You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"How they should have introduced the pope....."}]

Today In Sports 5 10 25

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

<title>Today In Sports: Saturday, May 10, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

How they should have introduced the pope.....

Today In Sports: Saturday, May 10, 2025

 How they should have introduced the pope.....

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

Renée Jean

Business

Kelli Tracy feels like she’s “living in a Hallmark movie.” She and her husband just closed on their own brick-and-mortar store in downtown Sheridan, and she’s now celebrating her 10th year in business. 

These days, her Lil Bee’s Bohemian clothing line ships all over the world, and the business brings in a comfortable $600,000 to $700,000 a year in sales. 

But, like any Hallmark movie, getting to “happily ever after” wasn’t an easy task. 

The journey started when she was unexpectedly laid off from a big corporate job in Florida as a quality assurance compliance manager. It was scary.

“I had just moved in with my now husband but, at the time, my boyfriend,” Tracy recalled. “And he was like, ‘Well you need to get a job. You need to maybe go back to bartending or go back to doing something so you have money coming in.’” 

Tracy had done plenty of bartending in college and had no intention of going back to it. She had a completely different idea, one people told her was crazy at the time.  

“The next day I started my own boutique with clothing out of my closet,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “That’s when Instagram first started. Like it was just coming out and the algorithms were great. Everything was great.”

She propped a mannequin she bought from California — a model she named Lola — in front of her phone, dressed it in her own clothes, and opened a Shopify account. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Lil Bee’s Bohemian was born."}]

Starting out, her biggest problem wasn’t finding customers. She had plenty of people clamoring for the outfits she was styling. 

Her trouble was finding inventory priced low enough that she could resell it with a healthy profit margin. 

“I didn’t know there were places like Fashion Go or like Marketplaces and all the things,” she said. “You can go to Dallas Market and like find all your vendors.”

Initially, to get inventory, she’d go to places like Ross and Marshalls to buy items for the outfits she was promoting on Instagram. It was rare, but if the outfits didn’t sell, she’d just return them.

That strategy wasn’t going to work long-term, she realized. She had to figure out something else.

“Then I met a lady named Holly who owns Baja Ranch and she’s the one who helped me,” Tracy said. “I was buying a bunch of her stuff off eBay, because it was really cheap, to resell. And so she asked me like, ‘What are you buying all this stuff for?’”

When Tracy explained she was starting a boutique and needed inventory, Holly explained where she could go to find wholesale items to resell. 

“I mean, you can buy from me,” she said. “But you can get all of this stuff here.”

And the prices would be much less expensive. Wholesale pricing, Holly explained, would let Tracy keep her margins, without relying on returns.

Tracy, meanwhile, helped Holly figure out how to start Instagram and Shopify accounts so she could improve her business model.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A $12,000 Surprise"}]

Once she had reliable wholesale sources, sales were booming. But there was a big problem. Somehow, despite making many, many sales, the money wasn’t adding up. 

“I was like, ‘Man, where is all the money?’ Like I know I didn’t spend all this money,” she said. 

Eventually she figured out that many of the purchases were landing in her business’ PayPal account. She thought that money would transfer to her bank account automatically, but it was sitting there, quietly waiting for her to go in and authorize its transfer.

“I was almost to the point of bagging it,” Tracy said. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this. I can’t really afford more stuff.’ And then I wound up with all this extra money.”

The business was saved, and Tracy realized she had to get more organized. The scare pushed her to tighten up her books and treat Lil Bee’s less like an experiment and more like the real business it was becoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Closet Wasn’t Enough"}]

As the business grew, so did its footprint inside the couple’s home. 

It was no longer just her own closet. It was every closet in the house. She put racks in the spare bedroom, the living room, and even one hallway.

“It was just taking over the house,” Tracy said. “It was bad. I remember looking over at my husband and his two kids and the dog and they all looked at me like I was crazy.”

Finally, one day her husband said, “Hey, if you go get a place like a studio or like an office, this whole entire closet here could be your personal closet.”

Tracy heard what he was really saying. It was time for Lil Bee’s to grow wings and fly. 

“I had the keys to a showroom the next day,” she said. “Within 24 hours.”

The business doubled in size and quickly outgrew the showroom. She moved it next to a big warehouse, and just kept upgrading from there. 

“At one point, I think I had two, maybe three warehouses,” she said. “It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

The growth looked impressive on paper. At peak, Lil Bee’s was doing more than $1.4 million a year in sales.

But the pace was grueling, the overhead relentless, and she was working all the time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Right-Sizing Her Business"}]

By year eight, she made some decisions that shape the business as it is today. 

First, she decided to start making her own clothing designs instead of just buying and reselling other people’s ideas.

That would also allow her to boost the quality. No more thin, disposable stuff. She wanted pieces that people could keep and love forever.

She also decided just how big she wanted Lil Bee’s to be. 

“It just got to bee too much,” Tracy said. “It was just more, more, more.”

She realized that if she downsized her business, she’d still remain profitable and she would have more time to focus on her own designs.

That turned out to be a fortuitous move. Her ‘70s-inspired clothes caught the eye of a rising country star — Lainey Wilson.

Wilson, then an artist in Nashville, was a regular customer. 

“She bought bell bottoms from me and she called it ‘Balling on a budget,’” Tracy said with a chuckle. “She even spoke about Lil Bee’s on the Bobby Bones podcast.”

Eventually, Wilson and Tracy teamed up on a collaborative clothing line built around flared jeans and boho blouses. 

“We created four items together,” Tracy said. “It was a really cool, button-down top, a pair of jeans, like acid-washed black jeans, a bandana, and striped bell bottoms.”

As Wilson’s career took off, however, the partnership became more complicated. New managers stepped in, and access to the star tightened. 

“I couldn’t just call her up anymore,” Tracy said. “I didn’t take it personally though. She’s a wonderful person, and she’s the same way in person as she is on stage.”

The Lainey Wilson chapter was a fun, unexpected part of her business journey, but it’s not the one Tracy likes best. 

That's the one she’s in right now, designing her own clothes and selling wholesale to 146 stores across America as well as stores in Canada. She also ships orders direct around the world and has a loyal following in Australia. 

The boutique shop she just closed on in Sheridan exactly 10 years after starting her business is a full-circle moment. 

The store is just 800 square feet. But it feels just right for now.

“It’s packed so full of just amazing beautiful stuff,” she said. “I’ve got my entire line in there — all my blouses, and jewelry.”

There are sweaters, jackets, dresses, tallow makeup, bags and a hat bar, too. 

“When you get in there, it’s like a time capsule back into the '70s,” she said. “It’s groovy, and there’s not one thing that’s plain. It’s like a maximalist dream.”

It’s a dream that’s also planted in the one place in the world she’s decided she likes the best of every place she’s ever roamed — Sheridan. She got to know the town after visiting some friends, and just decided it’s where she’s always belonged.

“It’s just marvelous,” she said. “This last Christmas we had the Holiday Stroll and it snowed. I mean, it snowed so much that night, it was just marvelous. Everyone was out there with hot chocolate and their scarves and I was like this is nuts. Like I’m living in a Hallmark movie.”

Lil Bees and Kelly Tracy 8 16 26

<title>How A Sheridan Woman Turned Her Closet Into A Funky Worldwide Fashion Business | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Laid off from a corporate job, Kelli Tracy started selling clothes out of her closet on Instagram. Ten years later, she owns Sheridan’s Lil Bee’s Bohemian and ships her '70s-inspired designs to people all over the world from her Wyoming storefront.

How A Sheridan Woman Turned Her Closet Into A Funky Worldwide Fashion Business

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Agriculture

Raising show pigs can be time-consuming and, for many, a tough endeavor. From early spring to fall, 4-H and FFA kids spend one to two hours each day training and caring for their prized swine. 

Not only do the young owners have to ensure they keep their pig healthy and bring them to full weight, they also must train them.

Show pigs must learn to prance around a ring with their heads held high to show off their assets. The goal is a grand-champion title. This takes months of dedication on part of both the kid and the pig. 

The pig is then sold to the highest bidder at the annual fair livestock auctions.

“I will not deny the fact it is one of the hardest things I do every year is sell my animal and realize that I will never see these animals again,” Tymber Eckley, 19, of Hot Springs County told Cowboy State Daily at the Wyoming State Fair in Douglas. “But you have to keep it in mind, obviously, that these pigs are being raised to be eaten.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We are feeding the future of America.”"}]

A couple of years ago, Tymber’s pigs picked up a variation of "pig flu" at a jackpot and the results were devastating. Her family lost pigs and those that remained were not the champions Tymber had hoped for.

Her family now, like many others across Wyoming, raises an extra pig as a backup. If all their pigs survive, they have the option of selling the pig privately or entering a lottery to help their community.

Since 2020, these extra hogs can be given to local charities to help feed those in need through “Fair to Fork” created by First Lady Jennie Gordon and the University of Wyoming.

Each participant selected is given $750 for their hog and then picks a charity in their county to receive the meat. Tymber was selected in 2025 and her pig, Baby, was made into bacon and sausage for her food bank in Thermopolis.

“Raising a pig can be intense,” Gordon told Cowboy State Daily in a phone interview. “These kids are the cream of the crop and this program just gets kids that are already doing good work involved in their own community.”

Gordon said the reason she gives the prize money and a plaque to each winner at the State Fair every year is to honor their work.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Life of a Show Pig"}]

This year, 23 counties were represented. Sawyer Wilson, 12, was selected to give his pig to a Hot Springs County charity of his choice.

“It kind of opened my eyes about all the people that don't get food,” Sawyer told Cowboy State Daily. “It feels good. Feels like I'm helping people.”

Sawyer’s family ended up with six pigs this year. To raise a show pig, it takes more than just daily feedings.

“I feed our pigs two times a day,” Sawyer said. “And then we train them with a baby bottle taped to a little plastic pole and filled with Gatorade to teach the pig to hold its head up.”

Sawyer said one person will hold the pole and another will guide it along with two whips, training the pig how to walk properly in the ring with its nose in the air and almost prancing. They should learn to turn when tapped with the pig whip and to pop their head up on command.

Sadie Eckley, Tymber’s mom, said her kids will spend at least an hour or two each night caring for their hogs and getting their chores done.

“When you first get the pigs, you should start training them right away before they get set in their ways,” Eckley said. “My kids work their animals almost every day, and when they put in the hard work, they have success in the show ring.”

There is even a certain direction each kid needs to be able to direct their pig so they are showing properly to the judge.

Some pigs naturally do better than others, Tymber explained. Baby was a big goofball and pretty naughty in the show ring. Despite this, with persistence, Tymber gother trained and won a few ribbons.

“She earned her name by being a little dramatic baby,” she said. “She definitely liked to push her limits but she loved her treats, especially animal crackers.”

Sawyer’s had chosen his extra pig, Marshmallow, because of an “eyeball” mark on his side. 

“Marshmallow is kind of like a dog,” Sawyer said. “When you scratch him, he'll lay down.”

He was the first pig Sawyer had ever picked out himself and didn’t make weight as hoped. So now, Sawyer is keeping Marshmallow for at least a few more weeks to put on weight before his pig is taken for slaughter to make sure the charity gets the most meat possible.

His mother, Mandy Wilson, said raising pigs has been a valuable lesson for Sawyer. 

“He got the whole experience of going to the sale to learn,” Wilson said. “And then to go through the process of training his pigs to realize what makes a good pig.”

Wilson said pigs, in general, are easy to raise compared to other livestock. They each have a unique personality. 

“They're just fun,” Wilson said. “Marshmallow was always the pig that came out when you were mixing the feed and he was just a good pick.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Raised To Be Eaten"}]

When it comes time for the butcher barn, Wilson said her family keeps it mind it is their destination from the get-go and what they were bred for.

[{"type":"text","text":"It doesn’t mean that it is easy selling the pigs."}]

Gordon said she has personally gone to many sales over the years and gotten emotional watching some of the kids cry.

“It's been such a big part of their summer and they've gotten to know their animals,” Gordon said. “Their heart and soul is in the whole program and in their animals. It's a bit of a tear-jerker.”

Tymber said that over the years of her own career in FFA and 4 H it took a lot of hard work, dedication and passion behind each project. She said it has been ‘super cool’ to be in the livestock industry and she plans to continue to help out in the agricultural business.

“4-H and FFA kids work so hard,” Gordon said. “They're the future of our state and being able to work with them so closely has really been just the highlight of my career as first lady.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hunger Aware"}]

Gordon told Cowboy State Daily one of the many reasons she began the program was because these extra pigs are Wyoming raised with the best genetics and feed. This provides great protein for those who normally don’t get it.

“Finding ways to help our neighbors that are struggling with food and security is what Wyoming does best and what we're all about,” Gordon said. “We should remember that everyone is one emergency away from being that person in need.”

The Fair to Fork program was developed in 2020 when the COVID pandemic threatened the public sale of show pigs at Wyoming county fairs.

“I thought to myself, 'Oh my gosh, what are these kids going to do that have already purchased their animals?'” Gordon said. “We started working with the UW Extension office and the 4-H team and came up with this idea of buying the pigs to donate to charity in lieu of the fairs.”

The fairs took place after all. Gordon then used the idea behind her program to raise awareness of hunger and to buy the extra hogs that the kids had raised. These extra animals are entered into a lottery and at least one pig per county is selected.

“One of the students actually went back and started volunteering at their local food pantry because of the connection that was made,” Gordon said. “It really is something that may make them lifelong volunteers and donors, and that's what we need to do is take care of our neighbors.”

Eckley encouraged Tymber to enter the lottery with their extra pig because she said is a strong believer in giving back to their community and wants to instill that in her kids.

“I think it's important for kids to learn that lesson at a young age,” Eckley said. “This was a great opportunity for my kids to help people in need.”

Tymber said the program was a good reminder that while their own freezers are full of the livestock they have raised, others are not so fortunate in Wyoming. During the process, Tymber discovered many people in her own community were not getting the proper protein she took for granted as someone raised in agriculture.

“I'll be the first to admit that I definitely kind of get blind-sided,” Tymber said. “I'm very fortunate to be able to raise livestock and fill my own freezers and I was reminded that some people don't get to do that.”

Gordon said they pay the kids for their hog to show appreciation for their hard work and then make sure the student is involved with giving away the meat.

“That way, they get to see the impact that they're having in their own communities,” Gordon said.

Pigs 2 Sawyer and his pigs 1 8 16 26

<title>Life Of A Wyoming Show Pig: Training, Tearful Goodbyes, And The Dinner Table | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Raising show pigs is a huge commitment for Wyoming 4-H and FFA kids working toward the Wyoming State Fair. Then comes the bittersweet part — tearful goodbyes when the pigs are sold to become dinner for the less fortunate.

Life Of A Wyoming Show Pig: Training, Tearful Goodbyes, And The Dinner Table

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

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.

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.

Today In Sports: Saturday, May 10, 2025

In case you missed it

More in You Still Here

Steve Inman: Monday, August 17, 2026

You Still Here? Monday, August 17, 2026

Bonus Video 1: Monday, August 17, 2026

Bonus Video 2: Monday, August 17, 2026

Most read