Lyle's Story

Lyle, born in 1921, grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. His wife died young, leaving Lyle with a son of three. In the course of life as a single parent, which included remarriage, the Army, and ranching, Lyle never found the occasion to talk much with his only child. A man of few words, Lyle felt self-conscious about focusing attention on himself, but he soon discovered it wasn’t so much a history of himself as a dialogue about the people and events that characterized his life. This also provided an opportunity to talk about his wife who died prematurely, before his son had a chance to know her. In this case, there was no one else left who could tell these stories.

​

Our first days with Lyle involved talking and taping, then, with a better grasp of the overall story, we sat down at the big kitchen table and painstakingly went through boxes of pictures, letters, and diaries. Among those was a colorful piece of writing from the 1880s by Lyle’s Uncle Eb describing a spirited attempt to match Great Plains bison against bulls in the Mexican bullring.

​

The surprise for Lyle was the number of people who were eager to have a copy of his book. They found the memoir he did for his son a fascinating social history of a particular time and place.