You Still Here

Make America Healthy Again, as narrated by MMA announcer Steve Inman......

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

<title>Steve Inman: Wednesday, February 12, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Steve Inman: Wednesday, February 12, 2025

 Make America Healthy Again, as narrated by MMA announcer Steve Inman......

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Public Safety

 for a North Carolina husband and father who disappeared in Wyoming's Snake River over the Fourth of July weekend came to an end Saturday after campers spotted his body floating in the water.

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office announced that Tory J. Raether, 55, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was recovered Saturday morning in the McCoy Creek area.

Star Valley Search & Rescue Commander Matt McMurdo said campers noticed Raether's body from the shoreline around 11:30 a.m. They paddle-boarded out to him before calling authorities.

Search-and-rescue crews, who had been back on the river Saturday morning, responded quickly and recovered Raether's body.

Raether disappeared July 4 after jumping into the river without a life jacket at Jump Rock, a popular recreation area about 3½ miles east of Alpine.

Members of his group tried unsuccessfully to rescue him after he began struggling against the swift current.

Since then, Star Valley Search & Rescue had searched the river and nearby reservoir using drones, rafts, a jet boat, jet skis and, later in the week, search dogs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Bring Him Home'"}]

Earlier in the week, Lincoln County Sheriff M. Shane Johnson told Cowboy State Daily the mission had transitioned from a rescue operation to a recovery effort.

"The goal is to find their family member and return him to them, so they can have closure," Johnson said.

That goal remained constant as Raether's wife, Jean, daughters Grace and Melanie, close friends and other loved ones traveled to Wyoming to wait for answers.

Among them was Brad Johnson, Raether's best friend of 35 years, who had planned to help search alongside another lifelong friend and Raether's daughter's boyfriend, a rafting guide familiar with the river.

[{"type":"text","text":"Saturday afternoon, Johnson shared the news many had feared."}]

"With a heavy heart, I wanted to let everyone know that Tory has been found," he wrote to his friends. "Thank you to everyone who reached out with texts, calls, and messages during these difficult days. Your love and support have meant more to me and to Tory's family than we can express."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Deeply Loved "}]

During the search, friends described Raether as a devoted husband, father and mentor whose kindness left a lasting impression on nearly everyone he met.

"Tory wasn't just a friend to me — he was like a brother," Johnson told Cowboy State Daily. "He was one of those rare people who made life brighter simply by walking into a room."

Johnson said Raether built a successful career as an investment professional, volunteered through Kiwanis and Rotary, mentored others and was always looking for ways to help those around him.

"The world needs more people like Tory," he said. "He lived with joy, loved freely, and gave far more than he ever expected in return."

Julia Joy Raether, Tory's former sister-in-law, said she remained close to the family even after her marriage to his brother ended years ago.

"Tory was deeply loved by everyone who knew him," she told Cowboy State Daily. "He was kind, generous, adventurous, and had a quiet strength that drew people to him."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Closure "}]

She said the tragedy was especially personal because her youngest son was with Tory when they entered the river.

"My son made it out. Tory did not," she said. "Our family has been living through the uncertainty, hoping for a miracle while also coming to terms with the reality of how powerful that river is."

For a week, Raether's family watched search crews work the Snake River, holding onto hope while preparing for the worst.

Now, with his recovery complete, they can bring him home.

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<title>Body Of North Carolina Man Recovered From Snake River After Weeklong Search | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The body of Tory Raether was found in the Snake River a week after leaping into the swift currents. Family and friends remember Raether as a devoted husband, father and mentor. "The world needs more people like Tory," close friend Brad Johnson said.

Body Of North Carolina Man Recovered From Snake River After Weeklong Search

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

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

Mortar rounds were once code-named “Tootsie Rolls” during the Korean War. But no one was diving for cover at the National Museum of Military Vehicles when the Tootsie Rolls started falling in Dubois alongside big, fat raindrops.

Instead, there were children clapping hands and laughing, just before a squealing sprint for a spot under the black helicopter hovering just above one of the museum’s side parking lots, letting fall what looked a bit like rain itself. 

The helicopter drop was arranged by U.S. Army veteran Gene Humphrey, who was born and raised in Burns. Humphrey worked with museum staff and a friend, helicopter owner Steve Funk, to pull it off.

Marines of a certain age were smiling in spite of themselves as the children scrambled after the candies wrapped in special red-white-and-blue paper. They remembered a time and a frozen place when those gooey caramels meant the difference between life and death.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Code Word: Tootsie Roll"}]

The year was 1950 and the location was the Chosin Reservoir, American History Project Founder and The Chosin Few President Shayne Jarosz recalled during a recent lecture series at Dubois’ National Museum of Military Vehicles. The lecture is part of ongoing activities this year that celebrate America’s 250th.

“The men were surrounded by roughly 300,000 Chinese troops,” Jarosz said. “It is minus-40 degrees. They do not have the cold-weather gear that they need, and they are being attacked in force.”

To maintain a level of secrecy about their needs, the Marines had code words for everything important. 

“If you needed something, you didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, we’re almost out of bullets, send them',” Jarosz said. “Because the Chinese were listening. So the code word for mortar rounds was Tootsie Rolls.”

One day, the radio chatter suddenly became all about Tootsie Rolls, but not all the pilots were aware of all the code words.

“We are running low on Tootsie Rolls and we need them right now,’” Jarosz said the men were screaming. “And these great pilots who are flying all these sorties have no idea what in the world is going on. But they know that these men are in a desperate fight for their life and if it’s Tootsie Rolls they want, then it’s Tootsie Rolls they’ll get.”

This version of the story has been disputed by some historians, Jarosz acknowledged. But enough veterans have told him personally about this tale that he feels comfortable repeating it.

“So, along the entire evacuation route, they dropped Tootsie Rolls, and it ended up saving the lives of these men,” Jarosz said. “They had not eaten in days.”

The sudden arrival of the candy was like manna from heaven to these men, providing something simple but vital — sugar and calories in a package small enough to slip into frozen hands and pockets. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Just Food"}]

The Tootsie Rolls did more than just feed starving Marines. 

“Their fuel tanks had been shot and would not hold any fuel,” Jarosz said. “They could chew on that Tootsie Roll and melt it. Then they could put it in a bullet hole and, at 40 degrees below zero, it would expand and seal that gas tank.”

That allowed them to fuel enough trucks to evacuate their wounded. History records 18,000 casualties during the Chosin Reservoir battle, as well as thousands more who suffered frostbite. Those numbers could have been significantly higher but for the improvised repairs the candy made possible. 

Word of the Tootsie Roll story eventually made its way back to the candy makers. Since the 1950s, the Tootsie Roll Corporation has chosen to quietly honor the Marines of Chosin, sending them more than 150 pounds of their candy to all of their annual reunions. 

“You want to see a bunch of 90-year-old men acting like they’re 5 years old,” Jarosz said with a chuckle. “It’s really wonderful. And what’s even more wonderful about this is, Tootsie Roll is a family organization, and they never forget these guys.”

The candy company still ships the treats to reunions of men sometimes called The Frozen Chosin or The Chosin Few, so named because so few survived. They are a dwindling brotherhood of men who survived a freezing gantlet.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Freak Cold Snap"}]

For the men caught up in the Chosin Reservoir Campaign, the battle quickly became less about human enemies and more a fight against the Korean winter itself.

The weather, according to veteran accounts, had been relatively mild when Americans first landed in North Korea. 

Marines and soldiers who reached the Chosin area in early November 1950 were writing family members back home, saying the weather wasn’t “too bad.”

However, a Siberian cold front swept in, precipitously changing all that. Temperatures plunged to around 40 below, with wind chills far colder. Some estimates say it was down to minus-70 — among the harshest conditions ever recorded in that part of North Korea.

The freak cold snap caught the troops without proper cold-weather gear or equipment. Many of the Marines were still dressed for the mild coastal climate they’d left behind when they received their marching orders to head to the Chosin Reservoir. 

When the Chinese launched their massive night assault at about 1 a.m., only half the Marines were on alert. The rest had their boots off, socks draped around their necks, in an attempt to dry them before the next day.

They had no time to put their boots back on. They dove into foxholes shoeless, and sometimes sockless, too.

Enemy fire came in human waves of roughly a thousand men at a time moving in V-shaped, three-man formations to help minimize casualties from machine guns and artillery. The successive waves felt relentless and endless, and were a strategy Jarosz said was aimed at trying to melt down machine gun barrels through sheer numbers. 

But there was also a psychological aspect, too. Every wave, the Chinese were crashing cymbals and blowing horns as they charged to unnerve the Marines.

“The Marines are like, ‘Oh, what in the world is going on?’ ” Jarosz said. “You talk to the veterans today about this stuff, and they said it was the biggest nightmare they ever had.”

Frostbite, meanwhile, ravaged the ranks, and many men later required amputations.

More than 8,000 Americans suffered frostbite at Chosin. 

It wasn’t just Americans suffering from the cold, Jarosz said.

The Chinese soldiers, too, had come dressed in lighter clothing than the moment required. They were wearing thin, cotton-quilted uniforms and shoes Jarosz likened to old “Chuck Taylor” Converse sneakers.

“Their feet would swell so much that their shoelaces would literally pop,” he said. “And at first the Marines didn’t know what in the world that noise was. It was the Chinese shoelaces exploding. So I mean, these guys were really, really miserable, because they had been out there much longer than the Marines had been out there.”

Among the Chinese, Jarosz said 30,000 men are estimated to have died from cold alone, while 40,000 died in combat. 

The Chinese army had been moving toward Chosin Reservoir in stealth mode, tying themselves to trees by day to sleep, and traveling at night so their movements would not be noticed.

“A man who is out during the day would be seen by any kind of spot or airplane and would be shot on sight,” Jarosz said. “So this was a very, very well-disciplined military.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Battle For Fox Hill"}]

Among the most desperate of the Chosin Reservoir fights unfolded on Fox Hill, a rocky ridgeline commanding the Toktong Pass. The narrow mountain defile controlled the way to Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri and was the 1st Marine Division’s only escape route. 

There, about 220 Marines of Fox Company were giving their all to hold the 2- to 3-mile-long mountain pass against an assault by 1,400 Chinese troops. 

In places, it was a line stretched so thin as to be more gap than men. Still, the men held their own, thanks to Marines like Hector Cafferata, who fought barefoot for three days, batting grenades back at the enemy with his rifle and shooting so many dead that the men who wrote his application for a Congressional Medal of Honor feared to list the true number, lest commanders think they had lied.

“When they wrote his citation up for his Medal of Honor, they purposely said that when the fighting had stopped on Fox Hill, they found more than 15 dead Chinese bodies around Hector’s fighting position,” Jarosz said. “There’s an annotation on that citation that says, ‘We actually counted 100 bodies that he had single-handedly killed, but we knew that nobody back at Headquarters would believe it'.”

Many of those Chinese soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand combat, Jarosz said. 

On the eastern side of the reservoir, things weren’t going quite as well. Soldiers with the Regimental Combat Team 31 — roughly 4,500 undertrained GIs — had been overwhelmed. As their column tried to withdraw under heavy attack, wounded men loaded in the backs of trucks were slaughtered when Chinese forces overran the convoy. 

Survivors, many badly wounded and half frozen, wriggled out from under wrecked vehicles. Too weak to walk, they were forced to crawl across the surface of the frozen Chosin Reservoir. 

Jeeps from the Marine base camp at Hagaru-ri, which sits at the southern tip of the Chosin Reservoir, were sent to pick up the stragglers. It was a grim, slow rescue that took place under the cover of subzero darkness.

Jarosz recalls the story of Col. Warren Wiedhahn. The young Marine machine gunner, a private at the time, was shot across the forehead in the battlefield chaos.

He was mistakenly tossed into a pile of bodies when his blood froze over his face and medics thought his skull was gone. 

Thirty minutes later, he woke up and stumbled into a warming tent, shocking everyone.

“With the limited medical care they could give him, they stitched his forehead back together,” Jarosz said. “They bandaged his forehead and gave him four aspirin. Then they said, ‘Get back on the line'.”

Years later, every time schools in his home state of Virginia would call school off for a snow day, he would call Jarosz to marvel — half joking, half bitter — that kids stayed home for a dusting of snow when he’d once been “shot in the head and had to go back to work.”

Many of the men who fought so valiantly at Chosin Reservoir did so despite knowing their families already believed them dead.

Early media reports, even in newspapers back home, were reporting that the First Marine Division had been lost. 

But the Marines did what Marines are trained to do. They started fighting back in reverse, step by bloody step, evacuating their wounded as they went.

Leaders such as Major General Oliver P. Smith, the legendary Col. Lewis “Chesty” Puller, and First Lieutenant Kurt Chew-Een Lee, the first Asian-American officer in the Marine Corps, kept pushing their men forward, doing everything they could to evacuate as many as possible.

Chew-Een Lee had been shot in November, a bullet shattering the bone in his arm. It was still in a sling at the time. But he didn’t let that stop him.

To make sure his men could see him on this fighting rescue mission despite the blinding snow, he wrapped himself in fluorescent aviation tape.   

He was a glowing silhouette on a land where everything else was white drifts and black sky. Men trudged behind him in snow up to their knees, following him toward the embattled company on the Fox Hill ridge.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Blowing The Bridge"}]

Step by step, the men fought their way off Fox Hill and back onto the narrow road that snaked south toward the sea, no longer trying to win ground. They were just trying to stay alive long enough to get out of the mountains.

The road funneled everything — wounded men, frozen trucks, tanks held together thanks to Tootsie Rolls and hope — toward Funchilin Pass. 

The Chinese had already blown up the concrete bridge that had been there, leaving a toothless chasm with no way to cross.

It was a problem others were working on, with a crazy-sounding plan like some writer would dream up for a movie. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But this was real life."}]

Air Force C-119 “Flying Boxcars” would each carry a single steel bridge section — a chunk of portable treadway about the size and weight of a small railcar and push it out the back, over the mountain.

Each section would float down under giant cargo chutes onto a flat patch of ground near the blown span at Funchilin Pass. The Marines would then bolt the pieces in place to hold them.

On paper, the plan sounded simple enough. Bridge sections would drop from the sky, Marine engineers would stretch them across the gap and bolt them into place, and then everybody would quickly get across. Once everyone was across, the span would be blown up, keeping the Chinese from following.

Two bridge sections dropped too fast and were too badly mangled to use. 

“They … were able to jerry-rig this thing to where they were able to get these men out of there,” Jarosz said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"How Legends Are Made"}]

All along that frozen gantlet — from Chosin Reservoir to Funchilin Pass — the soldiers found Tootsie Rolls that helped sustain them as well as to plug bullet holes to keep trucks fueled up and running. 

Regardless of which legend one believes, Jarosz said, there’s no disputing that the Tootsie Rolls were in the nick of time to save them all at a critical moment. 

They have become part of an enduring legend of American courage and ingenuity. 

It didn’t take long for the children to scoop up every last Tootsie Roll from the gravel at the National Museum of Military Vehicles after Jarosz’s lecture. They were excited about their sugary haul, even as they were largely unaware of the larger significance behind the moment.

But there were those in the crowd who understood. 

For them, it was enough to see Tootsie Rolls falling from the sky in honor of all the sacrifices made. This time, it was in a country that is at peace, in a Wyoming town a world away from the Frozen Chosin. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"And they wouldn’t have it any other way."}]

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<title>Dubois Tootsie Roll Drop Remembers How Candy Saved ‘Frozen Chosin’ Marines In Korea | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A candy drop at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois was more than just fun for kids. It honored the "Frozen Chosin" Marines who depended on Tootsie Rolls for calories, field repairs and sheer survival on minus-40 degree days in the Korean War.

Dubois Tootsie Roll Drop Remembers How Candy Saved ‘Frozen Chosin’ Marines In Korea

Wyoming Life

Larry Morgan was born in Superior, Wyoming, in the 1940s, the son of a coal miner. Eventually, he landed in Jackson Hole, well enough off that he could build his dream mountain home.

His friends call him “The Closer.” He’s a corporate dealmaker, high-stakes sales producer and, lately, a self-described best-selling author on Amazon with a book revealing how he made his fortune.  

Despite all that, Morgan doesn’t think of his story as a true rags-to-riches tale — though he’ll acknowledge it’s an arc that’s hard to ignore. 

“I never really saw myself as being poor, although my family was very poor,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “My father owned a tiny little cafe in Iowa, and we barely made a living. He always said, ‘We don’t make any money, but we eat good'.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Dusty Old Chevy"}]

Superior today is a semi-ghost town in Sweetwater County. His family didn’t stay there long.  

“My father was a coal miner during the war,” he said. “It was a strategic occupation.”

Two cave-ins later, though, and he was rethinking that strategy. The family packed up and moved to Charlton, Iowa, where he started a cafe. 

“I always liked to work,” Morgan said. “So, when I was probably 12,  he hired me to be the dishwasher. I had to stand on a pop crate to reach the sink and wash the dishes. But he paid me 35 cents an hour, which was the going wage for an adult.”

It didn’t take Morgan long to realize if he wanted to achieve his dream of owning a car when he turned 16, he needed a better-paying job. So, he kept washing dishes but also took a job at the nearby bowling alley. 

“I made real good money in the bowling alley,” he recalled with a chuckle. “I got paid for every line. This was back before automatic pinsetters, so you had to set each one by hand.”

At the end of the night, he could usually count on some fairly large tips, but it was a grueling schedule.

“I went to work at 5 in the morning in the cafe and worked until 8 a.m.,” he said. “Then I went to school and worked at the bowling alley until midnight.”

Before too long, Morgan had saved the $80 he needed to buy a dusty old Chevy — his first car.

Morgan loved living in Iowa. He was in a small rural town he describes as just a few blocks apart, stitched together with the wonderful smell of freshly mowed hay. 

It was a great place to grow up. It was a great place to “be from.” 

But, if he wanted to make the kind of living that would afford a life, he realized it was not a great place to “be.”

For that, he decided he needed to attend college. Which meant he needed an even better-paying job than dishwashing and tips from the bowling alley.

That led him to become what he says was probably the “world’s youngest” encyclopedia salesman.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"No, not Britannica, the top seller. "}]

It was a smaller, lesser-known company called World Book. 

“Most of the encyclopedia salesmen worked in cities,” Morgan said. “The doors are close together … but the trouble was most of those people didn’t have money or didn’t read books.”

Traditional salesman advice says that to get to a “yes” you have to listen to a lot of “nos.” But Morgan didn’t want to indiscriminately knock on doors. 

Every “no” felt too much like a bullet to his heart. He needed a better system. 

“The World Book was designed for children,” Morgan said. “So I started cruising around my little hometown, and if I saw a bunch of bicycles in the yard, I knew I had a buyer because they had kids.”

But, he realized, that wasn’t enough to ensure a yes. He also needed to make sure the family could afford an encyclopedia.

That started him looking for not just bikes but Buicks as well. A family with a Buick in the driveway had money. And a family with both a bike and a Buick had a child on which that money could be spent. 

Morgan also styled his approach so that he was practically closing the deal at the beginning of the sale rather than the end.

“I’d just walk up, knock on the door, and introduce myself,” he said. “And my opening line was, ‘Would you be interested in something that would help your children in school?’ Well, boom, what mother’s not interested in something that will help her children in school?”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Multiplier Effect"}]

Once the sale had been made, Morgan then did something else that ratcheted up his success. He would always ask the woman if she knew any other mothers who might also want their children to have the “World Book advantage.”

That usually produced a nice list of likely prospects, where he had a better than average shot at making more sales.

In no time, this thoughtfully targeted approach made him the company’s top salesman and he became, in his own words, the “richest kid in town.” 

This job didn’t just take him to college. It took him there in style. He had plenty of money to trade in his old Chevy for a shiny new Oldsmobile convertible.

He didn’t know it yet, but he’d learned everything he was ever going to need to succeed in sales beyond his wildest dreams. Later, he’d use those same principles to close multi-million-dollar deals.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"First, though, came a few wrong turns."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Learning The Wyoming Way"}]

Navigating past those wrong turns is something Wyoming helped Morgan with. 

“The most influential character in my life was my uncle, Ken Shelton,” Morgan said. “He lived in Rock Springs and was a real cowboy.”

When Morgan was 13, he ran away to Rock Springs to spend a summer and part of another year with his uncle. They’d go up to White Mountain to catch wild horses, fish and tell jokes.

Shelton was one of the best storytellers Morgan has ever known. 

“For Uncle Ken, his stories didn’t have to end up the way they actually did,” Morgan said. “But they always ended up the way they should have. And that’s the way he viewed life.”

Morgan’s favorite Uncle Ken yarn is about the time he was roping wild horses on White Mountain a bit too long. He caught a wild mustang just as the sun set, was bucked off in the dark, and ended up tangled in his own rope as a storm rolled in.

He saw a nearby cave for shelter, but what he couldn’t see inside that cave was the mountain lion living there.

“Before he manages to finally strangle the mountain lion to death it bites off three of his fingers,” Morgan said. “Now, even the casual observer is aware that my uncle has all of his fingers. But when I brought that up, he says, ‘Yes, and that’s another amazing story, but I’m trying to finish this one!’ ”

Morgan sums up the wonderful lessons he learned from his story-telling uncle in a chapter he called “Never Sell Your Saddle” in his bestselling Amazon book, “The Closer: An Inside Look at the World of High-Powered Sales, Big Money and Big Egos.” 

“The chapter ends up being a warning to people who are about to merge with a larger corporation and, for a few dollars, sell their life’s work,” he said. “They find themselves with nothing to do … In other words, don’t be quick to sell your saddle. Life’s a long, long ride.”

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

A long ride is often filled with a few wrong turns. For Morgan, his first wrong turn took him to Northeast Missouri State University in Kirksville.

“I was really captivated by academia,” Morgan said. “And I’d always wanted to be a college professor. To do that, you pretty much had to have a Ph.D.”

Knowing that, he took an extra-heavy class load, determined to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s at the same time. 

“But the Vietnam War was going on,” he said. “And I had a very low lottery number.”

This all but guaranteed he’d get drafted into the Army. So, he took control of his own destiny by pre-emptively enlisting in the Marines. 

Like many who served in Vietnam, Morgan doesn’t talk about it much. 

“We’re all still conflicted over the Vietnam War, and so am I,” Morgan said.

After the war, he returned to his education, earning his Ph.D. at St. Louis University in child psychology — a notable accomplishment in and of itself, particularly given he was the first person in his family to even graduate from high school.

But it didn’t take long for him to realize his dreams of being a professor had been something of a fantasy. He taught for a year at the University of Wyoming, and was bored.

To solve that problem, he tried an administrative position in Southern California — and that was even worse.

Somehow, in spite of his best intentions, he had not landed in the right profession at all. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A New Door Opens"}]

The solution came from a little problem known as San Diego traffic.

He was stuck in a sea of cars for 10 miles. 

So, he turned on the radio and became a captive audience as a booming voice emerged from his speakers offering him a free trip to Lake Tahoe. All he had to do was look at a recreational land development.

“Free is a powerful word,” Morgan said with a chuckle. “So I went home and called the 800 number and then my wife and I decided to take the trip. We got the free trip to Tahoe, and that was the first time in my life I ever met a professional, hard-close salesman.”

The project, Tahoe Donner, was being developed by a larger-than-life entrepreneur named Justin Dart.

“He started Rexall Drugs and Tupperware and Vanda cosmetics,” Morgan said. “It was all pretty exciting.”

The property was rustic elegance of the kind that whispered wealth and success. It was electrifying.

In the beginning, the sales pitches were all low-key. But soon, pushier salesmen took turns convincing Morgan and his wife to buy. 

“You accepted our free trip,” one of them said. “You said you could afford the price, and you agreed that if everything we told you lived up to what you saw, you would make a decision to buy before returning to San Diego. Isn’t that true?”

Morgan was reaching for his checkbook when his wife, Connie, interrupted.

“We didn’t say we’d make a decision to buy,’” she told the salesman. “We said we’d make ‘a decision.’”

The property was great, she added, but just too far away.

On the way back, one of the salesmen, named Cal Hackett, offered Morgan a new deal.

Born in a near ghost-town in Wyoming, Larry Morgan’s life is a rags to riches story that begins and ends in Wyoming. Yet he insists the real story isn’t about money so much as freedom — and he's got a best-selling book on Amazon that tells his tale.

Steve Inman: Wednesday, February 12, 2025

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