It was her 92nd birthday, so Leota Didier gave Dubois a present: a life-sized bronze statue of a cowboy. He now stares steadfastly off to the north from the front of the log-hewn Dennison Lodge, one of our favorite gathering places.
So typical: It’s Leota’s birthday, so she gives a big present to the town. The sculpture is an enlargement of the knight figure from a chess set that her former neighbor, artist John Finley, created in 1979, using Western-themed characters.
“I wanted to be sure to get this done while I still had time,” Leota said, in her deep, gruff voice. “I saw a statue like this in a town somewhere else, and I said: Dubois needs something like that.”
Like what? “Something that represents the spirit of the town.”
John is a diffident fellow, but also an old friend. Somehow she persuaded him to undertake the arduous task of recreating a chess piece as a monument.
Leota has already given much to her hometown. In fact, she was important to the historic Dennison Lodge itself, throwing herself into the effort to bring it to town when it was threatened with demolition in the 1990s. Out in the wilderness where she used to ride, it had been part of a dude ranch where notables such as Clark Gable and Carole Lombard once stayed.
Like so many others devoted to Dubois, Leota is a transplant. She was born in Iowa, and first came to town in 1970 when her husband Bernard, a Presbyterian minister, diverted them here from Denver during a vacation.
“Bernard was a funny man,” she told me recently. “He would get these urges. We came to Wyoming and he fell in love with it.”
She had thought they would be traveling on to California, but Bernard changed his plan. He had read somewhere that dilapidated ranches were going for marvelous prices in Wyoming. They came here instead, and a week later
they owned a ranch.
For many years, they ran the Lazy L&B Ranch (the “L” is for Leota) just down the East Fork valley from the Finleys. Two owners later, it’s still a very successful guest ranch.
(I owe my presence in Dubois to Leota, as I love to remind her. We stayed at the Lazy L&B nearly 30 years ago, and never stopped coming back to this area. I was delighted to see her still here when we finally moved to town.)
When Bernard passed away, Leota sold the ranch. As she aged, she slowly gave up her beloved horseback riding and moved to town. You see her often, always elegantly dressed and wearing one of her signature cowboy hats, whether at the rodeo, at church, or checking guests in at the weekly square dance in town (which devotes its earnings to charity).
It seemed like the whole town had turned out at the Dennison yesterday, to celebrate with Leota and join in as Reverend Melinda Bobo gave a blessing.
I was late for the ceremony. “What did you bless?” I asked Melinda.
“The statue,” she said. “The town. The community.”
One of its great blessings sat on a folding chair near the door, evidently enjoying her birthday celebration, and wearing her signature smile.
© Lois Wingerson, 2016
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They could, and they tried.
Is it any wonder that one float in last year’s July 4 parade bore the title “Dubois Rising”? The metaphor was obvious–rising from the ashes of the 
Matt Strauss, Guardian’s program director for flight and ground emergency services in Fremont County (where many calls require airlifting), said that services will be much easier and quicker when ambulance calls no longer bring volunteers away from home. Paid staff on call from a permanent base will be answering emergencies from the center of town.
It’s that time again. The cyclists begin laboring up the hill along the highway in front of our house. For those pedaling westward, this slope is the first real hint of the challenge that faces them in the Rockies.
Why do they go through this ordeal? Some of them are cycling for a cause: a cure for cancer, or houses for the homeless. Others are doing it for the challenge.
Last summer, someone installed this bike repair station in the center of town, in the parking lot in front of the Opportunity Shop.
I’m a bit worried about Becki, who is not only my yoga instructor but a dear friend from way back. I shouldn’t be.
She raised funds for the trip by selling her art, hand-appliqued T-shirts, and block-printed cards. (Who knew she is also an artist?)
Back briefly in Brooklyn for a business matter, I took the chance to attend the Memorial Day service in our local park. It was a pleasant surprise.
Sure enough, on Monday there seemed to be about as many people attending Memorial Day services in little Dubois (population less than 1,000) as in our part of Brooklyn (population about 44,000).
“It is such a wonderfully powerful thing to believe in,” he added. “It was a strong enough belief for me to want to dedicate my life protecting it. Unfortunately, never did I see it until last weekend.”
Mary Ellen Honsaker creates beautiful paintings of wildlife. She also feeds the hungry, helps the homeless, rescues abandoned animals, and sometimes delivers sermons.
John was the one who helped the Fremont County Library System with another problem: The libraries were upgrading their computers. Their IT director didn’t want to simply put the old ones in the landfill, but she couldn’t just give them away loaded with the Windows operating system, either. That would violate the license agreement.
In the first of the two half-day classes, Mary Ellen said, John taught his students how computers work and how to care for them. They took the machines apart and put them back together. In the next class he taught them how to install the new Linux operating system, Ubuntu. She says it’s almost like the Windows she was familiar with, and works well.
Well, that headline isn’t entirely true. Unlike some of the paintings on display, the three-man art show held last Sunday evening at a local church was not exactly invitation-only.
Antolik told me he was up on Union Pass quietly working beside this pond full of lily pads when the moose suddenly emerged with her calf.
One of his bows was on display last Sunday, along with several of his masterful paintings of native crafts. As part of learning to paint them, as you can see from the beaded bag in this picture, he also recreates them.
Recently, I had the unforgettable opportunity to help study some of the bighorn sheep and mule deer in the Dubois area, up close. It was an incredible experience!
The crew used a helicopter and net gun to catch the sheep. Once the sheep were caught in the net, two muggers (yes, that is what they are called!) jumped from the helicopter to blindfold and hobble the sheep. They also wrapped them in a sturdy tarp for transport to the exam area.
Most of the sheep were surprisingly calm throughout the process, especially considering that no tranquilizer was used.
The collars on the ewes allow the biologists to track them and their lambs throughout the year and to monitor their health as well as their migration patterns.
This avid outdoorsman has the best of both worlds. He spends his free time fishing, hiking, and hunting in Wyoming, in the Wind River Valley, but spends some of his working hours as a consultant to the Fish and Game Department for a different state–South Dakota.
“Dubois is one of those places,” as he put it, “where a consultant has all the quality access and communication links to the world through the Web needed to successfully compete in today’s markets, while providing an outstanding life space which stimulates those invaluable creative talents needed to excel in this line of work.”