Louie, Ilene, and Tommie
by Bob Wakefield,1955
When I came back to Sheridan as a nine-year-old fourth grader in March, 1949,
I had little confidence. Louie befriended me when I needed a friend. My
fourth grade teacher at Central School, Miss Johnson, encouraged me, too. She
read aloud to class every day, leaning on her big, wooden desk. Somehow, I
knew she was from the country, too. The Wakefields lived on Water Street
beside the Little Goose, which was still covered with ice. When summer came,
I rode my second-hand bike around town and hung out with Louie and some other
new friends.
Louie was quiet. Said he was an altar boy at Holy Name. We
didn't say much. Just rode and rode. Then I met Ilene, and we hung out, too.
I rode my bike to her huge house on West Loucks and we sat around and read
books together. Early in the fall of fifth grade, I heard that the Sheridan
schools had called my mother to tell her I was in the top five children in
the district in I! Q. She said "top five per cent"? They said no, one, two,
three, four, five. I heard about it and said to myself, "Bob, if you are
smart, why don't you speak up?" By then, as a student in Mrs. Reddish's fifth
grade, I vowed to put myself in situations where I would be forced to speak
up. Then everything changed. I represented the fifth and sixth grades in the
district spelling contests. Began to sing for relatives and friends as my dad
played the piano for me. Came out of my shell. Then, just before I started
seventh grade as an eleven-year-old, Louie died. I heard it was from polio.
Afterward, I remember sitting on a window ledge at Central waiting for the
bus, wondering how that could happen. I did not talk to anyone about how I
felt.
For weeks I dreaded going to school. I was afraid I, too, would die,
just like Louie. After days of my staying home, my parents suggested that I
take a dime with me to call home from school. ! That gave me strength. Two
months later, I was selected to represent the seventh grade in Armistice Day
ceremonies in the Central School gymnasium. I gave half the speech, Kenneth
Moore the other half as a representative of the eighth grade. I remember how
I felt, kind of floating across the gym floor to face the entire seventh and
eighth grades gathered in the gym. What a victory over my fears. Then in
March, 1952, my friend, Ilene, died. Just up and died. One day I was at her
house reading books with her, the next day she was gone. All my old fears
returned. I got busy working as a busboy at the Sheridan Inn Dining Room,
working six days a week from 4:30 'til 11. Then Tommie and I became friends.
He was a laughing, joking, bandy rooster kind of kid whose gregarious,
outgoing personality made me feel good. We double dated on moonlight rides in
the backs of pickup trucks at Kendrick Park and his raucous laugh filled the
air. ! I started studying voice after singing for Barbara Barnes and hearing
her say "We've got to get you voice lessons." The summer of 1954 -- I was 14
-- my confidence led me to enter a talent contest. I made the finals at the
Orpheum Theater, going for a $50 first prize. August 21, 1954, I won the
talent contest. I remember standing on stage as Monte Blue came out to
present the check. He played Geronimo in "Apache," the movie premiering that
night. He asked me how old I was. I said "fourteen," and Tommie laughed his
raucous laugh out in the audience. I said to myself, "Tommie, I'm gonna get
you, buddy." Thirteen months later, Tommie was dead. He had lost a leg in a
freak accident on Main Street, then he was killed in another auto accident.
Guess who was asked to sign at Tommie's funeral. There I was, standing at the
foot of his casket at Champion's Funeral Home, his friends and relatives
gathered around.
The kid who couldn't utter ! a sound as a five-year-old
without crying stood there and sang expressively in honor of his buddy. Weeks
later, Tommie's uncle tried to give me money. We stood in front of the
Orpheum, which he managed. I said "I just can't take the money. He was my
friend." I have often asked myself why three of my friends died before my
sixteenth birthday, why I have been blessed with sixty years of a most
interesting life. I did not know until recently that all friendships give
meaning to one's life, even friendships long forgotten. In many ways, my
friends have lived through me. For Louie, I have given friendships to others
without expecting anything in return. For Ilene, I have allowed silences to
express worlds of meaning. For Tommie, I have simply been myself. What you
see is what you get. And now, at age sixty, I have discovered that all of my
friends are together, not in separate graves, but in me. Bob Wakefield.
Louis Raymos Lopez - October 28, 1938 - Sept. 14. 1951
Florence Ilene Belish - July 20, 1939 - March 26, 1952
Thomas Lyle Campbell - February 11, 1938 - September 9, 1955
When the Cold War came to Sheridan
by Bob Wakefield, 1955:
Many of us who survived the Forties and Fifties' Cold War against Communism
recall that we had to endure viewings of Atomic Bomb Castle Films in our
elementary schools. As a fifth-grader at Central School, I was among the
innocents given the opportunity to see first-hand. One day in 1949, we were
lined up and taken down the hall to the "movie room," where the windows were
covered by black bunting, plunging us into the eerie gloom of darkness at
midday. I recall sitting in my folding chair with my fellow students as the
Castle Films movie began. Tomb-like tones of the announcer filled the room as
the images of an atomic bomb explosion covered the screen. "The atomic bomb
explosion lasts long, almost a minute and a half," the voice said. I watched
with my friends as the unbelievable primeval horrifying chaos erupted before
our virginal eyes. I wondered where I was when the bomb exploded, w! hy I
hadn't heard it and felt its rush of blast-furnace air. Then the calm voice
explained how the bomb was designed, and the screen showed a two-story house
as if at dusk, and I thought of our house on Water Street with Little Goose
running beside it. Suddenly, there was a blinding light, followed by a pause,
then the house exploded toward the left, then back toward the right as if a
giant vacuum cleaner passed nearby. The Cold War Gargantua was loose, and its
immense appetite would affect my life and my friends' lives until the end.
Then the film showed horrifying scenes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One that
stuck in my mind was of the black, carbonized shadows of passersby on a
concrete bridge, the only remnant of their lives left behind. After school
that day, riding my bike home, I focused on my shadow as it flitted along
sidewalks, fences and walls. I thought, "That would be all that's left of me
if the atomic bomb goes o! ff right now." Later, when the Duck and Cover films
were shown to us innocents, with the announcer intoning, "When you see the
flash, get under your desks and cover your eyes," several of us shared the
joke, "when you see the flash, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye." It was
no joke, however, Cold War fears of sudden death from the atmosphere haunting
me and my friends, and it all began with the gathering of innocents in a
darkened movie room at Central School in Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1949.
note from Bob Sellers, 1954
Thanks for your sharing your memories and fears of that time in our lives.
As haunting as such things were for us here, think what the dissolution of
the USSR meant to those Soviets in their fifties and sixties and older. The
break up of the USSR and a new form of government and economy must have been
an unthinkable thing to endure for those who had lived under communism all
their adult lives.
The other scary thing about the early years of the atomic age were the
numbers of individuals who really thought we (the world) could survive such
things. I was in Alaska in the early sixties (1st Battle Group, 23rd
Infantry)...our job was to "deter" the Soviets when they came across the
Bering Strait. There were enough of us to "wave" as they went by, but we
couldn't have slowed them had they come in force.
Later, I was in Washington, D.C. and received notice of where I was to go in
case of a nuclear attack. I always thought it was foolish; how would one
have gotten there...it was miles outside the city?
Later still, I was in Viet Nam...as a civilian. We had elaborate plans to
evacuate...the plans filled 4-inch loose leaf binders. When the time
arrived, there wasn't sufficient warning to reacquaint everyone with the
PLAN...some drifted down the river on whatever would float...such wasn't in
the plan! I was in Saigon when some of the PLANS were developed, explained
and justified...by bureaucrats in suits and ties! Some of those planners
could not accept that their "product" wouldn't work. We abandoned people (VN
and Montagnard) and vast amounts of materiel and structures...things that
"volunteers" had to go back and destroy...skirting the NVN troops...exciting,
but not covered in the PLANS.
We lived through some strange times and had to think strange thoughts. The
world is a better place now...hopefully, we can now think better thoughts!
Will the Packers win on Sunday?
Wakefield rock
When Rock 'n Roll Came to Town
It happened gradually, the Rock 'n Roll revolution in Sheridan, probably
because television wasn't widely available in 1956-57, and KWYO was dominated
by network radio, Ma Perkins, The Shadow, Sky King, and the like. I was
probably one of the few teenagers who liked Bob And Ray, by the way. I knew
about radio 'cause I had my first show as a 16-year-old the summer of 1956, a
live 15-minute opus called "Teen Tunes" -- 6:15 p.m. Mondays. But it's not my
debut in radio that I write about. Rather, I recall the way the Rock 'n Roll
revolution reached Sheridan. It was not on the radio...but 45 rpm records.
Berdon's and Mossholder's and Totman's sold records and Elvis hit town like a
bomb. I remember going to a buddy's house to listen to Hound Dog and Don't Be
Cruel and just losing it. After dark, we drove our cars onto nearby hills to
pick up KOMA "Mighty Pretty in Oklahoma City" and catch Elvis and the other
revolut! ionaries. That's how I remember it, but I am now selectively senile
and perhaps in error. I remember when "Loving You" came to the Orpheum
Theatre in 1957. It was a sensation. We packed the house. The first time
Elvis showed up in character on screen, every guy in the theatre hooted and
hollered their contempt. It was quite an experience. Elvis would say a line
and the guys would make rude noises. It was a real bonding experience with my
fellow jerks. Then I was graduated and went back east to summer school in
Mass. and Rock 'n Roll faded in mind as I met The Weavers, played basketball
with the Modern Jazz Quartet, saw Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Williams, and
otherwise was corrupted by modern music. Then I went in the Army (on our
side), and ended up in Munich, finding out that Elvis was in Frankfurt at the
same time. Hey, life was good. I found out that his outfit trained at
Grafenwoehr, in central Germany, near the Czech border, a! t the same time as
my outfit. Hey. One day, at a wash rack outside the impact area, I took a
break from hosing down my deuce and a half truck and went to a two-hole
outhouse nearby. I sat down to read the handwriting on the wall and there in
front of my frosted eyes was carved in the wood: ELVIS PRESLEY 6 MO. TO GO. I
sat in a daze, the cold German breeze frosting my buns. The King had sat
where I sat. To this day, I can see the indentations from his knife in the
raw wood. He was just a G.I. like me, a short-timer anxious to get back to
his home town and his loved ones. Whatever else happened in his life, he was
a United States Army soldier, serving his country in the godforsaken
wilderness, a Veteran. God bless him and God bless America!
For those few of us who were not swept up by the rock 'n roll revolution,
there was great jazz to be heard in Sheridan on Bill Emery's show on KWYO,
"Willie's Waxworks". Bill was and is an authority on jazz, having worked in
the jazz recording industry in Los Angeles in the early 50's. He and Jim
Harrod are currently collaborating on a book on the history of the Pacific
Jazz reocrd label. For a brief period, jazz ascended as the music of choice
on college campuses, in film and TV scores and even in high schools, and
then came Elvis... Well, some of us still prefer the sounds of Duke
Elllington, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Billie Holliday.
For those of us who also loved classical music, Bob Wilson had his fine hour
of the great classics on KWYO. Bob is still active in the community. He
was wonderful about playing some of the modern composers that weren't his
cup of tea, for those of us who were his young pals, and I got him to do an
hour of Bach every few months.
Bill Emery and Bob Wilson have contributed so much to the cultural life of
Sheridan. They served as mentors for many of us who were a bit out of the
mainstream in our great little city.
Aretha Willis, 1955, wants to know: Do I remember correctly that
at our Senior Prom some kids from Casper were there and introduced us to rock
and roll? How did those kids from Casper get into our Prom to begin with?
Maybe I'm cracking up but that happened somewhere in my past. Any of you
remember? We had never seen dancing like that before
My Freshman year of high school was 1954-55. My Father wanted to go
to California to see some of his older children from his first
marriage & wanted me to go with him. So, a week or so before
Christmas vacation we went to CA. My Father had three older children
living in or near LA & we stayed with a daughter that had a son about
my age. Although we did not get along very well he did take me where
ever he went. There were a lot of teen hang outs, soda shops,
hamburger stands that were having price wars, lots of good burgers &
trimmings for a quarter & the ever present playing of rythmn & blues
& something they called Bebop on jukes everywhere. One in particular
was Fats Domino, I really liked his style of music, still do.
Needless to say by the time I got back to Wyoming I was a changed
person. I went to CA a skinny kid wearing rolled up jeans, high top
black tennis shoes & an unruly mop of hair. I would guess generally a
hick from the sticks. When I got off the bus in Sheridan after being
in CA for a little over a month my own friends didn't recognize me.
Dressed in pegged pants with the belt loops cut off & the the top of
the pants rolled over & worn low on the hips, a solid colored pastel
shirt buttoned to the neck, platform wing tip shoes, a duck tail hair
cut & a black leather jacket, I was real cool or at least I thought.
I had also learned to dance what they called the Bop.
Bob Wakefield,1955 added:
I remember when the word "Jazz" was a dirty word...sometime in the early
1950s. Whatever, I had jazz in my bones, having listened to Debussy's
"Golliwog's Cakewalk" on 78 rpm records at my Aunt Dess's farm in Johnstown,
Colorado, when I was five. BTW, I talked with Bill Emery in June of 1999 at
the Fullmer Library in Sheridan. He remembered my teenage visits to his
record department at Mossholders. Now retired, he said he was frequenting
garage sales to find records...which treasures he donates to the library's
collection. I sang forever in Bob Wilson's choir at the Presbyterian Church
on South Main. He is an amazing self-taught man. Listening to Rev. McClure's
stentorian sermons on Sunday mornings got me interested in classical
rhetoric, which I studied later at the University of Colorado under Wayne
Brockriede, who was my dissertation adviser. Et tu, Bubba.