Episode Details

EP 28 SHANNON SMITH

Wendy Corr:

Well, hey there, folks. Welcome to The Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and our focus is on interesting people in the cowboy state. Today's guest on the Roundup, I am so - we've just been sitting here chatting, and I'm just getting more and more excited about our conversation because our guest knows more about Wyoming history, even though she wasn't born here in Wyoming, than probably most of us who were raised in this state know.

And so I'm very excited to introduce you all to Shannon, but first, I want to make sure that you all know about another really great podcast. It's called the business from the basement podcast, and it's from the Wyoming Business Alliance. And so anybody who's interested in or is a Wyoming business person, this is a fantastic resource filled with just great guests and great interviews and great information. For anybody who's a business person and wants to, wants to enhance their business and their connections here in the cowboy state.

So check them out, but don't go yet, because first we have all this really great fun conversation just waiting to happen with Shannon Smith. I love Shannon's, "Smithstorian," is Shannon's webpage, and I just think that that's fantastic, and it truly fits who she is, but she's so much more than a historian. So we're going to get started.

Hello, Shannon Smith, so glad to meet you and to be able to share your stories, your Smith stories, with the rest of the group.

Shannon Smith:

Oh, I might have to take that.

Wendy Corr:

Go for it. You can have that

Shannon Smith:

Thanks for having me. Yes, and thanks for my new product, my marketing product, right?

Wendy Corr:

Your Smith stories, Shannon, you have been, you've devoted your life to telling stories, to educating, but your background is so interesting, you did not come to history and to Wyoming history and Wyoming humanities until later. You started off your life in a whole different way.

You're actually coming to us from Gordon, Nebraska. If anybody knows Gordon, Nebraska, you know that's kind of the middle of nowhere.

Shannon Smith:

No metropolitan area, major metropolitan area.

Wendy Corr:

But you know, I graduated college from just down the road. I got my degree from Chadron State. So know right where you are, Shannon. Tell us about your journey to history. That sounds so strange, but your journey to history really started there in Gordon, Nebraska, and then brought you to Wyoming. Tell us about that.

Shannon Smith:

Yeah. Well, long, long time ago, I grew up in Gordon, and I was in junior high and high school during the American Indian Movement uprising at Wounded Knee. And we're about 18 miles south of Wounded Knee, and my dad was the county attorney and prosecuted the case that really kind of triggered that whole event.

And so I kind of grew up in this atmosphere of just knowing a lot about history happening directly in in, in my backyard. But I never thought then, I mean, I was one of those, you know, graduate in 1976 and get the heck out of dodge. So, I mean, the skid marks were real when I left and I headed to, I went to Kearney State College in Nebraska, and graduated from there.

But I studied computer science back in the days when you wrote, you know, programs using key, key cards, key punch cards, back in those days. But I graduated from Kearney State and was hired by a company called Electronic Data Systems and went to New York City. So that was a big change and a big deal in the 1980s.

So I