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[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Celebrate the weekend the Brady way....."}]

Weekend 3 8 25

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

<title>Today In The Weekend: Saturday, March 8, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Celebrate the weekend the Brady way.....

Today In The Weekend: Saturday, March 8, 2025

 Celebrate the weekend the Brady way.....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Seven years in prison beginning at 19 for putting a club into the head of a Swiss miner was followed by a couple of decades as a preacher and labor movement orator.

His personal reformation rewarded him with a Wyoming state role enforcing children and animal welfare.

But after just months on the state job, allegations of “white slavery” involving two teenage Casper girls in 1924 meant Baptiste John Minort needed to resign his state position and pulpit role. 

Those charges were eventually dropped and he was back filling a pulpit in Torrington when a “disturbing the peace” charge in 1926 was filed, alleging he had been in a rooming house with a woman in Nebraska he claimed was his wife under an assumed name.

An old character that many believed was buried and destroyed for the 42-year-old Torrington grain store manager and police court judge suddenly had resurfaced.

“Torrington Pastor Slays Family, Suicides,” the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926. “Wife and Four Children Dead as Climax to Late Scandal.”

Newspapers across the country carried the headlines that an Associated Press reporter wrote likely were caused by “wagging tongues” and “domestic difficulties.”

Minort was born Feb. 20, 1884, in France and emigrated to the U.S. in 1892 to Missouri.

In 1901, at 17, he married Luisa Elizabeth Huber and they had five children, including Baptiste John Jr. in 1902, sons Carl, David and Clarence in 1912, 1915, and 1917, and daughter, La Von in 1922.

When he was 19, Minort was charged and convicted for killing a Swiss miner, Vincent Gaffney, at a coal camp in Riverton, Missouri, in March 1903 after a dispute about missing money from Gaffney’s room. Gaffney boarded with the Minort family.

“Minort claimed that Gaffney drew a revolver on him, then, in order to protect himself, he struck Gaffney twice on the head with a club, knocking him against a barbed wire fence, after which he choked him,” the Henry County Democrat reported on March 26, 1903. “Gaffney died as a result of his injuries.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Second-Degree Murder"}]

After his conviction on a second-degree murder charge, Minort was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after seven.

Newspaper accounts state that while in prison he started reading the Bible and when he got out moved to Nebraska. Whether he pursued formal religious training is not known.

 In May 1914, he took a role as a pastor at a Sterling, Nebraska, church and also had a role as the chairman and clerk of a Sunday school convention.

The Sterling Sun reported he was helping at a revival meeting in Falls City, Nebraska. His efforts in evangelism and teaching grew his church by 200 people, according to a report in the Norfolk Daily News.

By 1922, he was serving as a pastor in a church in Alliance, Nebraska, and was the main speaker at a Labor Day gathering in Casper.

The Casper Daily Tribune on Sept. 5, 1922, reported that Minort delivered an “inspirational address” that promoted the idea of trade unions and how they eliminated “classes” in society. Hundreds gathered to hear him.

“America has no class from which it is impossible to emerge,” he said. “America is distinguished throughout the world by the high standard of living which the masses of her people enjoy.”

By 1924, he had moved to Torrington and taken the pastorate of a Baptist church. He was appointed by Gov. William B. Ross to be the state commissioner of child and animal protection on July 22. Minort embraced the role by bringing charges against 22 boys and girls involved in a wild Cheyenne party in October of that year at the YWCA and Pine Cove. 

He blamed the parents for allowing their children to be at the party.

He also made headlines by uncovering a plot of a stepson to accuse his stepfather of choking an old man to death so he could inherit his mother’s property.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mann Act Violation"}]

But on Nov. 8, he was accused by a federal grand jury of transporting two juvenile delinquent girls across the state line to Nebraska for immoral purposes under the Mann Act. Minort had taken the pair from their uncle in Casper and was supposed to take them back to a Cheyenne facility.

“The girls told police and federal authorities that Minort, instead of going to Cheyenne, stopped in Mitchell, Nebraska, where he is alleged to have mistreated them,” the Grand Island Independent newspaper reported on Nov. 12, 1924.

Minort responded that the charges were false and he had taken the girls there to be under the care of an aunt. Still, he resigned from his role as the state commissioner and stepped down from the pulpit. The Torrington community rallied around him and a fund was set up for his defense.

Those charges were eventually dropped by the federal district court in April 1926 because the girls could not be located to testify.

Meanwhile, Minort worked for the Cheyenne Police Department supervising chain gangs and then got a job managing the Torrington grain elevator. When the charges were dropped, he was named as a police court judge in Torrington and he resumed preaching at a church in the city.

On Nov. 7, 1926, Minort was caught by Bayard, Nebraska, police in a rooming house with a woman from Torrington who was not his wife. He had registered under the name of “Joe Lander and wife.”

A man from Torrington saw him and remarked he looked like Minort. The town’s marshal investigated and called Minort’s wife in Torrington at 3 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 8.

“Minort, after admitting his identity, asserted that he had been the victim of a ‘frame-up’ and that he had been forced at the point of a gun at Bayard (by men) to get into the automobile with the woman and had been intimidated into registering with her as husband and wife,” The Wyoming State Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926.

The newspaper reported that the landlady of the rooming house did not confirm his story. Minort was fined $25 and ordered to pay costs of $15.

On Saturday, Nov. 13, Minort resigned his post as a police judge for Torrington.

Early on Nov. 14 Minort, who had prepared a sermon he called “Breaking the Alabaster Box” for church that morning, took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot his wife in the head as she lay sleeping in a bed with their young daughter, 4. He then used a .22-caliber rifle to shoot his daughter twice in the head.

Two sons, who lay in their beds, were killed with one bullet to the head from a .32-caliber revolver. His second-oldest son was killed as he entered his mom’s bedroom with a shot to the head. He was dressed and, according to the Wyoming State Tribune on Nov. 15, had been working for another family in the country and likely returned home for church before being shot.

Minort took time to write letters to the sheriff, his surviving son at a college in Missouri, and to the public as well as to a religious rival in Casper.

Then he called the local undertaker just after 9 a.m. and told him he needed him at the house.

When the undertaker arrived, he could see Minort on the kitchen floor, gasping for air before he died, the Wyoming State Tribune reported. Police were summoned and found a mirror on the kitchen table that he apparently set up so he could shoot himself in the head.

They then discovered the breadth of Minort’s actions in eliminating his family.

In his letter to the public, Minort asserted that he had been framed in the incident with the Torrington woman in Bayard. In his note to the sheriff, he gave his son’s address at college in Missouri.

In a letter to his son, he explained that his mother had told him she would kill herself if he brought shame to the family again. Minort wrote he was going to save her from “spiritual torment” by killing her.

“I killed her and the rest of them rather than have the shadow of the past upon them,” he wrote. “Mother and children are in heaven and I suffer my own fate through the hands of destiny.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Caskets, One Grave"}]

Minor told Baptiste John Jr. to just dig a hole and bury the family in one grave to save on burial costs and that he could sell a box of shells he had at the grain elevator for $20 to get some money to help with costs.

“Well my son, I must hasten, as the gun beckons to me and I must hurry before I have lost my nerve,” he wrote, adding that the rest of his son’s life was his own. “So, do the best that you can.”

A coroner’s grand jury ruled that the murders and suicide were all the responsibility of Minort. The family members were buried in Valley View Cemetery in Torrington.

Minort’s surviving son was a sophomore at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and learned of the shootings from the college dean as he wrote a letter to his father during the afternoon on Tuesday, Nov. 16, according to the Daily Standard newspaper in Excelsior, Missouri on Nov. 17, 1926.

John Minort along with Minort’s brother, Louis, the mayor of Lexington, Missouri, attended the funeral, which was packed with mourners from the Torrington community. All the slain were in caskets, Minort’s exhortation to his son ignored.

The community bore the costs of the funeral and burials, the newspaper reported.

The Western Nebraska Observer reported on Nov. 25, 1926, that the son “bore up bravely” to the tragedy.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Forgiving Mourners"}]

“It was remarked that the crowd seemingly were forgiving and even sorrowful in their attitude toward the dead man,” the newspaper reported. “Many were seen to pause beside his casket and drop a tear. … Torrington people, heard to comment on the affair after the funeral, declared that Minort had not been himself, to all appearances for several weeks past.”

Three years after the tragedy, the young Minort returned to Torrington and visited old friends. 

The Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald reprinted a story from the Torrington paper on June 16, 1929, that stated that Baptiste John Jr. had been involved in a cafe business and had to quit college due to lack of funds.

“He has enjoyed a fair success and will continue in the cafe business,” the newspaper reported. “His friends in Torrington are glad to learn that he is pleasantly located and making a success of his efforts.”

Minort went on to marry twice, once in 1934 in Missouri. The marriage lasted a year. He married his second wife in 1945 and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Baptiste John Minort Jr. lived his last years in Utah and died on Aug. 16, 1970. 

Heworked as cook for most of his life and is buried in Price City, Utah.

Pastor killed family Valley View Thermopolis 8 9 26

<title>Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Shocking headlines from 100 years ago after a pastor from Torrington gunned down his wife and four of his five children, then himself. He wrote he had brought shame to them when caught with a woman in a rooming house in Nebraska under an assumed name.

Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926

Around Wyoming

He rescued two wounded men under heavy enemy fire, took a bullet to his leg, and the next day was blown into the air as a rocket-propelled grenade hit a half-track vehicle he was standing beside, sending shrapnel into his legs and back.

Capt. Barry Gasdek kept leading his men in September 1968 while countering a heavy North Vietnamese Army attack. During other action in Vietnam, he was shot out of the air twice while riding in helicopters.

Gasdek's philosophy then and now as a retired lieutenant colonel who closed his career at the University of Wyoming teaching ROTC students is that officers “lead from the front.”

“If you’re closer to the front, then you’re in whatever’s going on,” Gasdek said. “I never asked my men to do anything that I would not personally do, including being a tunnel rat or point, whatever.”

He left Vietnam after two consecutive tours with the Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, Soldiers Medal as well as a Silver Star, Bronze Star with a “V” for valor and four oak leaf clusters, and the Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster for wounds received on the battlefield.

Growing up, Gasdek said he never considered the military as a career. He was born the day before Memorial Day on May 29, 1942, as the nation tried to respond on two fronts in the early days of World War II.

Born and raised in Loyalhanna, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh, in a Czechoslovakian neighborhood, Gasdek’s grandparents had left the old country and moved to the U.S. to find a better life. His grandfather was a coal miner and his father also worked in the coal mines and steel mills around Pittsburgh.

An Eagle Scout and multi-sport athlete in high school, Gasdek was a three-sport college athlete at Indiana State College in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He played guard on the football team, wrestled in the heavyweight class and ran the two-mile on the track team.

Entering college, he chose to join the Army ROTC rather than do two years of required physical education because his sports commitments already meant he would have a lot of gym time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He found he enjoyed the military order. "}]

During his junior year, he committed to advanced ROTC training and graduated in 1964 with a degree in art education and due to his superior academic performance received a commission as a second lieutenant in the regular U.S. Army instead of a reserve commission.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Germany To Vietnam"}]

Gasdek said initial assignments took him to Fort Benning, Georgia, and then three years in Germany during the Cold War with the 4th Armored Division, where he had roles as a platoon leader, company executive officer and then company commander with the 1st Battalion, 54th Infantry Mechanized in the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Armored Division.

In 1967, he received orders to join the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, in Vietnam. Gasdek said he convinced the army to send him to Ranger school before he went into combat. The Army gave him a slot in the school, but a month through the training he injured his knee and spent three months recuperating.

After the knee was good to go, he was reassigned to Hawaii and a new battalion being formed for Vietnam, the “Jungle Warriors.” They were deployed to Vietnam in February and March of 1968.

A short time after entering the country and being sent to 11th Light Infantry Brigade headquarters, Gasdek was promoted to a company commander role.

During his first six months in Vietnam, Gasdek was involved in directing search and destroy missions in the northern part of South Vietnam. He said they mostly were dealing with Viet Cong fighters. However, in September 1968, his unit, Company D, 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry, 11th Brigade Americal Division, was sent farther north, where North Vietnamese Army troops were active.

On Sept. 22, his unit was conducting a combat assault into the new area and one of the 40-soldier platoons became engaged with North Vietnamese forces.

Gasdek recalls sending in another platoon to reinforce them and both were pinned down.

With two radio operators, Gasdek moved to where the action was occurring. He called for help from an armored cavalry unit but the M-113 track with a .50-caliber machine gun and two M-60 machine guns could not make it through a narrow pass.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"AK-47 Fire"}]

As Gasdek spoke via radio with a platoon leader, his two radio operators were on either side of him. A North Vietnamese soldier sprayed AK-47 fire on their position. Both radio men were hit in the head, Gasdek was untouched. One of the operators was dead and the other wounded.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Gasdek applied first-aid to the fallen."}]

“The one that was wounded, he calls me once in a while,” Gasdek said. “He was a police captain, I think in the New York Police Department. He said after Vietnam he healed and all that and went from one war to another in New York.”

Gasdek’s Distinguished Service Cross citation states he was wounded in the leg during the firefight. After learning two other men in one of his company’s platoons were wounded and laying in front of a defensive position, Gasdek crawled out and pulled them back into the defensive perimeter.

Other soldiers had hesitated due to the withering enemy fire.

The next morning, despite the leg wound, he led an attack through hedgerows and little villages and carried the radio himself due to the loss of his radio operators. As he crossed a rice paddy into a village, the enemy opened up with AK-47s, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Armored tracked vehicles accompanying Gasdek’s troops were hit and he was blown off his feet, taking shrapnel in his legs and back. He led the counterattack and “ended up just going bunker to bunker” killing the enemy. 

Gasdek said headquarters informed him they wanted prisoners to interrogate, so he had a tank drive on top of an enemy bunker until it collapsed. They then dug North Vietnamese troops out and sent them to headquarters for questioning.

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

“I ended up with six soldiers killed and 15 wounded,” he said. “I was wounded myself a couple of times.”

The North Vietnamese suffered 67 killed as well as the loss of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, AK-47s, and other weapons.

During the battle, Gasdek continued to communicate via the radio and help get air support for his troops as well as engage the enemy. The chaos of war from helicopter gunships, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and other small-arms fire somehow brought him to a place where “in your mind it goes quiet.”

“I thought that if this is the day I die, at least I’m where I should be up front with my men,” he said.

His actions that day resulted in his being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by Gen. Creighton Abrams, for whom the Abrams Tank is named. Gasdek said he had no clue who Abrams was until after the presentation. 

Abrams later become the Army Chief of Staff.

Gasdek remained in Vietnam for two tours and served for six months flying Visual Reconnaissance Missions as a base defense commander with a pilot on a light observation helicopter. He had at his disposal a mini-gun with 2,000rounds of ammunition and a case of grenades at his feet.

His responsibility was to protect a brigade-size firebase at night.

“We got attacked a couple of times. One night we killed 19 at the wire, and another time 21,” he said.

On other missions, Gasdek was shot down twice while flying as a passenger in Huey helicopters. In one instance they were flying over a village and took 21 bullets and fortunately were able to radio for support.

“It was about 5 or 10 minutes before we had gunships come out,” he said. The pilot found an old French airstrip to make a skid landing and a large Chinook helicopter was sent to lift what was left of the helicopter and take it back to base.

After Vietnam, Gasdek returned to the states through Hawaii, where he spent a week scuba diving, and then San Francisco and back to Pennsylvania. He said he never experienced personally the anti-war sentiment that many Vietnam veterans received. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"His Welcome Home"}]

In Pennsylvania, he said the miners and steelworkers made sure he did not have to pay for anything.

However, his own payment for the many battles he experienced involved post-traumatic stress and a traumatic brain injury. He said he believes staying in the service and talking with other Vietnam vets helped him cope and kept him from becoming socially isolated like other buddies from Vietnam who wanted to be a hermit and “wind up in the hills.”

“Sooner or later you’ve got to deal with your issues, your demons, and you know, life goes on,” Gasdek said. “So, for about 40 years, I never even mentioned Vietnam actually. I never wore my medals until we got invited to a couple of things at the national cemetery at Arlington and the secretary of veterans affairs said ‘How come you guys aren’t wearing your medals?’ That’s when I started wearing my medals.”

Assignments after Vietnam included Ranger school ,where he finished first in his class. He became not only a Ranger but a Pathfinder, qualified for setting up helicopter landing zones and drop zones. His experience in Vietnam led to his decision to stay in the military rather than pursue his original plans of teaching art in school classrooms.

Gasdek went on to serve as a leadership instructor at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, and through assignments as part of the Army Training Board traveled the world.

He was in Panama during riots that occurred a few blocks from his hotel and in South Korea in 1979 when a two-star general triggered a coup d’etat resulting in a shootout at the nation’s Ministry of Defense.

“Our compound was right on the other side of their Ministry of Defense,” Gasdek said. “They were shooting that up, and bullets were flying through our barracks. I was spread-eagled on the floor, but you know I didn’t get any combat pay for that. I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Protocol Role"}]

His career also included a stint as deputy chief of protocol for the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, working for four-star U.S. Navy admirals at Pearl Harbor. His job was to handle all the VIPs, from presidents, heads of state, congressional delegations, and others who came through Honolulu.

Gasdek and members of the team took care of VIP itineraries and made sure their accommodations and experience matched their expectations and status.

That job allowed him to meet the king and queen of Spain, Reagan administration Secretary of State George Schultz, several cabinet and congressional officials, and play basketball with George H. W. Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle. Quayle was traveling back from the Philippines and arrived about 3 a.m.

He had a 30-minute meeting with an admiral and then wanted to play basketball — at 4 a.m.

“My boss told me, Barry, you pick up a team,” he said. “We played the Secret Service and Danny Quayle. I can say part of my job was to guard the vice president, he was dribbling the ball of course.”

Gasdek ended his Army career teaching ROTC at the University of Wyoming. He said his role as a professor of military science allowed him to meet many people, including state leaders and governors.

He became an advocate for veterans being appointed to serve on the Wyoming Veterans Commission and also for several years as the first Wyoming veteran services officer. Gasdek said he took on the role to help veterans because he “knew what they were going through.”

Gasdek said he also wanted to make sure Wyoming Guard members on deployment were taken care of.

“We would make all the homecomings and yellow-ribbon events where they would brief the troops and the families (about) what was going on, making sure you had somebody look after the family while they were deployed,” he said.

After his Army career, Gasdek joined the exclusive Legion of Valor veterans’ organization that is open to veterans with the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross or Air Force Cross. He was its national commander from 2008 to 2009.

Gasdek also belongs to the Military Order of the Purple Heart and has had leadership positions with the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

While he never pursued his art education career, Gasdek said a three-story log house he built in the mountains northwest of Pikes Peak while he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, decades ago became an outlet for his artistic side.

He has hung onto the house but characterizes Laramie as his final home.

“Three or four weather systems would be up there,” he said. “I got a view of Pike’s Peak, which is really neat.”

Gasdek’s lifelong efforts have been honored by his alma mater with a Doctor of Public Service Degree and in the past by U.S. Sen. John Barrasso in the Congressional Record for his service and advocacy for veterans.

“He embodies the cowboy ethics and what it means to be a citizen of Wyoming,” Barrasso said in remarks published in the Congressional Record in 2012. “It is certain that the legacy of his leadership will inspire new generations of brave soldiers.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Barry Gazdeck Barry Now and Then 8 16 26

<title>Laramie Vietnam Vet Led From The Front And Has The Scars And Medals To Prove It | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Retired Vietnam Veteran Lt. Col. Barry Gasdek had a leadership philosophy that kept him in front of his men. He has the scars and medals, including a Distinguished Service Cross, to prove he lived out that ideal during two tours of combat at the height of the war.

Laramie Vietnam Vet Led From The Front And Has The Scars And Medals To Prove It

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.

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.

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