Wyoming has a long list of people who help preserve and promote the history of the state. Three of them I had the chance to work with this year are keeping the history alive in their communities.
In Afton, Glen Larson Call is the undisputed expert on the Call Aircraft Company and the key interpreter at CallAir Museum who shares both stories of the company and his personal flying adventures.
CallAir was founded by his father Reuel Call in 1939. The company manufactured planes in Afton from about 1940 to 1970, although the first prototype was designed and built starting in 1939. During World War II Reuel Call served in the military and became an airplane pilot instructor.
Glen Call recalls his own training to fly when his father would tell him how to do something in a plane, and he would follow the directions. “I was gifted” he said of his opportunity to learn to fly while still in high school – and given his connection to the manufacturing of the planes, he may have understood how they worked almost instinctively.
When visiting the CallAir Museum in Afton, with several of the company’s planes on display including the CallAir A-3 cabin plane, a Call Air snow car ,and other planes used for both passenger transportation and for mountain flying and agricultural crop spraying.
Glen Call clearly loves to talk about Call Air, his father’s history, and his own flying experience. Like the time he landed his plane in a field just outside of Afton and then taxied to the local drive in for something to eat. The car hop became a “plane hop” and brought him his order. Later she even married him!
And then there is the story about the photographs of what was clearly a horrific airplane accident. “That was me,” Glen said as he showed the photos of the wreckage. The crash happened when Glen and his father were working for the government, assisting with a wild horse roundup in the Red Desert.
Their two planes had a mid-air collision. Glen recalls it: “I was flying one of the airplanes Dad had for many years. As some horses broke away, …he didn’t realize I was there. He turned into me and cut my left wing in half. About a hundred feet off the ground.” Glen’s plane crumpled in a crash landing.
“What a miracle it is that I’m still alive because one part of the airplane that wasn’t cut up was where I was sitting.” Glen firmly believes he survived the crash because “the Lord had more for me to do.”
During his long life he has made many contributions. And now he spends time at the CallAir Museum talking about the family legacy.
Over in Lander, Jack States manages one of the valley’s heritage orchards, growing 14 varieties of old heritage apples that date back to the beginning of the orchard in 1883. His grandfather homesteaded in the Sinks Canyon area in 1903 and planted another 30 varieties of apples from about 1910 to the 1930s. Some of those apple trees are “still very productive even though they are approaching 100 years of age,” Jack says.
At the fall Apple Fest held at the Pioneer Museum in Lander, Jack showed a variety of the apples from the orchard, and he talked about orchard management and apple growing. “It seems like everybody’s interested in apples,” he said. “A lot of people have apples in their back yard. And of course, the kids like to eat the apples.”
At the festival events ranged from arts and crafts, to making apple cider and eating apple pie. But one newer event involves an oversized sling-shot used for apple target practice. As Jack said, “What kid could resist putting an apple in a sling shot and hitting a target?”
Back home in Encampment, Dick Perue shares his knowledge of newspapers and printing at the annual living history event at the Grand Encampment Museum every July. He sets up the old letter press, a foot-pumped press that has been in use in the valley since the late 1800s when it was owned by the Saratoga Sun newspaper and job shop.
Dick carefully instructs kids and adults how to pump the press, where to place their hands so fingers don’t get crushed, and as each piece of commemorative printing is produced, he proudly gives it to the visitor as a souvenir.
Dick started his press work at age 15, more than seven decades ago, and over the years he has taught not only visitors who print a single document, but many other press operators. One of his “students” is his stepson Alan Williams, who now owns Perue Printing in Saratoga, and who regularly does his own hand printing of documents for customers, using a press that is nearly as old as the one at the Grand Encampment Museum.
From airplanes to apples and hand set type there is plenty of history across Wyoming and the state is fortunate there are people like Glen Larson Call, Jack States, and Dick Perue to share it. They are just three of Wyoming’s history keepers.
Candy Moulton can be reached at: Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
