It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming! I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom, for Tuesday, May 28th.

As many as 100 people showed up at Cheyenne National Cemetery on Monday morning for an advertised Memorial Day service in honor of fallen heroes and loved ones.

But the VA never showed up to host the service, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Pat Maio. And the families, some of them driving in from out of state, are fighting mad.

“I talked to people who came from 120 miles away in Nebraska, 60 miles away in Colorado, I spoke to people who came from up past Cody, Rawlins area, but they all came down at 11 o’clock, thinking that there was going to be some sort of observation for their loved ones. And there wasn’t.” 

Meanwhile, the throng of 100 who did show up at 11 a.m. came with flags and flowers to push into the ground next to their loved ones, with tears rolling off their cheeks.

William Washington, the cemetery’s manager for the VA, told Cowboy State Daily that the snafu could have been caused by a failure to update the VA website in time for the event.

A half-hour documentary featuring the unique story of the Heart Mountain Eagles — the football team for the World War II Japanese internment camp between Cody and Powell — premieres on the NFL Network on Memorial Day.

The documentary “9066: Fear, Football, and the Theft of Freedom” tells the story of the Eagles, a high-school football team of Japanese Americans incarcerated at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center during World War II, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi.

“The NFL found the story of the Heart Mountain Eagles, which was a team of high school students who were detained at the Heart Mountain … relocation center during World War Two, and they forged this team together. And they played other Wyoming high school football teams, and went undefeated in 1942.” 

The filmmakers enlisted a Cody production company, Cactus Productions, to assist with the documentary, which premiered on the NFL Network Monday. The film will also be available on all the NFL’s media channels.

https://youtu.be/Ad_YY1bHJ64

A Bracco Italiano dog who lives in Douglas won Best of Breed at the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. 

Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that “Rowan” received a giant medallion for the win, and bragging rights that the best Bracco Italiano dog in the world lives in Wyoming.

“People can actually go on YouTube and watch Rowan performing, doing his thing, strutting around the ring, and showing how great of a pointer dog he is. His owner said that she’s not sure what his future is. But she hopes that he can just become a regular dog now. And for his reward, he got himself a nice plate of cooked chicken.”

Apparently, black bears don’t mind Black Sabbath.

At their wit’s end with a black bear that refused for hours to budge from a tree in Golden, Colorado, wildlife agents tried hazing it by blasting the heavy metal band Black Sabbath’s legendary anthem “Iron Man” from airborne drone speakers.

But as Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports, the music didn’t faze the bear.

“They’d been waiting for hours, like, the bear would go up in a tree and fall asleep. And so the police department had a drone down there with speakers, and said, Well, let’s try blasting it with some music. So the CPW agent I talked to, she decided, hey, Iron Man by Black Sabbath, that’s a great song, that’ll scare the bear, that’ll get him to move. And she tried it and it didn’t work. Either the bear just didn’t care. Or maybe he even liked it.” 

A few hours later, the bear climbed down the tree and ambled off on its own, going exactly where Parks and Wildlife officials wanted it to go all along.

If the walls of Cowboy State Daily’s headquarters in Cheyenne could talk, they’d tell a tale that’s part history and all legend.

That’s because the restored historic brick building was once a horse barn belonging to C.B. Irwin, Cheyenne’s larger-than-life Wild West character and owner of the second most famous Wild West Show after Buffalo Bill Cody’s.

And Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean writes that the historic building once stabled two legendary horses – including the horse whose image appears on Wyoming’s license plates.

“ Irwin bought him because he knew what Steamboat was and what he could do with him. Well, Irwin was also very heavily involved in the racehorse industry. He even gave the horse trainer who eventually discovered and trained Seabiscuit his start, and I’m told by Annalise Wiederspahn, who actually owns the CB Irwin barn and restored it, that both of those horses from time to time passed through the CB Irwin barn here in town in Cheyenne.” 

The legendary horses that trailed through the C.B. Irwin Barn still inspire many Wyomingites to this day, and Steamboat is forever linked with the bucking bronc logo that appears on every state license plate.

And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming’s only statewide newspaper by hitting the subscribe button on cowboystatedaily.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel! I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.

Radio Stations

The following radio stations are airing Cowboy State Daily Radio on weekday mornings, afternoons and evenings. More radio stations will be added soon.

KYDT 103.1 FM – Sundance

KBFS 1450 AM — Sundance

KYCN 1340 AM / 92.7 FM — Wheatland

KZEW 101.7 FM — Wheatland

KANT 104.1 FM — Guernsey

KZQL 105.5 FM — Casper

KMXW 92.5 FM — Casper

KBDY 102.1 FM — Saratoga

KTGA 99.3 FM — Saratoga

KJAX 93.5 FM — Jackson

KZWY 106.3 FM — Sheridan

KROE 930 AM / 103.9 FM — Sheridan

KWYO 1410 AM / 106.9 FM  — Sheridan

KYOY 92.3 FM Hillsdale-Cheyenne / 106.9 FM Cheyenne

KRAE 1480 AM — Cheyenne 

KDLY 97.5 FM — Lander

KOVE 1330 AM — Lander

KZMQ 100.3/102.3 FM — Cody, Powell, Medicine Wheel, Greybull, Basin, Meeteetse

KKLX 96.1 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep, Greybull

KCGL 104.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin, Lovell, Clark, Red Lodge, MT

KTAG 97.9 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin

KCWB 92.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin

KVGL 105.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Basin, Ten Sleep

KODI 1400 AM / 96.7 FM — Cody, Powell, Lovell, Basin, Clark, Red Lodge

KWOR 1340 AM / 104.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep

KREO 93.5 FM — Sweetwater and Sublette Counties

KGOS 1490 AM — Goshen County

KERM 98.3 FM — Goshen County

Check with individual radio stations for airtime of the newscasts.

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) – The Massachusetts man attacked by a grizzly bear at Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park has been identified as a resident from in western Massachusetts.

35-year-old, Shayne Patrick Burke of South Hadley confirmed his identity with Western Mass News on Monday as he recovers from serious injuries from the attack.

[ Massachusetts man seriously injured after being attacked by a grizzly bear in Wyoming]

On Sunday, May 19, Teton Interagency Dispatch received a report of a visitor from Mass. who had been injured by a bear in the area of the Signal Mountain Summit Road.

When rescue crews arrived they provided emergency medical care to Burke. He was then air lifted to an awaiting ambulance where he was transported to the hospital.

“The patient is in stable condition and is expected to fully recover,” Grand Teton National Park officials noted after the attack happened.

In a Facebook post shared with Western Mass News, Burke said it was a female grizzly protecting her cub. He explained in his Facebook post how he loves and respects wildlife and that it “was a case of wrong place wrong time.”

Park officials are urging people to give bears plenty of space, carry bear spray and avoid leaving out food that might attract bears when hiking.

[READ MORE: Visitor Injured in Incident with Bear at Grand Teton National Park]

Copyright 2024. Western Mass News (WGGB/WSHM). All rights reserved.

A barefoot woman rushed down a ramp and splashed into a cold lake this month, along with 200 other swimmers bound in black wetsuits like seals.

She crossed from the baking 81-degree air into the 61-degree waters of the Sand Hollow Reservoir, eager to cover the 1.2.-mile swim, 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1 mile run of the St. George, Utah, half-Ironman race, a super triathlon.

At the finish line, April Lange, of Evanston, Wyoming, would go right back to being a mother of nine, a pastor’s wife, and an English professor. But for the moment, all she did was move through time and space.  

Until five minutes into the race, when a man drove his heel into her rib.

People had been jostling one another in the open waters of the frigid lake. It’s unnerving to be touched underwater, Lange told Cowboy State Daily days after the May 4 race, but most racers manage to keep their course.

This man appeared to be struggling. He thrashed sideways and upon brushing against Lange, he kicked her away, breaking her rib, she recounted.  

Her breath caught in her throat. She took in water and had to stop swimming; and treaded against the disturbed water.

Then she gathered herself and kept going.

Next came the bike race, which was a climb up Snow Canyon with a 3,200-foot elevation change. Every breath fired pain through Lange’s chest and back. She popped one, then two Ibuprofens and they did nothing, but she knew better than to take a third while racing.

Finishing the bike race and starting her 13.1-mile run was a relief, Lange said. She didn’t stop at any one of the eight stations along the half-marathon route; she just ran, scaling hills and rambling down them.

April Lange’s husband Jonathan Lange watched a virtual tracker of the race from his phone.

He noticed his wife was on track to beat her personal best time for the half-Ironman by about 10 minutes. She was killing that course, Jonathan recalled to Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.

“I had no idea she was fighting through all that pain,” he said.

By the time April crossed the finish line after 5 hours, 47 minutes and 39 seconds of searing pain, she was completely preoccupied with the agony: each breath pluming her lungs against her cracked bone.

She finished in sixth place out of 36 women in the 50-54-year-old age group and within the top third of all females; and nearly in the top third of all 1,580 finishers.

The race’s final leg, the half-marathon run, Lange covered in one hour, 55 minutes – a time difficult for most women to achieve, even if they haven’t been biking and swimming for three hours with a broken rib. 

“I just kept thinking, ‘Well, I’ll go to medical (tent) as soon as I’m done,’” Lange said. And she did. “They helped me there, but there’s not much you can do about a rib anyway.”

This wasn’t her first time finishing a race on a broken bone. Last autumn she finished a full (140.6-mile) Ironman in California by running the last 24 miles on a broken and displaced ankle – the excruciating culmination of months of hard training. A surgeon later installed a plate and four screws in her ankle.

What You Need For This Day

With her torso wrapped, Lange left the medical tent. Then she vented to her husband.  

He congratulated her for achieving a personal best time.

She told him how frustrated she felt at having to battle against her own body once again.

“I mean, it just kinda sounds weird, like I break an ankle, and then I break a rib,” she later told Cowboy State Daily.

Jonathan told his wife her rib wasn’t anything she could control, and that she went above and beyond by finishing the race at all.

April Lange chuckled when she recalled that conversation.

“That never enters my mind, like I’m not going to finish,” she said, adding that any athlete could find an excuse not to finish if she looked hard enough for one.

“Something’s always going to be bothering you,” she said.

Lange came home the next day and got right back into training. She wrapped around her aching torso when she went for runs.

She also told anyone who asked about the race that her seventh-born child Isaiah,18, placed fourth in the competitive, 18-24-year-old men’s category in the same race, qualifying for the New Zealand World Championship.

One of Lange’s prouder racing achievements has been watching six of her nine children join her on various courses.

Ten days after the race, she was still fighting back feelings of defeat. But as she became able to run greater lengths without her arm curled around her rib, her frustrations fell away.

“God gives you just what you need,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “Maybe it’s not always our (plan). Like we plan things, we have in mind how we want things to go but then – He gives us just what we need for that day.”

The Bleak Year

Lange’s doggedness might seem kooky to a non-athlete, she said. But she figured other runners would understand: putting one foot in front of the other drives one’s worries away. 

“You just need to get in a run. If anything else is going wrong or you’re having a bad day, you just go for a run,” said Lange.

That was her attitude in 2012, her bleak year.

It was the year of her first miscarriage (she’d lose another unborn baby soon after). She was finishing up her master’s degree. Her mother died that year.

Lange said she was also diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that makes it dangerous for her to take antidepressants.

“I was in a pit,” she said.

She’d been running since eighth grade and had always been a casual biker, but now she leaned into her training. She raced her first Olympic-distance triathlon in 2015, the year after her youngest son Noah was born. Her two oldest kids moved away in 2016, which prompted her to train even harder, she said.

“I was really sad about (them leaving),” she said. “And I also don’t want to live vicariously. You know, they need to go do their own things. I also had to do something I was looking forward to.”

Lange said she believes her training has been a gift – one of many cures God hides amid the ordinary. She opened up about her battle with depression, the sadness of her autoimmune condition diagnosis, and the freefall of grief when she lost her mother.

She said she wants to reveal rather than hide these despairing periods of her life, to show other people who are struggling that they’re not alone.

“You always think people have an easier time of it than they really do – you know?” said Lange. “(It helps) if you’re not going through things by yourself; (if you know) there are other people struggling.”

She’s now completed five full Ironman races, seven half Ironmans, 19 marathons, and 17 half marathons.

Holding The Sign

Jonathan Lange doesn’t get the appeal of this sport.

“I don’t understand it,” he said with a laugh, adding that his role in all this racing is to hold the sign that says “Go, Mom!” and to cheer on his wife and his kids.

But he’s seen his wife’s training pull her out of the pit, and he’s marveled at her perseverance, he said.

“She has an amazing capacity for pushing herself beyond the limits,” said Jonathan. “I’m just in awe of her ability, and very proud of her.”

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.