Continuing the Crook County News Since 1884

Peek at the Past

100 Years Ago

The Times

April 16, 1919

Tony Bissacca was in from Beulah Friday. He is still gaining and feeling quite well after his wounds on the French front and subsequent seven months’ confinement in a hospital, during which time it was questionable whether or not his shrapnel-wounded arm could be saved. Tony was also gassed, and entering the hospital weighing 217 pounds, and losing to 160 pounds speaks something of the siege he had. He was in the veterinary corps, it is understood, and while working with the horses a shell burst among them, tipping Tony over and disarranging his mask for a sufficient time to take in almost enough of the deadly gas to send him west. He has nothing but words of high praise for the treatment of the wounded by Red Cross nurses, and it is surmised, that Tony attributes his getting by to the unceasing care of at least one of these brave girls from California, whom he expects to make a visit to Wyoming later on.

75 Years Ago

April 20, 1944

Lt. Vayle Oxford, son of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Oxford of Mona, has been awarded the Air Medal, Oak Leaf Cluster for meritorious achievement while participating in sustained aerial flight on transport missions in South Pacific combat areas where there was a possibility of enemy interception. On one trip to his home field from Guadalcanal, they encounter 120 Japanese planes, but he brought his plane and crew back without a scratch.

Cpl. Willis Stanton, who has been in Italy for some time, recently received the Croix de Guerre from the commander of the French forces in the Fifth army writes his mother, Mrs. Mary E. Stanton of Sundance. She adds that Governor Lester C. Hunt of Wyoming also sent him a letter of congratulations upon receiving this award.

50 Years Ago

April 17, 1969

A Sundance girl, Peggy Dillon, is among the 34 northeast Wyoming people in the Sheridan Elks lodge jurisdiction who have entered brochures in the Elks youth programs and who have been invited to an honors banquet Saturday.

Thieves broke into the Union State Bank, Upton, Sunday night or early Monday and escaped with approximately $20,000 in cash from the bank’s steel vault. Scott Werner, special agent-in-charge of the FBI’s Denver office, said the thieves pried off a back door to the bank and then used a cutting torch to cut through the bars guarding the vault and then cut into the vault itself. Werner said several leads are being investigated but he did not elaborate.

25 Years Ago

March 3, 1994

Delegates and alternate delegates to this year’s American Legion Boys State have been selected by Crook County Post No. 45 in Sundance. Named as delegates were Wes Duvall, Toby Gorsuch and Lee Wyatt. Alternate delegates are J.R. Moline and Matt Sackett. Roy Montgomery Post No. 80 selected their Boys Staters at their April meeting. They were: Brian Mills, Ryan Wood and alternate, Brian Nieman.