As the Crow Flies: Morry Crow

Like most people of his generation, Morry Crow remembers exactly where he was on December 7, 1941.  Twenty-one years old, and “full of vinegar,” he was in Seattle, Washington with a pretty girl in his brand new ’41 Club Coupe Chevy. He’d paid $850 for it, and it was a beauty—with white wall tires, a heater and a radio, from which he heard the first report of the bombing of Pear Harbor.“Turn up the radio!” he remembers telling his girlfriend. He quit his job as an assembly line worker at Boeing Aircraft the next day.

“I was registered for the draft but couldn’t enlist because I was missing a toe,” Morry tells me, as we sit in the kitchen of his Silver City home on an unusually warm late summer morning.  “But after Pearl Harbor, I knew I’d be drafted.”

(Read the rest of the story in Winter ‘08 FACES)

Learning Curve: Hunting 101

Prologue: OK, so this artist goes hunting with a businessman, a hat-maker, and two priests. Seriously, this is not a joke, it really happened. I had asked my friend Pete Lien, CEO of Pete Lien and Sons, (named after his grandfather) if he’d take me hunting so that I could write a “learning curve” article about the experience. A couple of days later he called me and asked if I wanted to go pheasant hunting with him and two friends of his, who happened to be priests, or whether I’d rather wait until sometime when he and I could go alone. I told Pete I had no objection to the priests (actually, I figured they might come in handy, given my lack of experience with guns) so it was agreed that I would meet the three of them for breakfast the next day and then we’d head down to Oral (near Hot Springs) for the hunt.  In the morning I found Pete and two men at a table in Minerva’s, a popular Rapid City restaurant. Pete introduced them as Brian Lane and Kevin Achbach. They looked so un-Fatherly, so, well, normal, that I assumed two additional friends had been invited to join the expedition and we were still waiting for the priests.   “So what do you guys do?” This was my brilliant conversational opening gambit.  “We’re priests,” replied Brian, the older of the two men.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling rather foolish.

(Read the rest of this story in Winter ‘08 FACES)

Mike Wolforth – Photoshop ‘Til You Drop

I defy anyone to find a nicer guy on the streets of Rapid City—or the entire Black Hills for that matter–than professional photographer Mike Wolforth.  I also defy anyone to find a person better able to maintain a sunny disposition despite a constant companion called “chronic pain” than our good friend Mike Wolforth.

We in the FACES office, where Mike has been generously lending his expertise for a couple of years now, have started calling him “Job,” a nickname, Mike acknowledges, he’s heard before.

(Read the rest of this story in Winter ‘08 FACES)

Fly-By Knight: Wayne McAfee

Garbed in the red-and-white hooded mantle of his chivalric order and carrying his ceremonial sword, Sir Wayne Mc Afee would appear anachronistic anywhere, but nowhere more so than in South Dakota where heroes wear cowboy hats and spurs, and the ancestry of horses and bulls is more important than their owners’. The Custer man is South Dakota’s only knight of the Imperial Constantinian Order of St. George, which claims to be the oldest order of Christian chivalry in the world, founded by Constantine the Great in 312 A.D.T  

(Read the rest of this story in Winter ‘08 FACES)

Shining Stars: Streeter and Barbara Shining

It’s great to move around the country, to live in different climates, cultures, and seasons and we all know people who have done so.  Unfortunately, some never stop talking about “the other place” – the other school, the other church, the other governments, the other political systems, the other doctors, the other stores, and the other whatevers.  (Boring, to say the least!)So it’s quite refreshing to talk with people who love the place they are at the moment.  That can definitely be said of H. Streeter and Barbara Shining.  Born in rural eastern Iowa, they have lived “from sea to shining sea” throughout their marriage and have called the Black Hills their home for 42 years.  But I have no doubt that had I interviewed them in any of their previous locations, they would be as positive and happy as they are today.

Cover Story – Paige McPherson: The Face of a Fighter

Paige McPherson looks great in gold, and gold medals in particular. She looks good in almost any color actually, with her dark hair and eyes contrasting with the honey-brown tones of her skin.  It’s a striking face, one that would be at home on the cover of any fashion magazine.  Her legs are long and lean—pure muscle–and when she walks, there’s a power in her step that hints at the natural athleticism that lies within this beautiful young woman.  At seventeen, Paige, a junior at Black Hills Classic Christian Academy in Spearfish, turns heads wherever she goes.  But if you ask this Sturgis teenager about turning heads, she’s likely to tell you about the heads she has turned with her foot–the increasingly famous and powerful foot that most recently (along with the rest of her amazingly toned physique) helped her win a gold medal for the United States at the Pan America Taekwondo Championship in October.“We like to tell people we take our daughter all over the country to meet other girls and beat them up,” jokes Dave McPherson, Paige’s dad and biggest fan.

It’s a joke he likes and he tells it often, but behind the humor lies the truth: Paige McPherson has become a formidable force in the international taekwondo scene in recent years, and is currently one of the top competitors in the world.

(Read the rest of this story in Winter ‘08 FACES)