Bill Sniffin

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

After months of slow news, former President Donald Trump is causing a ruckus in the Wyoming political world.

According to spokeswoman April Poley from state Sen. Anthony Bouchard’s campaign, the two GOP U. S. House candidates being invited by Trump for endorsement consideration are Cheyenne attorney Darin Smith and Casper legislator Chuck Gray. Although Bouchard was the first to jump into the race against incumbent Liz Cheney, he was not invited by Trump, according to Poley.

Trump has a big-time grudge against Cheney because she was one of 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach the former president. Cheney has become even more vocal since then in her criticism of Trump, which has isolated her from a huge number of Wyoming Republicans.  

Wyoming voters polled more in favor of Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections than voters in any other state. This IS Trump country.

The prevailing pro-Trump mood among many Republicans in Wyoming is so dominant that Cheney is seldom seen at public events these days and travels with two security men at her side. In the first quarter of this year, she spent over $58,000 on personal protection. 

Meanwhile in related news, state Sen. Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester apparently commissioned what is called a “push-poll” of Wyoming Republican voters Tuesday about running against Cheney.  Cowboy State Daily was tipped off by someone who was called. 

This person said the poll was obviously designed to both determine Biteman’s statewide name recognition and then promote his candidacy in the race against Cheney for the House seat.  The call contained a half-dozen questions about how Biteman would fare when running against Cheney or Smith, Gray, or Bouchard. Biteman did not return my calls.

Based on money raised, while Bouchard has raised the most in donations of any of Cheney’s challengers at almost $580,000, Smith has more cash on hand, $142,461 to Bouchard’s $108,612 after raising about $171,000 in just the second quarter of the year.(Note: Smith and I worked together of Foster Friess’s governor race in 2018 and Smith briefly served on the board of Cowboy State Daily.)

Smith said he has raised money the old-fashioned way – from friends and supporters. Smith’s $142,000 is the biggest war chest of cash among Cheney’s rivals.

When I chatted with him Thursday, he said he has kept his head down and is working hard. He is traveling the state and attending GOP functions around Wyoming.

Friess was Smith’s state chairman until he died May 27.  Smith said he still considers Foster his chairman in spirit.  Friess was a big supporter of Donald Trump. Near the end of his presidency, Trump appointed Foster’s wife Lynn to the board of the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. 

I talked briefly with Chuck Gray and he is excited about his chances.  But neither Gray or Smith would discuss a possible meeting with Trump. It could be assumed there is a “gag order” in place on the subject.

Fox News broke the story that Bouchard was not invited to Trump’s resort in New Jersey next week for the meeting. According to Trump staff, the former president plans to endorse just one candidate and then work tirelessly on his behalf to defeat Cheney.  If Cheney decides to run again, this will be an all-time ugly race.

Meanwhile, lost in all of this Trump discussion is Anthony Bouchard.  Bouchard got into the race early and earned a lot of national publicity.  He had momentum until a story broke that when he was a teenager, he impregnated a 14-year old girl in Florida who he later married.  Bouchard is a bulldog and has not said whether or not he would support a Trump-anointed candidate. 

Smith said if he does not win the Trump endorsement, he would probably support the candidate who did receive it.

Gray, 31, is in his third term representing Casper in the Wyoming House. His family has seven radio stations in the state but he is now working full-time on the campaign. “I have a proven record. Wyoming conservatives are ready to rally around a candidate. I am that leader.”

Meanwhile, in many parts of the country, these hot times are referred to as the Dog Days. Even mild weather-prone Wyoming, it has been hotter than blazes lately.

To politicians, this time of year is truly like the Dead Sea. They are paddling around trying to raise awareness and — yawn — nobody seems to be paying attention.

But with the announcements from Trump’s camp this week, things suddenly got a lot more interesting.

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

This past spring, I noticed that Wyoming’s Black-Footed Ferret is a rock star at the Phoenix Zoo.  In fact, you might think the elusive little critter was native to Arizona. 

Not so.

Here is the real story.

An obscure place in the Cowboy State was the host of one of the most impressive recovery stories of an apparently extinct animal that has occurred in America over the last several decades.

The famous naturalist and artist John James Audubon first painted and published reports of the critter around 1846.  In 1979, the Black Footed Ferret was declared extinct in the world.  

In 1981, Lucille Hogg’s pet dog Shep dragged home a carcass of an unusual animal at their ranch home near Meeteetse.  Lucille was a fixture in Meeteetse at her Lucille’s Café.  She and husband John took the odd critter to a local taxidermist to talk about possibly getting it mounted. 

The taxidermist took one look at it and after a long pause said he needed to make a phone call.  When he returned he said this animal was not only an endangered species, but it was extinct! 

Wyoming Game and Fish officials descended enmasse on Meeteetse and the Hogg home. The hunt was on for the rest of the animals.

This was an amazing coincidence involving a pesky dog and some folks who thought they had found a really odd-looking animal.  Thankfully that taxidermist was alert enough to contact the Game and Fish.

Our local newspaper in Lander along with most newspapers in Wyoming ran news stories and ads in the late 1970s trying to locate any colonies of the elusive nocturnal animal. None were found. 

An animal called a “ferret” is common in America as a pet. But these critters are not native. They are originally from Europe. The only local ferret in America is the Black-Footed Ferret, which originally roamed all over North America.

In a column last year, I wrote about how reliant the American Indians were on the buffalo for food, clothing, and shelter.  Well, in this case, the prairie dog is the buffalo to the Black-Footed Ferret. The latter’s entire existence is based on killing and eating prairie dogs. 

One Game and Fish biologist described the relationship as the prairie dog providing “room and board” for the ferrets, since ferrets live in abandoned prairie dog towns. One study showed that an adult female Black-Footed Ferret and her litter of kits will kill and eat over 1,000 prairie dogs a year for their diet. 

This ferret looks a lot like a mink but the two animals are not related. Our Ferret has a close relative in Europe called the Polecat, not to be confused with the expression “doggone polecat” to describe a bad guy in old-time Wyoming.

Bob Oakleaf and Andrea Orabona, non-game biologists of the G&F, worked on the recovery project, which is featured in a video on YouTube. 

Back in the 1980s, G&F staffers tried to locate the rest of the pack of ferrets, using an old-style trap and then some huge hand-held antennas. G&F staff walked around trying to track the ferrets, which had radio collars installed on them.

Ultimately they found over 50 of the ferrets and the small colony seemed to be doing well.

But this did not last long.

The reason the Black-Footed Ferret was declared extinct in 1979 was because of a disease called plague, which had been wiping out prairie dogs and killing ferrets at the same time.

By  1985, the number of Meeteetse ferrets was down to 18 and the decision was made to capture all of them and put them in a captive facility to prevent further deaths leading to extinction.

The initial facility was in Sybille Canyon. As the G&F was able to breed more and more ferrets, other places around the country got involved, including Colorado facilities and the Phoenix Zoo. 

Today, ferrets have been re-released to the outdoors. A big event was held in Meeteetse on July 26, 2016 where the critters were re-introduced to their original home area.  There are now more than 1,500 ferrets running loose in the region and they seem to be thriving. Not good news for prairie dogs, though. 

Meanwhile, I even bought a tee shirt at the Phoenix Zoo, which was emblazoned with big photos of the Black-Footed Ferret and a big logo for the zoo. 

I cannot blame Arizonans for wanting to take some credit for this amazing survival success story. But in the brief information piece about the ferret, Wyoming was hardly mentioned and the location where they were found was spelled “Meteetse,” rather than the correct spelling of Meeteetse.  Oh well.

Over the years the zoo has provided over 500 Black-Footed Ferrets, which have been re-introduced into the wild. So, I grudgingly have to give them a little bit of credit after all.

Not sure I will ever wear that tee shirt back here in Wyoming, though.

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

(Note: The Oxygen Cable TV network on Monday night will air a new documentary on the 1980 murders of Virginia Uden and her sons. It will be aired repeatedly on into the future.)

Back in 2013, I wrote: “After 33 years of one cold case and 16 years for the other, it has always been easy to believe that some unsolved disappearances will just never be explained.”

In Lander, for decades we pondered about two gals who vanished.  Virginia Uden and Amy Bechtel both disappeared and I wrote the news stories about them while I was the Lander newspaper publisher.

Amy is still missing but the horrible fate of Virginia Uden and her two sons has now been known for a while.

Ironically, both women worked for me at my newspaper.  It seemed odd to be writing these horrible stories about people you actually knew. It did make it easy to write columns and editorials full of speculation about how a person could disappear into thin air during a modern time when everybody seems to know everything about everybody.

But these two mysteries seemed destined to be perpetually unsolved.

Then, just like that, one of them was solved.

And the answers to all of those one-third of a century-old questions were as horrific and grisly as anyone could have possibly imagined.

Gerald Uden was a worker at the U. S. Steel iron ore mine at Atlantic City, some 25 miles outside of Lander in the Wind River Mountains.  Co-worker Kim Curtis remembered him as “scary.”

Virginia Beard must have seen something in the guy, since she married him and Uden adopted her two sons, Reagan, 10, and Richard, 11.

Everyone now knows what happened next.  It was on CNN, ABC, in People Magazine, and The New York Times among all the other state and national media outlets.  The story is impossible to ignore and if you wrote about the Uden family as fiction, the story would not sell because it is so unbelievable.

Then there is Amy.

Amy Wroe Bechtel, 24, disappeared while jogging in the Wind River Mountains above Lander on July 24, 1997.  Although what happened to her is not known, it is believed she is dead. 

And it is also believed she died at the hands of a serial killer, who authorities believe is already in custody for a similar Wyoming abduction and killing.  

That suspect is Dale Wayne Eaton, the man on death row for the famous and heinous “Little Miss” killing. Eaton kidnapped, raped and murdered another pretty young woman in 1989. 

Fremont County Detective John Zerga recounted that Eaton’s brother told him that the convicted killer was in the Lander area at the time of Amy’s disappearance. 

But evidence is lacking and Eaton is not talking.

My wife Nancy and I have positive memories of both Amy and Virginia.

Amy Bechtel was a part-time photographer and a darned good one.

Note: Famed author Ron Franscell wrote an excellent book about the Uden case called Gerald and Alice, A Homicidal Love Story.

Virginia Uden did some surveying and telemarketing for the newspaper. She had recently divorced Gerald Uden at the time. She was desperate for money and working as many jobs as she could to make ends meet. 

Gerald Uden and his new wife Alice worked at the U. S. Steel mine.  Alice was convicted of killing a previous husband and dumping his body in a mineshaft in Albany County.

Then they conspired to rid Gerald of his obligations — his ex-wife Virginia and his two adopted sons.

An acquaintance of the new Mrs. Uden (Alice) who worked with her at the mine reported on Facebook that Alice was always complaining about Gerald never having any money because he had to support Virginia and the kids. Thus, money appears to be the motive for the taking of these three lives 33 years ago.

On a fall day in September 1980, Gerald Uden convinced Virginia and her two boys to meet him in Pavillion, Wyoming, for some hunting.  He murdered all three.  He stashed her car down a deep canyon off the Dickinson Park Road.

Officers finally found the body of Alice’s previous husband and that led them to her and Gerald, by then living in Missouri. 

Meanwhile, officer Andy Hanson at the Dept. of Criminal Investigation (DCI) never gave up and connected the dots.  Credit also goes to a UW archeologist who with eight students spent some awful summer days in 2008 digging around in an old pigsty in Pavillion looking for evidence of the Uden bodies.  They were unsuccessful.

Gerald Uden confessed to all three murders — although he did try unsuccessfully to recant that confession and is spending the rest of his life in prison.  His wife Alice died in prison a year ago.

Gerald originally said he killed Virginia and the two boys and their bodies are at the bottom of Fremont Lake outside of Pinedale. Then he said they were not. Most folks believed the bodies were dismembered by Alice and fed to the pigs on their farm near Pavillion.

Amy, well, her fate is still a mystery.

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

Once my wife Nancy and I reached a certain age, our approach to reading about deaths of folks in the local news services changed.

We call it “obituary roulette.”  It is not something to joke about. We go down the list of folks who died and if they are older than we are, well, that might be okay.  But when they are younger, heck, something is just not right in the world.

In my day job as publisher of the Cowboy State Daily, we recently started publishing a statewide list of folks who have died.  I think we are tracking down most of them.  Folks who, for some reason, saw that a Wyoming death was omitted should send their information to staff Writer Jen Kocher at jenniferkocher@gmail.com, and she will be happy to make the addition.

In the latest list, there were 46 statewide deaths in a one-week period from June 10 to June 16.

When it came to our roulette game, there were just 17 younger than us. 

Seriously, our condolences go out to all these folks and their families.

Although we lost a few folks during the 2020 pandemic, including my 96-year old mother, and some local folks like Steve Mossbrook of Riverton and Sue Krebs of Lander, it seemed like we sure did not see as many deaths as we are seeing now.  

Lately, we have been seemingly bombarded by news of the deaths of folks we knew. Not a good trend.  It is almost like the grim reaper was in hibernation.  Statistically, some medical reports claimed that flu practically disappeared in 2020 since everyone was staying home and being masked up.  A huge reduction in the common cold occurred during this time, too.

As a young reporter back in 1964, I did not appreciate my job of having to write obituaries.  I knew they had to be accurate, which they always were. But I never made an effort to make them more interesting. 

Later in life, it suddenly hits you how interesting most peoples’ lives really are.

Some recent funerals featured some moments that need to be mentioned, too.

A local surgeon, Dr. John Whipp, 79, died in his sleep.  At his funeral, we found out he was truly self-made. After Vietnam, he rode his motorcycle from San Diego to Kentucky, as I recall, to attend medical school.

John and his wife Marie, had five children. Their first child, JP, was killed in a wreck of his pickup truck many decades ago.

John knew he was sick and had written a wonderful letter to his family, which they saw after he died.  His brother in law read the last part of it during his eulogy.  After expressing his love to his family, he ended the letter by saying: “So now, if you don’t mind, I am out of here. I am going to check in with JP.”

Chuck Guschewsky, 64, unexpectedly died of a heart attack. He was CEO of the 12 Fremont Motor car dealerships in Wyoming and Nebraska and was a good friend.

His funeral was in a big field on their ranch in Sinks Canyon outside of Lander and rain was threatening the entire time.  But Chuck, who loved flying, was given credit for holding off the weather.

Part of his service was a fly-over by local pilots.  Very solemn and very impressive.  They flew in what is called the Missing Man formation.

A big tent was set up for refreshments afterward where we toasted our friend when a downpour finally arrived.  It was memorable.

Probably the biggest and most notable funeral I have ever attended was for Foster Friess, the great philanthropist from Jackson.  Nearly 1,000 people attended his services in Scottsdale, Jackson, and Rice Lake, WI.

His good friend, former U. S. Sen. Rick Santorum, gave a remarkable eulogy for Friess saying “Foster had a Ph.D. in friendship.”

One of Friess’s four children, Michael, is deaf.  He gave a stirring eulogy about his dad in sign language with a person on the side reciting what he was saying. It was emotional and powerful.  Strong words from a loving son.  

Tucker Carlson of Fox News gave a rousing speech at Foster’s Celebration of Life and described how Foster had a rule when folks sat down for dinner. “Only one person could speak at a time. And everybody got to talk. You can imagine how hard that was on me, as voluble as I am!”

As I write this, we are anticipating the service for retired Judge Jack Nicholas, 94, and also a service for our wonderful next door neighbor Leonard Yost, 82. 

Writing about deaths, funerals, and obituaries should probably be more somber than this column. We need to celebrate lives well lived and mourn lives cut too short. Amen to that.

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

“Time sure does change things,” said an airline passenger to his companion.

“When I was a boy, I used to sit in a flat-bottomed boat on that lake down there below and fish.  Every time a plane flew over I’d look up and wish I were in it.

“Now I look down . . . and I wish I were fishing.”

Time (or the lack of it) has always been a prime topic for people who work hard and miss out on all the fun activities that living in Wyoming can provide. 

This time stress is especially bad about this time of year.  Spring and summer are times for fishing, golfing, puttering in that garden, working in the yard, visiting relatives, taking that long anticipated vacation and, well, just doing fun things.

It seems like time is so precious and is flying by so quickly that before we know it, we are out of it.  Often precious time with family and friends gets lost amid the pressures of job and commitments.   

We are so lucky to live in a place like Wyoming.  When was the last time you went to Yellowstone?  It is so green and beautiful this time of year.  One of the reasons it is such a favorite in the spring is the appearance of all the calves and other baby critters.

Other national treasures like Devils Tower or the Oregon Trail beckon, too.

Our state park system is one of the best in the U.S.  It really doesn’t take that long to drive over to Fort Laramie, for example, or Guernsey or Seminoe.  Time may be precious, but Wyoming offers lots of see if we just make the time.

Philosopher Jacob Needleman refers to our present-day pressures as the “poverty of time.”  He wrote a fairly pessimistic (but accurate) essay on this shortage of time in people’s lives. His comments are as follows:

“Time.  We’re coming to the end of a hundred years or more of devices that were invented in order to save time.

“What has become of time? Nobody has enough time anymore.  We are all completely taken.  The way I would put it is that time is slowly disappearing.  We are a time-impoverished society.  We have lots of material things, but we have no time left.

“Human time has disappeared — and we’re in animal time.  Or vegetable time, if you like. Or mineral time. 

“The time of computers.  The time of things.  Of mechanical devices.  Animal time is literally the time of the rat race.  It’s the New Poverty. We are simply not living our lives.

“New Agers say: Do what you love, the money will follow.  That is a fantasy.  Many people will say: ‘Now I have found that when I’m there making my living, making money, I am completely wasted on meaning.  My life is meaningless. I come away exhausted and tired. I have no time for anything that I consider meaningful.’”

Now, the above is a pretty serious commentary, but sometimes we all feel a little desperate about the lack of time there seems to be for us to get everything done that we want to do.

Then here are a few of my favorite expressions that I’ve collected over the years about time:

• After all is said and done, more is often said . . . than done.

• A favorite toast: May the most you wish for be the least you get. May the best times you have ever had be the worst you’ll ever see.

• Which shall it be?  Go, Go, Go or No, No, No!

• Experience is a hard teacher because she gives you the test first and the lesson afterwards.

• It isn’t necessary to believe in miracles.  Just hope a few believe in you.

• Sympathy is never wasted unless you give it to yourself.

• People always ask how do you grow? Figure out what scared you the most and go do it.

Here is a great quote on time. It is from the 1953 classic movie Beat the Devil, which was directed by John Huston. In it, a character played by Peter Lorre launched a famous monologue about time, which went:

“Time . . . time. What is time? The Swiss manufacture it. The French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist.  Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook . . .”

In order to have more time, we need to get organized. A smart guy once suggested that we need to do an inventory of our lives. He suggested we list things “I have to do” on one sheet of paper and “what I want to do” on another sheet.

Then go through everything in your life and anything that clearly doesn’t fit on one sheet or the other – get rid of it.

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

I love the Red Desert.  And you will, too.

The ghosts of longtime friends Jimmy Smail and Bill Crump were hovering over us as Nancy and I made our first trek in three years to the vast Red Desert south of Lander and north of Rock Springs and Rawlins.

This gigantic place will devour you.  It is so big and stretches out so far in all directions.  I had forgotten how deep it is.  That’s right, the word “deep” comes to mind as you venture farther and farther into it.

Much like a vast dark jungle, this huge swath of open space just takes over. It stretches from one horizon to the other. It is like being in the middle of the ocean. 

I remarked to Nancy how native peoples roamed this area for 12,000 years. And for all but about the last 350 years, they did it on foot! 

From South Pass, you travel south for 10 miles to the magnificent Oregon Buttes.  They are so named because when the Oregon Trail emigrants reached these buttes on South Pass, it meant they were entering the state of Oregon. They stand tall next to Continental Peak and are major landmarks in the north portion of the  Red Desert. We love the buttes.

The area is known as a place to find Eden Valley petrified wood. In our early years in Wyoming, we hauled our share of the beautiful wood home. Now removing the wood is prohibited.

Southeast of Oregon Buttes we pass through the Honeycomb Buttes country and then come to a T-intersection.  If you go right, you see all the sights. If you go left, you literally drop off the end of the world. You feel like you are Columbus sailing off into the vast horizon.  We turned left. As we ventured deeper into this gigantic basin, you just feel overwhelmed by the distances. There were few landmarks. Just emptiness all around you.

The roads are well maintained and most cars would do fine, but I would recommend an SUV or pickup. 

We stopped once and I found a survey marker indicating the border of Sweetwater County and Carbon County. Also photographed a tiny horned toad. 

There were lots of wild horses roaming the area.  Stallions had clearly marked their territory with piles of road apples in the road at strategic locations.

This area is considered the largest unfenced region in the United States.  It also is a place where the Continental Divide splits, going east and west and creating a basin. Water entering this basin does not leave. 

After 90 minutes of experiencing this loneliest place in the loneliest state, we turned west and headed back to see the sights.  We could see two buttes off in the distance and knew that the Killpecker Sand Dunes and the Boar’s Tusk were on the other side of them.

The sand dunes were busy.  Lots of folks camping over the Memorial Day weekend and lots of expensive ORVs (off-road vehicles) roaming around.  We visited with Jose Perez of Rock Springs and took a photo of him and his daughter. He said his rig would go 80 miles an hour.  Wow!

We love the Boar’s Tusk.  This rock formation can be seen for a long distance all around. You can almost see it from Rock Springs.

Just south of there is one of the state’s best petroglyph sites at White Mountain. These are ancient rock carvings created by native peoples centuries ago. There are even rocks believed to be “birthing rocks,” into which handholds have been carved. Women over a millennia would grip these when having babies.  

The area is sheltered from that perennial western wind that occurs in this part of the state and was probably a wintering site for indigenous peoples.  

The site is well marked, well maintained and well worth the short hike.

It was over 50 years ago that a game warden named Bill Crump introduced me to the desert.   Bill died last September at the age of 95. On Memorial Day, the city of Lander named the day in his honor.  At 6 feet, 5 inches, he may have been the tallest sailor in the history of the Submarine service in World War II.

What a wonderful happenstance to have had a brilliant outdoorsman like Bill introduce me to the desert. I am so grateful for that.

In recent years, my late friend Jimmy Smail showed me all sorts of secret places in the desert. Jimmy died at 82 in February.

I could feel good vibes from both of these wonderful Wyoming icons while we were tooling around in their favorite place – the vast Red Desert.

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

Cowboy State Daily is one of the fastest-growing news media organizations in the Rocky Mountain region. 

We owe that to YOU, our readers. 

Recently, our subscriber list passed the 16,000 mark.  Back in February of 2020, we started all this at 1,500 or so.  

But there are thousands of people who still do not know about us.  I am asking you to help us out by telling your friends about this wonderful free news service. 

And please share with me the stories you hear from your friends when they realize a news source like Cowboy State Daily is available to them.

So please, please reach out to your friends and tell them about Cowboy State and help us reach our goal of 20,000 subscribers this summer. It is so easy to sign up. Just go to our web page at www.cowboystatedaily.com and click on the “sign up” button and then fill in your name and email address.  That’s all there is to it!

When you sign up for Cowboy State Daily, you get the benefit of the most experienced news staff in the state.

Here’s a quick rundown of the crew:

Jimmy Orr is executive editor and has been with CSD from Day One; Jim Angell is editor, and  Ellen Fike, Wendy Corr, and Jen Kocher make up our reporting staff.  

Plus, we have a sizable stable of contributors and columnists who spice up our pages with interesting content.  We also have the best weatherman in the state helping us out — Don Day.

We’re always trying to improve our offerings. We recently started publishing statewide death notices, a service our readers really seem to appreciate.

I’d also like to take this chance to thank the hundreds of folks who sent us nice donations during our recent spring fund drive. It was by far our most successful and we are still adding up the totals. 

It is not too late to donate – just click on the donate button for a credit card payment or send a check to: Cowboy State Daily, Box 900, Lander, WY 82520.

Thanks everybody for helping out!  And don’t forget to help your friends and neighbors sign up for Cowboy State Daily.

Don’t just watch us grow – join us!

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By Bill Sniffin, publisher

Thank you, Foster.

You could sum up Foster Friess in one word: Generous. He did more for more people than anyone I have ever known. He and Lynn gave away $500 million in their lifetimes. Amazing.

My story with Foster is a personal one.  I had worked with him and Lynn some 20 years ago on some obscure project and had not had any contact for many years.  Out of the blue in April of 2018, he called and asked me to help him with his governor’s campaign.

There is no hesitation when Foster Friess asks for your help.  I was in. It was one of the most fun summers of my life as he started with zero name recognition and nearly won the gubernatorial primary four months later.

Of significance is the fact that he forbade any of the staff to ever say anything negative about his opponents and, no matter what, he would not run any negative ads.

He loved traveling the state and getting know the regular people of Wyoming.  He was down-to-earth as he cracked jokes and talked about growing up in little Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Although considered a billionaire, he loved to explain that he and Lynn started their investment business with $800 he had saved up from his service in the Army.

On election night, when he realized he had lost, he was gracious and said to everyone it was time to move on to the next project. He was a good sport.  

He and I had talked about how statewide news organizations had been cutting back because of the economy.  That piqued his interest.

Six months later, he funded the Cowboy State Daily, which was started by Annaliese Wiederspahn and Jimmy Orr. A year later I took over as publisher. It has been an amazing time so far and resulted in getting to spend some quality time with him.

As our major funder, he only asked me to do two things:  First, he thought we should run obituaries (which we are now doing) and second, he wanted us to include some national stories from the Daily Caller, which he also founded.

Otherwise, he was a hands-off donor, which made life at the Cowboy State Daily a true pleasure in all ways. He was always sending emails that were very supportive.

Foster was a big guy with a big personality.  He wore a big hat and cowboy boots, which made him stand out even taller.  He was tanned and had a big smile.  He was a natural salesman  and a wonderful politician.

He had more friends than anyone, from Donald Trump to a group of welders in Evanston. 

 His outlook on life in his later years was simply to make the world a better place. He always said he felt his wealth was not really his but was given to him to do good works. 

For Christmas 2020, he gave away gifts of $100,000 each to 400 people with the condition that they had to pass it on to a charity of their choice. Over $50 million in given away, in total.

He and Lynn funded wonderful charities such as Rachel’s Challenge and advocacy sites like OpentheBooks.com and TurningPoint.com.

We last saw Foster and Lynn in March in Scottsdale.  A rare blood disorder was killing him. He had already lost 25 pounds and was frail. Yet he wanted to go out to dinner with his friends and he was full of ideas and wanted to hear about projects that were underway.

Even during this time, Foster was forward-thinking.  What was the next great project?  Who needed help?

For example, in 2020, he and Lynn put up $250,000 challenge grants twice, once for the Wyoming Food Bank and second to scholarships for people to go to community colleges for vocational skills.  These are small samples of all the projects they were funding and supporting.

A recent nice gesture was when he and Lynn sent a $100,000 check to the Wyoming Catholic College for a building project.

I am writing this just a few hours after hearing the news of his death.  It is hard to pull together all the wonderful things that I personally experienced with Foster and Lynn. 

Lynn and family, we are so sad for your loss.  You have a true angel in heaven looking down on you and all the rest of us, too.

Thank you, Foster.

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