, coupled with the evidence that Allemand was the subject of a drunk driving report by another driver on the Interstate near Buffalo, made for enough evidence to justify Campbell’s stop, Kisling ruled earlier.

Campbell spotted a gun on Allemand's truck seat and handcuffed the man during the traffic stop over what he cast during a March court hearing as officer safety concerns. 

That was appropriate, Kisling had ruled. But Campbell also asked Allemand potentially incriminating questions while Allemand was confined, but without having given Allemand his Miranda rights. 

That's why those 12 minutes of video, spanning the time Allemand was confined but not Mirandized, could not be part of the prosecutor's main case at trial, Kisling ruled in June. 

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

Campbell’s affidavit says Allemand was driving a blue 2016 Toyota Tacoma with Wyoming plates, and that it was towed after the interaction.

 Wyoming state Rep. Bill Allemand pleaded guilty to DUI in court Wednesday and was given one year probation and fined $500. He faces 88 days in jail if he fails probation. 

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