Cheyenne Frontier Days

Our Sunday newspaper - The Daily Independent carries Sunday suppliment called the American Profile.

Page 4 of this weeks American Profile has an Article called Cheyenne's Cowboy Classic. Sorry I can't link to the article, it's not up on their website yet. They website seems to lag a week behind the paper publication.

This article describes the week long event in Cheyenne called Cheyenne Frontier Days.

Cheyenne Frontier Days is a great event if you like country music, rodeos, parades, pancake breakfasts, and cowboys. For one week in July (22 - 31 this year) Cheyenne Wyoming a town of 53,000 people opens it arms to about 60,000 visitors. If you like the old west, the new west, or just cowboys and horses in general this is the place you want to be.

Everyday there are rodeos, and concerts. There are four parades. The parades will have hundreds of horses, horse drawn carriages and marching bands from all over the country. On the mornings that they don't have parades there is a free pancake breakfast held downtown. All you need to do to get breakfast is get in line and grab a plate. Even the breakfast is a show. With lines of volunteers cooking pancakes, and boy scouts scurring about catching and serving pancakes even standing in line watching is fun. The flippers once a pancake is done will scoop up that pancake on their spatula and toss it backwards over their shoulder. Behind them wiil be a gaggle of scouts with platters catching the griddle cakes as they fly through the air.

The focus of the American Profile article is the volunteers from the city of Cheyenne and how they get involved. I can tell you almost everyone in town gets involved in some way or another.

A few years ago I took the family there for the event. I was fun to attend and not have to work. We got to be tourists and just enjoy the fun. In previous years I had tried to go do the events as a tourist and it never worked. I would be spotted by someone I knew who was working the event and I would be recruited to help.

In the American Profile article the mention one volunteer specifically, Mister Bill Dubois. The Article mentions that Bill had sung the national anthem at every rodeo for the last 40 years. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum.

What the article didn't mention was that he spent his profesional career as a high school teacher at Cheyenne Central High School. I had Bill as a history teacher for three years. He was one of my favorite teachers and one of the more influental adults in my life. When I first had Bill as a teacher I had been convinced by other teachers in earlier years that I wasn't a very good student and didn't have many opportunities ahead of me. But I hit the jackpot for teachers my first year in high school. I had a science, math, french, history, and band teachers who very quickly taught me that my previous teacher were wrong. I could do well in school and I could succeed if I put in the effort. Bill was a key figure in that change in my life. and he remains a good friend to this day. I don't get back to Cheyenne that often and seldom have the chance to see him much anymore, but we treasure the occasional lunch we have had the chance to share with him. His Christmas letters always start the holiday season for us.

So if you get the American Profile in your local paper, read the article about Frontier Days. If you are looking for a place to holiday next year, look into Cheyenne that last full week in July. Its an event you will love, and never forget. If you do go to Cheyenne, pay attention to the volunteers, they are some of the finest poeple you will ever meet.

Finally if you are involved in a community event that you want your whole town to get involved in, you should take a really close look at Cheyenne Frontier Days because it is truly a whole communtiy event.