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Dog's routine after working a 9 - 5 day.....

Smile 2 4 25

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

<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, February 4, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Smile: Tuesday, February 4, 2025

 Dog's routine after working a 9 - 5 day.....

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Tourism

The parking lot was mostly empty when a group of volunteers from Zion Lutheran Church in Rapid City rolled into Blessed Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Sturgis, South Dakota, at 7 a.m.

Fog hung from the tops of the pine trees like a delicate tablecloth. The air was cool and fresh.

It had rained hard the previous night — an unusual turn during a record-breaking hot and dry summer in the Black Hills — and the motorcycles were slower than usual to begin pulling into the church parking lot for breakfast.

But that morning, like every other morning for the past five days, the core volunteers were ready.

For more than 15 years, the church has opened its doors, its kitchens (first one and then two) and its hard-charging weeklong ministry to bikers looking for a hearty breakfast or dinner. 

As an estimated half-million bikers worldwide descend on the otherwise tranquil town of about 7,000 over 10 days, the devoted volunteers at Blessed Emmanuel work tirelessly to cook made-to-order breakfasts for free-will donations.

[{"type":"text","text":"The week of work funds the bulk of the church’s annual budget."}]

Soon after 7, the first customers arrived. A lone biker wearing a black T-shirt and faded black jeans placed his breakfast order with church member LuAnn Grossman, who greeted customers beneath an awning outside the church.

Most of the rest of his crew was still back at the campground, he explained, sleeping off the previous night.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Some of them are in rough shape,” he said."}]

Grossman smiled, handed the biker a number and gave his order to a runner. 

That runner, a middle schooler who will start school next week, made the rounds: First to the outdoor kitchen for eggs, hashbrowns and French toast according to what the order sheet specified, then to the indoor kitchen for bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy and toast.

A full plate of hot food would soon land in front of the biker to accompany his cup of hot black coffee — a godsend in the morning’s cool and cloudy weather.

By the time the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is in full swing, Blessed Emmanuel Lutheran Church has become something of a second home for many rallygoers.

Eggs and omelets are cooked to order. Biscuits and gravy. Waffles, bacon, sausage, ham, toast and fruit.

There are tables beneath awnings in the church yard, where bikers can sit outside and swap stories. There is a dining room inside. Volunteers are everywhere – cooking, serving, busing, scraping plates, washing dishes, wiping down tables, visiting with rallygoers.

[{"type":"text","text":"And there is plenty of coffee."}]

But the ministry that now feels like a Sturgis institution began with a much humbler purpose.

[{"type":"text","text":"It started because Blessed Emmanuel needed the money."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From 'Takers' To Givers"}]

Blessed Emmanuel began as a church plant in 2000, a new congregation that relied heavily on financial support from sister churches in the area.

[{"type":"text","text":"The congregation eventually needed to find a way to support itself."}]

“For a long time, we were takers,” said Kari Kannenberg, a longtime member of Blessed Emmanuel who has been involved with the breakfast ministry since it started in 2010.

[{"type":"text","text":"Church members began talking about ways to raise money."}]

Several saw opportunity in the rally. How could the church serve the scores of strangers who rumble in and out of its little town during one week every year?

In 2010, the congregation began serving meals during rally week, on a wing and a prayer.

The first breakfasts were prepared in the church kitchen, a cramped room about the size of three cubicles.

Volunteers cooked eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, biscuits and gravy and toast in that tiny space.

[{"type":"text","text":"A lot of food in a small room."}]

But the idea caught on. At first, roughly 50 people showed up throughout the week. Then 100 a day. Then 150.

The weeklong fundraiser brought in money the congregation needed. More importantly, it eventually became something bigger than a fundraiser.

Today, proceeds help fund much of Blessed Emmanuel's annual budget, while some of the money is shared with other Lutheran congregations in the area.

“Our parish would not exist without this ministry,” said Pastor Robert Hinckley, who also serves as pastor at Grace Lutheran in Deadwood. “It really puts us on the map.”

The church that once needed supported from other congregations now has something to give.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Well-Oiled Breakfast Machine"}]

By rally week, the operation at Blessed Emmanuel resembles a small restaurant with a remarkably large volunteer staff. A food inspector from the South Dakota Department of Health examines the property the first day to ensure operations are sanitary.

Volunteers serve breakfast every day from Saturday through Saturday and dinner Monday through Friday. The dinners – one homemade menu item each night – draw a crowd, but the breakfast is where the ministry really shines.

Bikers put in their order with Grossman under the awning just outside the church’s entrance. When someone orders a waffle, Grossman presses a button, which dings in the church kitchen, notifying the volunteer there to pour batter so the waffle is ready when the plate comes.

An entire wall of the dining room is lined with drinks and condiments where customers can help themselves.

The church’s yard is covered with awnings beneath which are scores of folding tables and folding chairs.

After placing an order, each customer receives a number. A volunteer runner then shepherds the order from one kitchen station to the next.

[{"type":"text","text":"Outside, six cooks work oversized grills."}]

Once that part of the order is fulfilled, the runner brings the plate (washable, not disposable) to the inside kitchen, where servers further pile on waffles, toast, biscuits and gravy and/or fruit.

“You should have seen our waffle makers the other day,” longtime church member and volunteer Bill Denke said while eating his own breakfast before the Thursday rush. “They got so behind in making waffles.”

The volunteer cooking waffles heard the “ding” so many times the sound followed him home.

“When he got home that day and his doorbell rang, he got up to go make a waffle,” Denke said.

[{"type":"text","text":"There are plenty of stories like that."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Week Of Vacation, Cooking Eggs"}]

The ministry requires roughly 10 to 15 volunteers each day, in addition to about 10 core volunteers who show up every day.

Many of those core volunteers are in their 60s and 70s. Some are retired. Others take vacation from their regular jobs.

Denke, a stout man with a weathered face who braids his long beard and always wears a bandanna or cap snug against his scalp, has been cooking eggs and omelets at the rally breakfast for 16 years.

Every August, he takes a week of vacation from his job as an elevator shaft operator at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in nearby Lead.

He trades his regular work clothes for an apron and he spends the week cracking eggs over an oversized griddle.

Kannenberg's husband, Denny, wears an old pair of shoes while working in the outdoor kitchen because, as she puts it, he knows he's going to get eggs all over them.

Quinten Glass, a pharmacist from Rapid City, was on his second day of cooking bacon.

“I'm pretty sure I'll sweat bacon grease the rest of the day,” he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"But the volunteers don't seem to mind."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"They keep coming back."}]

One day this week, members of the quilt club from Peace Lutheran Church in Rapid City joined them.

[{"type":"text","text":"One volunteer was 90."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Another was 100."}]

The 100-year-old volunteer sat on a stool for hours scraping dirty plates.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Don't talk so loud!” she would say. “My hearing aids are new!”"}]

The ministry even attracts volunteers who aren't affiliated with the church.

Every once in a while, bikers themselves trade a day on the open road for an apron and spatula.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They see the mission,” Kannenberg said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Bikers Know Where To Find Them"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"In the early years, the church had to work to get the word out."}]

Kannenberg's husband walked through Sturgis neighborhoods, knocking on doors of homes where motorcycles were parked in the driveway.

[{"type":"text","text":"Volunteers distributed flyers at campgrounds."}]

Today, the church puts up large signs around town advertising its free-will-donation meals, and Kannenberg shares information about the breakfasts in biker Facebook groups.

But mostly, the church’s breakfast reputation has spread by word of mouth.

“The biker community knows our church,” Hinckley said, adding that the breakfast ministry has become part of the congregation's identity.

[{"type":"text","text":"“One guy brings his own tea from England,” Kannenberg said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Earlier in the week, a Portuguese-speaking couple arrived at the church."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"They didn't speak English."}]

Volunteers pulled out an online translation app, explained the menu and helped the couple place their order.

On Thursday, a handful of members of the Redrum Motorcycle Club came through.

The club, an Indigenous motorcycle organization founded in 2006, emphasizes brotherhood, motorcycling, community, respect, responsibility, fundraising and family.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then there was Bill Douglas."}]

Douglas, 83, sat with his daughter, Ashley. The duo had trailered their bikes from Connecticut to Sturgis for Bill’s 25th rally. They got a late start, because Bill had been down and out with a tooth infection.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We rallied, got some antibiotics and hit the road,” Ashley said."}]

This is the fifth year they’ve come to Blessed Emmanuel for breakfast – and dinner.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We eat every meal here,” Bill said."}]

The Douglases learned about the church breakfasts and dinners from an employee at the Hog Heaven campground, where they always stay.

Trying to beat the rain, they drove through the Black Hills in their truck on one of the rainy days.

[{"type":"text","text":"“The people who ride bikes only are hard-core,” Ashley said."}]

Bill told the story of his first motorcycle experience, in Vermont. Every now and then, he’d swat at a fly with a surprising flash of anger.

“There was a crotchety old guy named Curly who owned a farm. We go there and he has this Indian (motorcycle), (dismantled) in a basket of parts.

Well,” Bill said, “we bought the thing. I was in my 20s. We take it home. We (put it together and) got the thing started at one a.m.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Bill said he rode the motorcycle up and down the driveway."}]

“The pipe was this long so it had a hell of a noise,” he said, holding his hands out as if measuring the size of a fish.

[{"type":"text","text":"Ashley looked across the table at her father."}]

“I can’t believe you took a basket of parts and figured out to put it together,” she said. She had a few bites of French toast to finish.

She had been pulled over two nights in a row – for having a tail light out. The first incident made her and her dad late for the Lynard Skynard concert at the Sturgis Buffalo Chip.

“You hoofed it,” Ashley told her dad, explaining how they had a heck of a walk from the parking lot to the concert venue – once they finally got there. “You were doing better out there than a lot of 60-year-olds.”

Bill smiled, almost shyly. “It's been a good life,” he said. “I don't want to stop.”

Sturgis breakfast inset 8 15 26

<title>Thousands Of Hungry Sturgis Bikers Boost Churches With Made-To-Order Breakfasts | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For 16 years, a small Sturgis church that needed to raise money has welcomed motorcycle rallygoers with hot, made-to-order breakfasts. “Our parish would not exist without this ministry,” says the pastor for Blessed Emmanuel Lutheran Church.

Thousands Of Hungry Sturgis Bikers Boost Churches With Made-To-Order Breakfasts

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — Arden White was a man with a plan. He knew the target of his would-be affection would be headed to her college class.

“I just waited until I saw she was coming around the corner,” he said. “I asked if she’d go out with me. Oddly enough, she said yes.”

“He ambushed me!” recalled his wife, Betty, on the occasion of their 75th wedding anniversary a week ago. 

The party was arranged at their Cheyenne home by their three children, Gary, Sharon and Ann.

They dated for about a year at Colorado Agricultural and Mechanical College, now Colorado State University, in Fort Collins. 

Then Arden made an announcement to his girl and his family. The conflict between the United States and Korea was heating up, and he’d decided to follow some of his friends and join the Navy.

Arden was stationed at Treasure Island, California, a man-made island in the San Francisco Bay. The Navy put him to work as a keypunch operator, using an early data entry system that had people punch holes into cards, encoding information for computers.

It was a specialized clerical job, and virtually assured him that he wouldn’t be reassigned to a battleship. He spent the duration of the war at Treasure Island.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Popping The Question"}]

While home on leave, Arden popped the question: “I think I’m going to be there for a long time, so why don’t we get married?”

“I said, ‘Sure,’” Betty recalled. 

That didn’t sound like the parents who raised her, said Ann, the baby of the family, who was born in 1966. She was preceded by Gary in 1953 and Sharon in 1956.

“I remember them being pretty strict and having everything planned out, and they never wavered,” said Ann. “So for them to be so willy-nilly and spontaneous doesn’t fit with the memories I have of them.”

Guess they must have been in love, as they clearly still are. Their children are happy they put together the party, inviting family and friends to share their special day. Betty had copies of several family histories she’d put together for guests to take home.

Betty and Arden were married in 1951, in her family’s church in Eaton, Colorado. They were both 20, but Arden’s mother had to go to the courthouse and officially give her permission for the marriage to take place. Girls only had to be 19.

“Discrimination!” Betty said, laughing.

Then they moved to Berkeley, California, and he returned to his stint in the Navy. Moving halfway across the country wasn’t something people in her family normally did, but Betty said, “I was kind of the maverick in the family. Everyone else stayed close to home.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Back To School"}]

Arden was supposed to serve for four years, but he had other ideas about his future. 

“I asked for an early release,” he said. “I wanted to finish my bachelors degree back in Colorado, and so did Betty.”

One day his chief walked by and tersely said, “Well, you got it.”

“I said, ‘What did I get?’ and he said, ‘Your early release.’ He was not pleased,” Arden remembered.

But the Whites sure were. Betty earned her bachelor's degree in home economics. Arden graduated too and took some correspondence classes by mail. The G.I. Bill had helped him pay for his education, and he had decided to pursue a master’s degree so he could teach at the high school level. 

The couple and their son Gary moved to Kansas, where Arden got a job teaching at a high school. That’s where Sharon was born. Then the family moved to Greeley, Colorado, where he received his master’s degree in education at Northern Colorado.

“I found out I was doing rather well academically, so I had the idea, ‘Let’s see if they’ll let me apply for a doctorate.’ And they let me do it.”

Arden needed a job and found one teaching at Northern State College in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He liked everything but the cold winters and hot summers. He hated the climate, and so did his family.

Betty was a bit more diplomatic. She didn’t scrunch up her nose at the thought of their two years there. 

“Aberdeen was a lovely place to live,” she said. “But the climate was terrible.”

Then the college’s main building was destroyed by a fire. 

“That was the end of that,” Arden said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He began looking for another job."}]

One day Arden was at a golf course when a friend told him there was a vacancy at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. 

“Well, that suited me — the location did," he said. “They asked me to come for an interview.”

He had one of his sisters-in-law give him a ride from Aberdeen to Cheyenne, then caught a bus for the trip over the hill to Laramie. After the interview he flew back to South Dakota just in time to make it to a class he was teaching.

At 9 a.m. Monday his phone rang. “They said, ‘Would you take the job for this (amount)?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’ll take that,’” Arden said. So the family packed up again, but they wouldn’t leave for a long time — 30 years.

While he was at the College of Education, Betty was a stay-at-home mom when their children were young. As they grew older, she took a job working in the UW athletic department ticket office. 

Arden was promoted to the head of the counselor education program. It’s a job he said he enjoyed, especially when he could combine it with his love of fly fishing in the Snowy Range.

“He could go out in the afternoon, catch some trout and be home by dinnertime,” Betty said. 

Arden and his boss referred to their fishing trips as their “department head meeting.”

Betty learned to fish, but said she wasn’t good at it “because I needed help getting the fish off the hook. But I really enjoyed the Snowies.”

By the time Ann came into the picture, her family had a routine of hiking, camping and fishing and she did not get to vote on her participation.

“They took me on one camping trip when I was 3 or 4, and I was such a pain in the ass, I remember someone ended up carrying me because I refused to walk anymore,” Ann said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“That was me,” Gary reminded her."}]

“Their idea of camping was you park your car and you hiked with all of your stuff — the tent, the sleeping bags,” Ann continued while her siblings chuckled. “They ate the little powdered food, caught and ate the fish, and I’m not any of that. They still went, but they just shipped me off to my grandparents in Ault for a week.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wonderful Parents"}]

Despite not sharing her parents’ love of the outdoors, though, she said they were wonderful. 

“Dad always made sure we went to church every Sunday and spent the day together,” Ann said. “They never fought. They never argued. And they never swore. Well, Dad did sometimes when he was golfing.”

Despite their parents’ passion for college, Gary said they didn’t insist that they get degrees. 

“But Dad was always focused on us all having a job,” Gary said. 

He discovered that he loved working in agriculture, and went to work at UW’s greenhouse and planted flowerbeds on campus.

After visiting some friends at CSU, Gary approached his father and asked if he could go to school there.

“He told me as long as I could graduate in four years, he’d help me out,” he recalled. “It took getting some credits in the summer, but I did it.”

Sharon left Laramie when she was 19. She saw someone she liked in a band and told her friends, “I’m going to marry that guy.” 

Sharon went to Cheyenne and it took a week, but she found him. They’ve been married for 49 years.

After Arden retired from UW, he and Betty stayed in Laramie for a few years before moving to Cheyenne. Gary lives in Powell, and Ann moved to Illinois.

The Whites have enjoyed traveling together, with their best memories being Washington, D.C., and New York City. Asked what she saw at the former, Betty said, “Everything. The Smithsonian. The Washington Monument. The White House.”

On two trips to the Big Apple, the couple saw eight plays. The first one was “Cats.”

“There was one I had no idea what was happening,” Betty said. “It was a man on a ship and he was talking loudly and he spit all over himself. That’s what happens when you sit in the front row.

“We don’t like to talk about that,” she added with a wry smile.

Why do they think they’ve been together for so long?

They stared at each other for a minute or so. 

“She’s very accommodating," Arden said. “She was always willing to move wherever we needed to be.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“He’s very patient,” Betty said."}]

“I can’t explain it. She’s brighter than me,” Arden said, and when she tried to brush off that assessment, her husband simply said, “That’s true.”

“We found out in high school she was going to be the valedictorian — until I showed up,” he added. “Her parents weren’t all that pleased with me.” 

Kerry Drake can be reached at: Kerry.Drake33@gmail.com

75 years of marriage composite 8 15 26

<title>Cheyenne Couple Celebrate 75 Years, Husband Still Amazed Wife Agreed To First Date | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Arden and Betty White of Cheyenne celebrated their 75th anniversary this past week with family and friends. In recalling their first date, Betty said Arden ambushed her. Arden said he was surprised she agreed to go out. "Oddly enough, she said yes.”

Cheyenne Couple Celebrate 75 Years, Husband Still Amazed Wife Agreed To First Date

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Raymond Felix brought a brand-new bike to Sturgis this year. New to him, that is.

“We bought it about two weeks ago,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I traded my Sporty in. I said, ‘We’re going to Sturgis, so I want a better bike.’”

The bike is a 2017 Softail Slim FLS with 5,000 miles on it, “practically new” for what was Felix’s first trip to Sturgis. He went with his family — his mom and dad, Leon and Alisa, and his girlfriend, Yessenia Marenco. 

The four were among hordes of bikers — literally thousands — riding the Devils Tower loop for a Sturgis Rally tradition called Wyoming Wednesday. 

Sundance’s claim to fame on Wyoming Wednesday is a burnout contest that’s been going on for more than half a century in front of the historic Dime Horseshoe Bar.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Legend Of The Burnout"}]

Local legends say the Dime Horseshoe Bar’s burnout actually started inside the establishment, which takes its name from a horseshoe pattern inlaid into the bar top with dimes.

The story goes that a bar patron decided to do a burnout inside the bar and the owner chased him out.

Other riders joined the fun, putting on their own spontaneous burnout event on the street in front of the bar.

It started a tradition that has continued ever since, though these days it’s more of a planned thing, complete with bike mechanics who swap used tires for new, saving the bikers’ good tires for their return trip to either the Sturgis Rally or home. 

The bar has since also built a stage for the bikes, elevating them above the crowd so everyone can see. That also helps keep the smoke over everyone’s heads. 

A set of fans blows the clouds of acrid, billowing smoke away from the bikers. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Big Father-Son Moment"}]

Felix had a dream for his first Sturgis, and watching the Dime Horseshoe Bar’s Burnout in Sundance was it.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally riders have packed Sundance, Wyoming, for its annual burnout for more than 50 years. Legend has it the burnout started inside the Dime Horseshoe Bar. “The bigger the cloud of smoke is, the better,” says one rider.

Daily Smile: Tuesday, February 4, 2025

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