Archives On The Air

Alfred Lawson was a professional baseball player but he made his name by proposing America's first airline. In the great depression he left aviation for a different passion.

Lawson founded the Direct Credits Society.

Mademoiselle was "the magazine for smart young women." It was founded in 1935 and was written for college-educated women.

Editor Betsy Talbot Blackwell "pioneered in advancing the cause of American fashions through Mademoiselle at a time when Paris was the world fashion center…"

Edith Clements received her PhD in Botany from University of Nebraska in 1904. Her husband Frederic was also a botanist. The Clements spent many years traveling the US together doing research and teaching.

Edith was an illustrator. She drew plants for her own books and other publications.

University of Wyoming had strict rules in the women's dorms. Records from an early Dean of Women named Luella Galliver give us a glimpse.

In 1925 8-year-old Robert Bloch saw "The Phantom of the Opera". He was terrified when Lon Chaney removed his mask. That terror also sparked Bloch's interest in horror and sci-fi.

By the 1930s Bloch began writing to sci-fi author H.P. Lovecraft.

Lucille Ball is best known for her role in the TV show "I Love Lucy". The show is the height of 1950s nostalgia.

In a 1976 interview with Journalist Beverly Linet, Ball dismissed nostalgia:

Lucile Ball: nostalgia is something you still yearn for and want to happen again is that what you mean?

Beverly Linet: Yeah and also that you say 'oh do you remember that marvelous time when I was 24 and we did that or that happened'

Minnie and Merris Barrow were early Wyoming settlers.

The Barrows moved to Laramie in 1877. Merris worked for the Laramie Boomerang Newspaper until 1886. Then the Barrows launched their own paper, Bill Barlow's Budget. Merris was editor and Minnie was bookkeeper.

Writer Ernest Tidyman said he was a newspaper reporter by age 14 and an alcoholic by age 15. He later adapted his own book into the 1971 film Shaft.

Dorothy Strain Kaufman grew up near Laramie, WY on her family's ranch. She wrote a memoir that recounts her life and hijinks as a young girl on the prairie in the 1930s.

The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. was the crime of the century. It was one of the first high profile cases to receive obsessive media attention.

Lambert Kreimer was a German Captain in World War I. He trained Red Cross and messenger dogs.

Martin Caidin was a sci-fi author and an aviation expert. He is best known for his 1972 novel Cyborg. It was the basis for the TV shows "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman."

In 1978 an undercover cop was killed by the sheriff in Rock Springs.

The oil boom of the 70s brought seedy characters to Rock Springs.

In 1968, John Turner of Cheyenne wanted to expand his restaurant Taco House. He partnered with James Woodson and Harold Holmes to outfit a camper into a mobile restaurant that could feed visitors at Cheyenne Frontier Days.

Most wedding invitations are sent by mail. But when Marvel Comics' star couple Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson got married in 1987, the invitations were sent via comic book.

Nowadays, we expect every airplane seat pocket to come with an in-flight magazine. But before 1934 airplane seat pockets were empty. Rose Benas is responsible for bringing the first in-flight magazines to the world.

In 1924, there were still mountain peaks in Wyoming that had not been climbed. Carl Blaurock from Denver took a party to climb the Wind River Range that same year.

Craig Chandler worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the 1970s. He was Director of Forest Fire & Atmospheric Research. He was known for his sense of humor around the office.

Lora Webb Nichols loved her camera.

Lora was born in 1883. She grew up on a ranch outside Encampment, Wyoming. By the late 1890s, the area was in a copper boom.

Chic and Virginia Sale were siblings. They were also both character actors in vaudeville and movies.

William Harlow Reed worked for the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming in the late 1800s.

Forrest Ackerman is the man who created the science fiction fan community. In 1953 he co-created the magazine "Famous Monsters of Filmland". It is still published today.

True crime author W.T. Brannon wrote objectively and honestly in the 60s and 70s. But magazines publishing true crime at the time mostly had sensationalist and exploitive stories. Many of the stories featured sex appeal and violence.

In 1937, pilot Albert Ball flew a plane into a storm to test a theory on airplane radio interference.

During World War II the U.S. government removed American citizens of Japanese descent from their communities and relocated them to internment camps across the country. One of these camps was Heart Mountain, near Cody, Wyoming.

Arthur Demaray was a National Park Service Administrator who worked as the liaison with Congress. He worked for the park service from 1917 to 1951.

Jean “Babe” London was a comedic film actress who acted in films with Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and others in the 20s and 30s.

Within the Toppan Rare Books Library is a book called Black Magic.

Verna Endicott grew up in Cheyenne in the 1910s and 20s. Her diaries describe downtown Cheyenne as she experienced it. 

"A journalist, an actor, a clown, a crime expert, and an elephant tamer" may sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but this is actually the resume of one notable person: Courtney Ryley Cooper.