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Always be proud of what you do for a living....

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CSD Staff

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Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Tourism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sturgis breakfast inset 8 15 26

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

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

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

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

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A slew of fantastic fossils from Earth’s earliest primates have been discovered in southwestern Wyoming, offering new insights into the evolution of humanity’s tiny, sap-sucking great-uncles and aunts.

A new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution reports on the tiny fossils of three prehistoric primates excavated at Smiley Draw, a sandstone site in the Wasatch Formation of the Eocene Period.

Among paleontologists, Wyoming is well known as one of the best places in the world to find 

. These discoveries add to that reputation while also showing how much remains to be found.

“We've made the picture of the early Eocene more complicated than what we once thought,” said Chris Beard, a Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “There will be much more to learn about these fossils, especially from southern Wyoming. There's a reason we're working down there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fascinating And Frustrating"}]

Wyoming has been a hub of primitive primate paleontology since the 1880s. The first fossils of lemur-like primates, dating to around 55 million years ago, were discovered in the Bighorn Basin around that time.

“A whole lot of work happened in the late 20th Century in the Bighorn Basin, especially with respect to this animal called Tetonius,” Beard said.

Tetonius, named after the Tetons, is a “vaguely tarsier-like creature,” as Beard described it. It was around the size of a modern-day mouse lemur, less than a foot long and under 2.5 ounces, but its closest living relatives are modern tarsiers.

Tarsiers are tiny, tree-dwelling animals known as “dry-nosed” primates. Endangered populations of these tiny primates still exist in the rainforests of Southeast Asia.

In their study, Beard and his colleagues described a new species of Tetonius, T. varleyorum, from Smiley Draw, an Eocene site in the Great Divide Basin in Sweetwater County.

“In Wyoming, you typically find Eocene-aged fossils in mudstone that erodes very easily,” Beard said. “This particular site is very unusual, if not unique, as it’s a layer of sandstone chock full of fossils. It’s rare to find Eocene fossils in sandstone, so Smiley Draw is exactly the opposite of what we normally expect.”

According to Beard, the discovery of a new species of Tetonius, based on its age and anatomy, is highly significant.

“It’s obviously a different species because it’s younger than the Tetonius and its younger descendant, Pseudotetonius, from the Bighorn Basin,” he said. “The fossils we found in Sweetwater County occur after that whole lineage has gone extinct in the Bighorn Basin.”

The study also describes fossils of two rarely found anaptomorphines, another group of prehistoric primates. Arapahovius gazini and Anemorhysis savage have never been found in the Great Divide Basin, and only a handful of other specimens have been found.

What’s significant is that the fossils of these three primates were found at the same site, which means they coexisted at the same time and place. That just raises further questions about life in the early Eocene.

“We’re finding animals that lived together at Smiley Draw that never ever cohabitated in the Bighorn Basin,” Beard said. “Tetonius, Arapahovius, and Anemorhysis don’t coexist there, but we find them together here.”

That’s why Beard said it’s “frustrating,” from a paleontological perspective, to compare Smiley Draw with the well-researched discoveries in the Bighorn Basin.

“We have an idea that animals evolve, they go extinct, and other animals replace them,” he said. “What we're finding at Smiley Draw is the animals that we think are going extinct at a certain time in the Bighorn Basin probably aren't going extinct elsewhere.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Gradual And Parallel"}]

Tetonius, Arapahovius, and Anemorhysis are all omomyids, a family of early tarsier-like primates known from several Eocene sites worldwide.

Beard said Wyoming’s omomyids are excellent examples of gradual evolution, which is what Charles Darwin proposed in his landmark 1859 book “On the Origin of Species.”

“There was a huge debate in paleontology about how evolution proceeded,” he said. “Did it occur gradually, the way that Charles Darwin predicted, or did it conform more to a punctuated equilibrium model, which was made famous by Stephen Jay Gould and his collaborators?”

The fossils of Tetonius and Pseudotetonius from the Bighorn Basin are a textbook example of gradual evolution. While they are distinctly different animals, Beard said the fossil record shows “no break in the single lineage chain from primitive to advanced.”

The key observation is the significant changes in the lower jaws of these primates, which Beard and his colleagues observed in fossils from the Bighorn Basin and the Great Basin Divide.

“These animals start out with fairly long lower jaws and lots of teeth in between their back teeth, the molars, and their front teeth, the incisors,” he said. “Through time, their lower jaws get compacted from front to back. They lose some teeth and develop a rodent-like incisor that sticks out of the front of their jaw, getting bigger and stouter over time.”

The purpose of this overly large incisor remains a mystery. Beard said that if you asked three different paleontologists, you’d get three different answers.

“In my opinion, they're using that big front incisor to gouge the bark of trees,” he said. “A lot of modern animals do this to stimulate sap or gum or resin to come out of the tree.”

Tree sap contains a lot of sugar. For a tiny primate with a high metabolism, that sap would be a valuable source of energy and nutrition.

Is this change in jaw and dental anatomy driven by a change in diet, or were the omomyids perfecting the tools needed for millennia of the same diet? That’s another debated question, but Beard said the latter is the most likely answer.  

These questions are significant to the new discoveries from Smiley Draw because they show the same thing happening – the shortening of the jaw, loss of teeth, and larger incisor – in Tetonius, but not exactly the same as in the Tetonius from the Bighorn Basin.

“The T. varleyorum from Smiley Draw has shorter haws and fewer teeth, so it’s similar but not exactly the same as what we see in the Bighorn Basin,” Beard said. “These are two different lineages evolving in parallel to achieve the same result.”

Parallel evolution is a well-documented phenomenon in nature. The legendary finches Darwin collected in the Galápagos Islands are an excellent example, as the different but related birds had beaks shaped to suit their diets on their isolated islands.

It’s more evidence that something strange was going on in Sweetwater County 55 million years ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hyperthermal Events"}]

Beard and his colleagues are studying all the mammal fossils recovered from Smiley Draw to see if they have the same story as the recently described omomyids. If they do, it would be further proof that different things were happening in different parts of Wyoming.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” he said. “We find animals living side-by-side at Smiley Draw that were already extinct or never lived side-by-side in the Bighorn Basin. They were only going extinct locally in the Bighorn Basin.”

Climate change might explain this discrepancy. The Eocene was a roller coaster of climate, which usually leads to extinction or adaptation for flora and fauna.

“We've got lots of iterations of what we call hyperthermal events in the Eocene, where the world warms up very rapidly and cools down again,” Beard said. “When the world warmed up, animals that were more tropically adapted spread northward, from Sweetwater County to Park County. When it cooled down, and they were no longer happy, the animals went back down. It's a very dynamic thing, and we're picking up a lot of these oscillations by looking at Smiley Draw.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Our Great Uncles"}]

This new study on prehistoric primates raised more questions than it answered. That’s not a bad thing, as it gives Beard and his colleagues more reasons to return to Smiley Draw.

Beard said his team was at the site collecting fossils in June. Some of those specimens are already being studied using a micro-CT scanner in North Carolina.

“I can tell you that we found additional fossils of early primates and primate-like creatures that are totally new just two months ago,” he said. “We’ll have a lot more to reveal from Smiley Draw.”

They’re not the only ones looking at overlooked spots in southern Wyoming. Paleontologists with the Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History at Duke University have been finding 

phenomenal Eocene fossils in Bridger Basin

, including the best specimens of the earliest known primate-like mammal in the fossil record, Plesiadapis.

“The Bridger Basin is the Madagascar of the Eocene,” curator Matthew Borths told Cowboy State Daily in December 2024. “We transition from a few primates on the landscape to a lot of diversity, hopping around in the rainforests of Wyoming.”

Borths’s dream was to find an omomyid in the Bridger Basin, as they’re humanity’s closest Eocene ancestor. There’s no shortage of omomyids in Smiley Draw, which is less than 200 miles northeast. 

Beard said Wyoming is “better than any other single place in the world, including Europe, Asia, and Africa” for paleontologists studying the origins and evolution of the earliest primates. That’s just from what’s been discovered, let alone what’s still out there, waiting to be found.

“Wyoming is incredibly fundamental to understanding the deep origins of humans,” he said. “None of these animals are the direct ancestors of humans. They're probably great-uncles and great-aunts, but that doesn't make them any less important. In fact, in my opinion, it probably makes them more important.”

That’ll keep Beard and his colleagues busy for decades. There’s a lot more to find, study, and understand – if that’s an excuse to get dirty in Wyoming, all the better.

“I love Wyoming, personally and scientifically,” Beard said. “We wish that we had a perfect fossil record, but we don’t. 

A slew of fossils from Earth's earliest primates have been discovered in southwestern Wyoming. Scientists say the tiny primate fossils, around the size of a mouse lemur, is evidence something strange was going on in Sweetwater County 55 million years ago.