Posted on 12/01/2002 7:36:07 AM PST by Theodore R.
Larry K. Brown writes stories about the Old West and Wyoming
By Becky Orr Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE – Larry K. Brown is about as close as you can get to a time traveler.
And while he doesn’t live in the past, Brown spends a lot of time there. During his visits, he has met some fascinating people.
Brown is an author and historian who writes about Wyoming and the Old West.
His exhaustive research has introduced him to the likes of Cheyenne suffragette and historian Grace Hebard, author Owen Wister, justice of the peace Esther Hobart Morris and William Hardin, Wyoming’s first black legislator.
They and others he writes about are part of the fabric of Wyoming’s legacy.
Brown is a born storyteller. He has found the souls of these people and several others from Wyoming’s past in his new book called “Coyotes and Canaries: Characters Who Made the West Wild ... and Wonderful!”
His down-to-earth writing style breathes life into those he writes about. While they may have lived more than a century ago, his words make them alive and vivid and not just musty puffs of memory.
“When you spend as much time as I do with them, you think of them as friends or acquaintances,” he said.
He looks for the unusual in each story. “I love a good story,” he said recently at the home he shares with his wife, Florence, in northwest Cheyenne.
Much of his research for his books and articles is done at the Wyoming State Archives and the Wyoming State Museum. He has struck gold at both places, unearthing interesting tidbits about the state’s past.
At the archives, for example, he has come across collections that include the writings and belongings of those in his books.
Brown started writing about Wyoming’s history in 1993 and has since published five books.
Many of his articles about western characters have been published in such magazines as American Cowboy, True West and Old West.
One of those characters who appears in his most recent book is Dr. Lillian Heath, the state’s first woman doctor. He credits her with the book’s title.
While studying her papers, he came across one that she had called “favorite things.” Opposite the title of favorite musicians, she listed coyotes and canaries.
Brown writes in a straightforward way. “I write the way most people read,” he said.
His readers seem to appreciate his style.
Nancy Curtis is primary editor and publisher of High Plains Press in Glendo, which publishes his books.
“Larry has a remarkable ability to find subjects people are fascinated with and that haven’t been written about before,” she said. “He’s well-known for his research ability.”
Readers specifically ask for his books by his name, Curtis said.
Brown has always possessed good writing skills.
“I grew up in the newspaper business,” Brown said. “I grew up sniffing stories. I’ve always been around storytellers. I just love a good story.”
His parents owned a newspaper in the Sandhills region of Nebraska.
His grandfather, aunts and uncles were all in the newspaper business. Brown’s great-grandfather was a writer during the Civil War.
Brown earned his journalism degree from the University of Nebraska in 1960 and covered sports for the Lincoln, Neb., newspaper. He then spent 20 years in the U.S. Air Force as an information/public affairs officer. The career took him and his family across the world.
Brown was responsible for briefing journalists and photographers and getting them in and out of battle zones during his tour in Vietnam.
While in the military, he received a master’s degree from Boston University in 1970.
After he retired from the military, he was director of public relations and communications for Sun Exploration and Production Company.
In 1986, he joined the American Heart Association’s national office in Dallas. Two years later, he moved to Cheyenne as executive director of the state’s American Heart Association chapter.
Brown fell in love with Wyoming and its people.
“People in the high plains don’t have a lot to say. But what they say, you understand,” he said.
He suffered a heart attack in 1993. But because he had taken good care of himself, damage from the heart attack was not permanent.
The heart attack gave him time to reassess his life. What he decided was this: “Life’s too short, eat dessert first.”
And that meant pursuing what he had a passion to do.
He left the AHA in 1993 when he was 56 to research and write about the West and its colorful characters. His first book, “Hog Ranches: Liquor, Lust and Lies Under Sagebrush Skies” was published in 1995.
The book was inspired by a great-uncle who led an expedition in 1886 for Gen. George Crook in the West. The relative was killed during the expedition.
His uncle spent time in Cheyenne before his death. “He wound up capturing the second man who was executed in the Wyoming territory,” he said.
“Coyotes and Canaries” is a compilation of Brown’s articles published earlier in newspapers and magazines.
“I’m interested in unusual stories. I’m interested in the little nuggets that you find,” he said.
The book includes a chapter about the late “soiled dove” Dell Burke, a madam who ran a brothel in Lusk. Burke had a strong business sense and was known throughout Wyoming.
His volunteer work at the state archives inspired him to write about Grace Hebard, an early day suffragette who was truly a Renaissance woman. She was the first woman lawyer admitted to the Wyoming Bar but is best known for her map-making abilities and her work as a state historian and writer.
Brown also writes about Cattle Kate, whose real named was Ellen Watson.
He came across a pair of the woman’s moccasins in a collection at the state museum. Cattle Kate bought the moccasins on July 20, 1899, at a Shoshone Indian camp on the banks of the Sweetwater River.
She died that same day. Six cattlemen hanged Watson and a man named Jim Averell for alleged cattle rustling. The cattlemen later were acquitted.
Brown said he believes in her innocence. She had three things that were unpopular for a woman to have back then, he said. She was an outspoken woman at a time when that was frowned upon, she was homesteading grassland that one of the cattlemen wanted, and there was water on the land.
Watson kicked off the moccasins as she struggled from the end of the rope. The moccasins were found on the grass below her.
“They’re in wonderful condition,” he said.
Brown’s book also includes a story about a pair of snappy-looking oxfords now at a museum in Rawlins.
The oxfords were made from the skin of convicted murderer Big Nose George Parrott. He was convicted of killing two sheriff’s deputies in Rawlins and hanged in 1878.
Rawlins Dr. John E. Osborne, who conducted an autopsy on Parrott, commissioned a cobbler to fashion the oxfords. It’s said he wore them to dances.
For Brown, half the fun of working with history is the research. History writing is “great fun,” he said. “It’s like detective work.”
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A Philadelphia native from an upper-class family, Wister wrote "The Virginian," the first American noevel to sell a million copies. Wister was also a staunch conservative and opponent of FDR. There is a recent biography of Wister by a professor in TX.
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