Long-time musician Russ Garner dies at 82

(Editor's Note:  Russ Garner, a long-time resident of Dawes County, passed away on June 22, 2014.  Garner was well-known throughout the region, remembered best for his work as a country and western singer.  Our friend Con Marshall was kind enough to pass along a story he did about Russ Garner back in 2009, which we share with you below.)

By CON MARSHALL

Russ Garner

Russ Garner says he was just three years old when he knew what he wanted to do in life. He wanted to be a country and western singer. The inspiration came after he’d listened to records played on his grandparents’ Victrola and to Grand Old Opry late at night on their radio.

More than 70 years later, Garner is still living that dream, much to the enjoyment of scores of admirers throughout the region. For generations, anyone who liked country and western music has wanted to hear Garner’s rich bass voice and his expert guitar strumming.

“I’ve always known what I’ve wanted to do and have enjoyed every minute of it,” said Garner during an interview in February. “As long as I can do it and do it right, I plan to keep doing it. I don’t have any plans to retire.”

Long-time fans, some of whom have listened to him for more than 50 years, say there’s been no decline in Garner’s performances, even though he was forced to  take a couple of breaks from his career.

“He has a smooth, rich sound. His voice is as good as ever,” said Cleone Hoyda of Crawford, who has frequently played the keyboard and provided vocal support when Garner performed. “Music just flows out of him.

“He’s a hometown boy who made good. He’s very professional. He won’t sing a song until he gets it to perfection. He’s put Crawford on the map as far as music is concerned and it’s never gone to his head. He’s just Russ,” Hoyda continued.

Garner was born on Feb. 20, 1932 in Alliance while his parents, Russ and Minnie, were living in a dugout on Trunk Butte Creek, about six miles southeast of Whitney. When he was 8, his mother gave him a setting hen. After the chicks were grown, he sold them and bought his first guitar and an instruction book for $10.

Sleuthing to find the homes of "lost treasures"

 It doesn't take long for anyone who has dabbled in family history, not just those who call themselves genealogists, to discover "brick walls."  When no matter what you do, you're unable to solve a particular problem -- whether it's determining a relationship, a date/place of death, or any of a long line of challenges.  You're stumped, and that's all there is to it.  Welcome to the "Brick Wall."

About four years ago, we wrote a story about Chadron natives Skip and Bev (Urwin) Umshler, shown here above.   It touched upon Skip's remarkable personal achievements after what some might call a "mis-spent youth" that lingered into the early years of their marriage.  To be sure, those achievements belong to both Skip and Bev -- but we tended to focus a bit on Skip.  His "Husker Room" alone was pretty amazing.  Anyone who's cheered for the Nebraska Cornhuskers over the years can't help but be blown away by Nebraska memorabilia in the upstairs of the Umshler home just outside of Mount Vernon, Missouri. We also made note of Skip's venture into poetry.

And, yes, we also mentioned Skip's strategic diversion into the world of metal detecting.  Now comes "the rest of that story...."

Not surprisingly, the enormous inventory of coins, rings, pins, and other artifacts Skip uncovered with his detector while traversing his territory as a traveling salesman is like a vault of  memories.  Each item has a story.

Skip was the collector of these items.  And now computer-savvy spouse Bev has taken the lead in finding some of the stories that go with them.  More specifically, she and Skip are trying to find happy endings for some of the many personal articles that he's found since first taking up metal detecting more than 40 years ago.  And they've met with considerable success.

One of the more recent "happy endings" was well documented by a writer for the Villisca (Iowa) Review named Linda Artlip Weinstein, a 1966 graduate of Villisca High School, who has kindly shared her report with us.  It describes the story of fellow graduate John Fengel, who lost his class ring eons ago, and most likely had given up hope of ever seeing it again.  But -- some 50 years after Fengel lost the ring -- Bev and Skip Umshler have helped tear down that brick wall, find the ring, and solve the mystery of what happened to John Fengel's ring.

Read:  WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHN FENGEL'S RING?

"Billy the Bear" Iaeger -- a Chadron legend

by Larry Miller

Louis John "Fred" Iaeger
"Billy the Bear"

Cow puncher, horse trader, riverboat captain, sea-going sailor and one-time secretary and friend to the legendary Buffalo Bill Cody.   Add to that Postmaster and Police Judge, and you’ve hit a few of the high points in the life of  “Billy the Bear” Iaeger, one of Chadron’s most famous citizens of yesteryear.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1856, Louis John Frederick Iaeger would become one of the “prosperous and prominent citizens of Dawes county, Nebraska.” Young Iaeger was just five years old after his father died in an accident; then his mother died the following year.  So, “at the tender age of six was sent, via Central America, to California, where he was raised by his father’s brother in Yuma, California….”

The Iaeger story is chronicled within a book of biographies entitled Reminiscence and Biography of Western Nebraska.  It is utterly fascinating.  Stories told between the covers of this publication – and other similar biographical books from that era – are likely to generate a bit of skepticism among many readers.  As with many of today’s paid newspaper obituaries, those old biographies were sometimes penned by a family member.  It was not uncommon for subjects to submit their own manuscript, which was “smoothed over” by an editor.

A young "Billy the Bear" Iaeger

Nonetheless, those publications often have become valuable, particularly if there are few or no other documents or “paper trails” left by the subject.

Fortunately, in Iaeger’s instance, there are numerous other sources that share tidbits of his many pursuits – and they all piece together a story about a fellow who truly  had a remarkable life.  From making a “wagon full of money”  to becoming penniless, his was a life filled with adventure – and many challenges.

He gained theatrical experience on stage at the San Francisco Opera House in the 1870's, which led to an engagement with the Buffalo Bill Combination Company as it toured California.  He portrayed a bear in the play "Red Right Hand."  That successful tour also branded Iaeger with a new nickname:  Billy the Bear.

After transitioning to ranching, Iaeger found himself hop-scotching to several locations in the heartland -- including Wyoming.  It was as the result of  the horrendous Wyoming Blizzard  of 1883 that he lost his feet and fingers.  After recuperating at the hospital in Laramie – and then outfitted with artificial limbs – Iaeger settled in Chadron. Again, his list of accomplishments began to grow, despite his “infirmities.”  

Iaeger (left) with Sheriff James Dahlman

For all of his many endeavors, perhaps Iaeger is best remembered for helping organize the famous Chadron to Chicago Cowboy Race  in 1893. But we think his earlier dramatic experience may have led to an association with one of the earliest film dramas about the legendary Wild Bill Hickok.  It was filmed near Chadron.  While we've not yet seen documentation that supports that contention, we do know that his son, Richard, played a role in the early film.  The story of “Billy the Bear” Iaeger and his many diverse experiences is, indeed, mesmerizing. 

While we don't pretend to have great knowledge of the Iaeger family genealogy, we believe a few folks around Chadron will remember long-time educator and one-time county sheriff, Jim Butler.  Our sources indicate that Butler married Madeline Iaeger -- a 1935 graduate of CHS who was Billy the Bear's granddaughter -- before the onset of World War II.  She died of pneumonia in 1943.   

Another Chadron family -- the Kindigs -- also had ties to the Iager's.  Karen (Kindig) Schlais tells us that her mother's sister, Elizabeth Larsen, was married to Richard Iaeger.  He was the younger son of "Billy the Bear."

If you want to learn more about Louis J. F. Iaeger, a good place to start is Reminiscence and Biography of Western Nebraska, published in 1909 by the Alden Publishing Company of Chicago.

Long-time "Old School" educator stirs memories

by Larry Miller

It was 1927, and Gutzon Borglum had just started his famous Mount Rushmore carvings of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.  Henry Ford unveiled his new Model A motor car to replace the old Model T, while Charles Lindbergh – the Lone Eagle – was airborne, making the first non-stop, solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane.

Young "Schoolmarm" Cleo Bigelow

It was also the year that a young lady out of Sioux County Nebraska took over as Principal of the East Ward School in Chadron.

Cleo Bigelow was a 35-year-old teacher with 13 years of elementary classroom teaching, and she was no stranger to small town rural lifestyle that dominates western Nebraska.  Her teaching would eventually touch the lives of thousands of west Nebraska schoolchildren, and she would become a recognized leader in several education and professional organizations.

Born in 1892 on a ranch northwest of Harrison, Cleo was the fifth child of Eugene and Elizabeth Bigelow.  As was fairly common, the ranch family bought a small house in town so it would be more convenient for the kids to go to school.   When Cleo finished her Junior year, she had to go to  Alliance to complete her high school education, since the school at Harrison had not yet added a Senior year.  Fortunately, her older sister Mabel was teaching in Alliance, and young Cleo lived with her.

Years later, Cleo’s niece, Lois Putnam, wrote that after Cleo finished high school, she “…returned to the ranch and planned to stay there to help her father.  Her plans were changed when a newly organized school district just west of the ranch needed a teacher.  She told them she wasn’t qualified, but the board went to town and got permission from the County Superintendent for her to teach their school. “

District 46, the “Dunn School” as it was known, wasn’t far from the Wyoming border, and that’s where Cleo taught in 1915-1916, moving to the Davis School, District 85, the following year, and then to the Lacy School, District 34,  just a mile west of the Bigelow ranch.  She was there for five years.

By 1922, older sister Mabel Davis and her husband, Neal, were living in Chadron, and Cleo enrolled in summer school at Chadron Normal with plans to earn a teaching certificate and return to Sioux County to teach.  But she was offered a teaching job at the West Ward elementary school in Chadron, and she accepted it. 

It was in 1924 that Cleo Bigelow began her career with the Chadron Public Schools -- the same year that a studious-looking young lad named James Myers graduated from Chadron High.  The bespectacled Myers went on to get a diploma from the Chadron Normal School in 1928 and immediately went to work teaching at Chadron High School.  Both Bigelow and Myers were destined to have long tenures within the Chadron school system.

Cleo was at West Ward for four years before moving to East Ward School, which was housed with the Junior and Senior High School programs in the three-story brick building at 6^th and Ann Street.  In addition to teaching Kindergarten, Bigelow served as Principal.  In subsequent years, she would teach sixth grade and then fourth grade.

Cleo Bigelow -- much as we remember her

Even with administrative responsibilities as principal, teaching was never a lucrative career.  After 16 years, 47-year-old Cleo Bigelow’s annual income was shy of $1,300 a year.

It was as fourth grade teacher that this writer remembers Cleo Bigelow.  I was in the third grade, and I still recall hoping that Miss Bigelow might retire before I reached fourth grade.  Not that there was necessarily anything wrong with Miss Bigelow, it was just that she was…….well, strict.  In those years, hard as it may be to comprehend these days, school principals were to be respected – and for many of us – feared.  To be sure, she was “old school.”

Many of us who tried to keep below the radar and  avoid being noticed by Miss Bigelow remember the "Friday morning Sings" in the old auditorium.  There, waving her ruler as a baton, she would lead us all in a bit of culture as we raised our voices to sing songs like "Down in the Valley, " "Stodola-Pump," and a few patriotic numbers like "Anchors Aweigh!"

One East Warder from that era later perceived that elementary principal Cleo Bigelow and high school principal Jim Myers seemed to share the same philosophy: “spare the rod and spoil the child!”  Another student recalls how Miss Bigelow would tote her ruler and occasionally snap it across the hands or fingers of idle students she thought weren’t paying attention.

Such was the experience of Jack Castek, who recalls one day in 1952,  "While we were reading a book -- the student reading out loud was going very slowly -- so I started reading ahead.  Miss Bigelow came alongside me, noticed that I was not following along, and she whacked me alongside the head with a ruler."  Castek remembered Miss Bigelow as "fair but hard-nosed."

One CHS 1960 graduate – an East Ward alum whose father was on the school board – says he remembers hearing that Cleo Bigelow was one of Superintendent H. A. Schroeder’s favorite teachers. “She had a lot of ideas that she would share with Heine Schroeder, who was inclined to adopt them.  And Cleo would never claim credit for them.”  He surmised that she was a pretty smart cookie.

H.A. Schroeder

Another East Ward student whose father also was on the school board back in those days recalls getting whopped alongside the head with a ruler, resulting in a pair of broken glasses.  Although Miss Bigelow ended up apologizing in front of the class, "My dad was as mad as a hornet," she remembers.

Superintendent Schroeder's daughter, Susan Schroeder Lundborg, doesn't remember Miss Bigelow as necessarily being one of her father's favorites, but she does recall that her mother, Opal, was good friends with Bigelow.  "Lorraine (Shaw) and I were best friends, talked a lot to each other, sometimes in class.  Miss Bigelow separated us...those multiplication tables were taught by Miss Bigelow and stayed with me through the years." Lorraine (Shaw) MacDonald remembered Bigelow as being "a very firm teacher who was much harder on the students who needed more assistance."

One might believe she was challenging them to do better.

Amazingly, this writer and many other youngsters who were students of Cleo Bigelow’s, managed to not only survive fourth grade at East Ward, but actually thrive in succeeding years. She had done her job, but it certainly seemed she wasn’t trying to win any popularity contest with her students.  She did, however, continue to maintain a strong relationship with her family and her Sioux County roots.

 “Cleo returned to Harrison each summer to be with her parents, always spending one day a week at the ranch of her brother, Lee, cleaning house and getting a meal for the ‘boys,’ Lee and his long-time hired man, Adrian Smith.  She was always available to cook for the branding and threshing crews,” wrote Lois Putnam many years later.

“After the passing of her parents, she spent summer and winter vacations on the ranch with Lee and Adrian and became their “live-in” housekeeper after her retirement and until Lee’s death in 1965.  After his death Cleo returned to Chadron and her apartment in her sister’s home.”

Her role changed significantly in May 1959, when she retired from teaching.  She was 67 years old and had spent nearly two-thirds of her life as a teacher.

Celebrating 90 Years

School kids, of course, usually see their teachers in the sole capacity of teacher.  Heaven forbid teachers should have a life outside the classroom!

Cleo Bigelow reportedly enjoyed traveling and was involved with Friends of the Library and Republican Women, among others.   And for Cleo, her roots in Sioux County remained strong and durable.

Active in several professional and community organizations, she was a charter member of the Chadron Business and Professional Women and a life member of the Nebraska Congress of Parents and Teachers.  While she was active in the Methodist Church and the Women’s Society, it was with the Woodbine Rebekah Lodge of Harrison that kept Cleo active for more than 70 years.  She held many offices in the lodge and in 1953 she was honored with the Rebekah Degree of Chivalry – the same honor once afforded her mother, Elizabeth Bigelow.

In September 1982, Cleo Bigelow celebrated her 90th birthday.   She would live another six years, but she endured growing difficulties with glaucoma and lost her vision.  Long-time neighbors Bob and Therese Hinman took Cleo into their home and cared for her in the final few years of her life.  She died in their Lake Street home on June 9, 1988.  She was 95 years old.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Our thanks to Sue Willey of Harrison, NE and Mary Willnerd of Spearfish, SD for their assistance with this story)

Old school photos arrive with Spring!

by Larry Miller

It's always a treat when an unexpected treasure falls in to your lap!  And that was our reaction this week when former Chadron resident Doug Wilson sent us a few old school pictures from Chadron Prep and East Ward Elementary.

Below is one of the photos, and it's a gem.  We're working to add the names of the youngsters who are "Unidentified" in the picture, which captured the East Ward Third Graders of 1945-46.

"The teacher was Mrs. Smith," wrote Wilson, who now lives in Lincoln.

"I thought she was a great person -- as did the majority of other students in her class."

We've posted a higher resolution version of this photo -- and others -- in our DCJ School Photo Gallery.  That version also identifies most of the dapperly-dressed youngsters in this post World War II gem.

As one afflicted -- or blessed -- with left-handedness, I was also intrigued by this classroom flashback offered by Doug Wilson.

"During third grade, we learned to write cursively rather than only print.  This involved another teacher, Miss Douglas, who taught cursive writing using the Palmer Method of penmanship.  Across the front of the room above the blackboard were a series of large cardboard strips bearing the letters of the alphabet -- both small and capital letters -- in the form we were to learn how to perform."

"Although Miss Douglas did not require "lefties" to write with their right hands, she did require that they not use the "curled" or "write from above" technique that many left-handed people use."

"While I was right-handed," Wilson reminisced, "I had my hand slapped with a ruler several times because I did not write with my wrist flat on the piece of paper.  I had, and still have, the habit of writing with the side of my hand resting on the paper.  My current handwriting is a mix of print and cursive -- a style that has served me well for almost 70 years."

Chadron High students from the early '60s may remember Wilson's wife, Lois Puckett, who taught Home Economics.

Girls basketball prohibited in Nebraska

Shown here are members of the 1927 Chadron High School girls' basketball team as they were featured in the CHS "Milestone" yearbook of 1928.  The caption noted that their final season "…was very successful, inasmuch as this was the last time a girls' basketball team would represent the C.H.S. at any contest…in January 1927 the state board of athletics made the ruling that after the close of the present season, girls' basketball would be prohibited within Nebraska."  These girls, who were not identified, made one long trip into "the wilds of Wyoming and were defeated in three out of four successive games."  Nonetheless, this team was a contender for Western Nebraska Championship, which they lost to Harrison.

Although it took more than half a century, girls basketball came back to the Cornhusker State -- with a vengeance!  And during the 2013-14 season two Dawes County girls' teams made it to Lincoln for the state tournament.  Although the Chadron High Lady Cardinals lost to the Pierce girls, they could take solace in the fact that Pierce went on to win the state championship for the second year in a row.  And the girls from Crawford High School also made the trip to Lincoln, losing to Giltner 58-39.  By all accounts, the Lady Rams may back in contention again next year, since they'll lose only one of their players.

This Is What It Looks Like at the Center of America

Daughter Jill Miller first alerted us last December about a wonderful collection of online photographs of the American heartland.  New York-based photographer Andrew Moore did a splendid job of capturing these images for an exhibit dubbed "Dirt Meridian," which opened last month (January 2014) at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City.  We viewed the photos, appreciated them a bit, then promptly forgot about them -- until friend Mike Smith reminded us again this week, not only of the photos, but about the story that accompanied them online.

The Murray House in Sheridan County, Nebraska (2013) - New York Times Magazine

The collection contains numerous images that were taken in the area along the 100th Meridian in Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.  Most were captured west of the meridian, and all of them are truly remarkable.  A portion of photographs included in the exhibit can be found at this link to the New York Times Magazine, which begins with a photo of an 1890 Sheridan County homestead.  And there are plenty of Dawes County shots, too.

We've also linked to the story that accompanied the photos.  It was written by Inara Verzemnieks of Iowa City, Iowa, and is entitled "Life Along the 100th Meridian."  

And thanks Jill and Mike for the heads up on the photos!