Memorial for Bob, Doris and Todd Skinner 7-28-07.

Open Mike Excerpts

Roz Brown: (Roz played an autoharp – they were invented in 1883 – and sang). Fond memories of sitting around the campfire at the Upper Green camp or at Burnt Lake playing folk songs – 20 or 25 years ago. I went with Bob for 18 days climbing Gannett. It was not easy. I think I lost 25 pounds.

Orion Skinner: Holly has been a stalwart person, trying to get the house ready to sell and carrying the brunt of all the estate stuff.

Holly Skinner: I made him say that….

Orion: In some regards, Mom and Dad (Doris and Bob Skinner) were an odd match. Dad being a wild, outdoors guy - hunting, hiking, climbing, skiing. Mom didn’t do any of that stuff. But, it (their marriage) clearly worked. It got stronger as time went along. Just over a year ago they celebrated their 50th anniversary. Even though their interests were diverse, you couldn’t find another couple that was more dedicated to each other, than Bob & Doris Skinner.

Mom was born Feb 15, 1932 in Greybull, Wyoming and grew up in Lewistown, Montana. After high school she decided she wanted to get out and explore. She moved to Salt Lake City where she became a stewardess for Western Airlines. She did that for several years and got to see different parts of the world. As part of one of those flights she ran into this dashing, debonair, Wyoming cowboy type guy and gave him her business card. Doris Carnell, Flight Attendant for Western Airlines. Dad carried that card in his wallet until the day he died. It was dog-earred and you could hardly read it, but he kept it in his wallet no matter where he went for the 50 years. Just shows the impact on that chance meeting on some flight. They were married in 1956 in Jackson. Skiing was an integral part of the family. From what I heard, Dad didn’t care when I learned to walk as long as I had skis on at the time. When they were going to get married, Dad was teaching skiing over at Sun Valley. Mom & Dad ran away to Jackson to get married because the tradition was that if you got married in Sun Valley, you had to buy drinks for all the instructors.

Mom was very understanding because all of us kids ended up being outdoors folks. Mom never complained about it, never tried to hold us back. On a lot of this stuff we tried to keep her in the dark as much as we could. When you’re climbing mountains or exploring other parts of the world there’s a lot you can conjure up and you accept the risks. We felt it was just as well Mom didn’t know all the details so she wouldn’t worry quite as much. She was a very prolific painter and active in Artists Guild. She painted until her health got to where she couldn’t. She had more difficulty with that than with anything else because the art was such a big piece of her and her ability to express things. She had a lot of talent. Mom was involved with church activities. This (Pinedale Congregational) was the church we grew up in. Mom was involved with Women’s Aglow throughout the state. That side was a huge part of her life while we were up in the hills gallivanting around and trying to find ways to get ourselves in a lot of trouble. One of Mom’s greatest loves was arrowhead hunting. She probably put on thousands of miles on the mesa looking for arrowheads. Whether she found anything or not, she loved the exploration. That was certainly passed on to us kids.

Dad was born Nov 20, 1929 in Cheyenne. He grew up on a ranch, in the outfitting business. The family moved to the Pinedale area in 1936 where they had a Dude Outfitting (Boxed K) business on Soda Lake. They had a pet antelope, a pet elk, a pet buffalo. The pet bobcat didn’t work real well. They had a lot of these things that in this day and age you would never, never be allowed to get away with. Those guys (6 sons of Clem & Vi Skinner) grew up doing the outfitting, the cowboy stuff. It was ingrained into them. It was a big chunk of Dad’s personality that he shared with the world, with anybody who came through Skinner Brothers, and with the locals here. When he was younger he used to go around with an old trapper named Walt McPherson who had a series of cabins up around Horseshoe and Burnt Lake. Walt needed somebody to be with him and Dad got a chance to traipse around the woods and learn a lot about the animals and the wilderness. Those experiences were clearly evident in what he could provide back to other people. Dad and all his 5 brothers got seriously into skiing. Sunny Korfanta was an instrumental part in helping Dad and his brothers get up to the ski area and encouraging them to become skiers at a caliber that was renowned throughout the country. In 2005 all 6 brothers were inducted into the Wyoming Sports Hall of Fame for their skiing. In 1951 Dad was 2 races away from his expected qualifications for the Olympics in salaam and he got injured. He was racing for the Air Force at the time. He was in the Air Force from 1951-1955 and the Air Force gave him leave to compete for them. He was expected to make the Olympic team and all he had to do was almost show up for these races. And then he got injured. The experiences he got from the Air Force – learning & teaching survival - became an integral piece, combined with the outdoors side – the hunting, the guide, the outfitting – to start up with brother Monte, the Skinner Brothers Wilderness School. They were able to wrap up all these different aspects of outdoor survival and create a program that was unique in the United States. Many people who went through their camp as a kid will freely admit years later saying, ‘You know, I was going left, I was going down the wrong path and this shifted me.’ Or ‘It created a huge difference in my life.’ When you talked with dad, this was one of the things he looked back on, amongst all of the other achievements that he did, he was the most proud of the kids camp. If asked what he did, he’d say, “We run a wilderness survival camp for youth. Oh, we also take fishing and hunting too.” He knew the impact he was having. He enriched countless lives throughout the country, including our own. We grew up going to camp to help set up and when we were old enough we were spending the whole summers up in the mountains. Dad was extremely proud of what they were able to do with the camp.

Dad was creative and artistic as well. He went by the name “Wedge” when he signed his artwork. If you gave him a sewing machine, he could create just about anything. He made downhill suits for us for our ski racing. He sewed up every single teepee, every single wall tent that was ever used in the family business up there. He could create marvels on that sewing machine. Dad led by example. Prior to him getting sick about a year and a half ago I would have put him against anyone 20 to 30 years younger and he would have run them into the ground. He was one of the hardest working people anyone would hope to encounter up there. He was non-stop. A lot of that did him well because he was extremely dedicated to Mom and he was acting as her caregiver as well as husband. Even when his own health was failing, it got to the point where if he could crawl to get back there to help her, he was doing it. When we were on Everest, he was one of the leaders with his brother Courtney. He was hauling, humping loads of 40-50 pound packs up to 22,000 feet. And he turned 57 when he got back. His lifestyle allowed that to happen.

Todd’s accident was so unexpected. Todd benefited by the way we were raised. The expectation of being able to handle things , to be creative, to think on your feet, to be able to adapt on the fly when things go wrong as things often do. One of Todd’s main comments:

It’s never an adventure til things go wrong.

It was amazing what he got through. He did 3 months in Europe on a thousand dollars. Todd had that personality that would allow doors to open. Many other people who may have had his skill and caliber could never do what he did because his personality was the thing that opened it up. When we were growing up we were model children. We never fought (laughter). Mom got good at refereeing. We scrapped a lot. One of the things that would create an instant fight – we thought it was nearly a mortal insult – was to be called ‘average’. When you wanted to start a fight you’d just say to the other, “You are so average.” We both took that very much to heart. As we went along through life we tried a lot of different things. If we did not think we could excel and become one of the best, we gave it up and went to something else. We would never, ever settle for average because we knew we had a capacity far beyond that. We were always challenging ourselves, pushing. Todd was a master of pushing the limits on things. Todd epitomized the words: “Dare to challenge what others deem impossible”. If you told Todd that was unclimbable, it was like a red flag in front of a bull - darned if he wasn’t there trying to work it out the next day. To have someone say it was a challenge was an incentive to give it a shot. I think that was one of the most admirable things about Todd. Todd was a very good skier in his own right. Most of the climbing world didn’t know he even knew what skis were until on some occasion they’d go out skiing and he’d just turn circles around them even though he hadn’t been on skis in 15 years. Everything he tried, he pushed to be the best. The skiing did not work. Climbing became his new passion at the University of Wyoming. Once in awhile he’d attend classes there. The rest of the time he was up climbing. The true measure of a person’s life is not what they leave behind, not the material stuff, but how they affect others. It’s like a stone thrown into a pond and it ripples out. It’s about who and how they impact.

George McCown: I pleased to be here to pay tribute to some people who have made an enormous difference in the lives of my family. Bob Skinner was like a brother to me. He and I hooked up for the first time when my wife and I made a trip to the Goldens (Golden Lakes in Wind River Mtns), across the continental divide. It was an extraordinary trip. I had a huge connection with Bob. When we were on these pack trips sometimes just the 2 of us would go off for a day and ride and talk. We shared our intimate successes and failures, our hopes and our dreams. One of the ones Bob told touched me greatly. In addition to being a world-class skier, he was a world-class climber. He had the opportunity to climb this formidable, incredible piece of rock in Pakistan and for whatever reason was unable to do that. I think it had something to do with coming back and forming Skinner Brothers Wilderness School. That’s why Todd’s opportunity to climb Nameless Tower was such an inspiration to him -because it was the thing he wasn’t able to do in his life. He just thought it was terrific for his son to be able to do it. We are the beneficiaries of Bob’s sculpting abilitites. I spent time on the phone with them when Doris got sick and they went over to Lander. She was a real hero in all that. She went through some really tough stuff. I know Bob just worshiped her and would do anything he could for her. We were blessed to get Courtney and Bob to take our family on a pack trip 2 years ago, just before Bob got sick. We went up to Prue Lake. Bob and Courtney had never camped at Prue Lake before and it was the best fishing we’d ever had in the Wind Rivers. The finest trip we ever had, to have both those guys and Monte sending us off. It was like we’d died and gone to heaven. Todd was a great blessing in my life and a good friend of my son Dan’s. We brought him to Bohemian Grove in 1996 to speak to our CEOs - one of his motivational speeches. He is one of the only people I’ve ever seen who got a standing ovation at that place. We’ve been blessed to have the Skinners in our lives. Our family has been made a part of their family. (Mr McCown was Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Everest Expedition).

Mary Lynn Worl: I grew up in Pinedale. I could go on about the Skinner family! In the summer, Doris and I would go off on adventures. We sometimes did get in trouble out on the desert – when we weren’t strong enough to close a gate or when we camped in the middle of the wild horse trail and they stampeded by our tent in the night. Doeis liked getting out and had a sense of adventure and wonderment of finding things. Doris was much better at finding arrowheads than I was. She was very focused and patient and determined. She talked about the family. She had these wonderful children that were so accomplished but there was no sense of priority. Maybe Todd had been in National Geographic but that didn’t get any more weight than Orion adding on or remodeling his house. I always appreciated that of her – the equality and enthusiasm she would share. I always appreciated her talent and sense of wonderment.

Roz Brown: The Skinners, before and after camp, would have “City Slicker” cattle drives. Three hundreds cows and 17 city slickers. The cows were no problem. We’d bring them out of the Great Divide Basin in the spring. We rode those bankers and lumbermen - people who had never been in a saddle before – for 35 miles a day picking up strays. I was not used to the saddle either and I would get off, grab the reins and walk along. The city slickers asked what I was doing and I said, “Looking for arrowheads”. I was too embarrassed to tell them I couldn’t sit saddle anymore. Coming in the last day I got off and was in front ‘looking for arrowheads’. I turned around and there were all 17 city slickers behind me ‘looking for arrowheads’. There wasn’t an arrowhead for 100 miles out there. It was dirt roads.

Courtney Skinner: We always thought of Mary Lynn Worl as our sister and she would keep us in line. There’s hardly a day when I’m at work on the mesa (counting Sage Grouse) when I don’t think of Doris Skinner & Patty Looney and the arrowheads they’d bring back and the adventures they’d have. Bob would worry. He bought and fixed up a Jeep for those 2. Orion too can spot an arrowhead a mile and a half away. I used to think as I rode the lone trails into the mountains that there was a story behind every rock. As I look here at the audience, I see a story in every person here that has to do with Bob, Doris or Todd. Les Henderson from down in Rock Springs and Tom Johnston running out of ammunition shooting at elk on one of their famous elk hunts. And Tom Johnston’s gun jams and Bob saying, “Unjam it! Unjam it! Shoot again!” I look at Steve Mackey who guided for Bob over in the Jackson Hole camp and would sneak in late at night, I think a little bit on the outlaw side. But coming in, Bob would say, “How’d you do Steve?” and then Steve would roll his eyes and say, “How big does the elk have to be?”

I want to tell about Doris and the outdoors. Here she was, Doris Carnell, Airline Stewardess Extraordinary, in the time of the 50s and Bob brings her to camp at Burnt Lake and puts her on a horse and takes her into the woods for a ride to show her our lifestyle. We’re on the ridge above Meadow Lake and Bob sees these 3 great big deer coming in on the trail. (whispering): “Lay down, Doris. Courtney, take the horses!” And he covers her all up with snow! Then he gets down beside her and covers himself with snow. I’m away over on the side. Lo and behold the big bucks come right on up. I’m watching this episode. And one steps on Doris’s hand! She jumps up and the startled deer take off. I don’t believe we ever saw a deer in that spot again in our 40-some years. It’s always a favorite story as we pass by that spot.

Bob was always called the “John Wayne” and that’s exactly right. If we had known how old Bob Skinner was on the Everest Expedition, he could have been the oldest person climbing it. We did not know or think. At that point the oldest person to climb Mt Everest was 55 and Bob was 57. He took his responsibilities seriously. He was Director of Mountaineering (for Everest), seeing that everyone was safe, life was good, the camp was clean, the food was good and preparing to get some of our summiteers up that mountain. One day we realized that if we could take away his responsibilities we could make him the oldest person to climb Mt Everest. And he could do it! As Orion said, his strength was phenomenal. But he would not hear of it. He kept right with his “We’ll get the team up there and come back”.

I see Bob Skinner coming back from trying to find a way over Indian Pass, which had not been crossed to horseback since the days of the early Indians in the mountains. And I see him with this long-legged American saddler horse riding in the evening sunset coming across the meadow trying to get back to camp from his scouting experience. I see him again with a great big, long horse with Doris and Karen McCown and some others. Somehow always riding in the John Wayne or Tibetan style, across some vast horizon with a glint in his eye thinking “Ah, I found the way. I found the pass to bring those people through”.

On Everest at 24,000 feet with his Stetson hat on he was coming across a crevasse, taking 20 breaths, one step. It’s a scary crevasse. It is devastating. You dare not look down. Bob is breathing and we have a photographer on the scene. He says, “How was it Bob?” (breath, breath) “Well,” Bob says, “If I hadn’t kept stepping on my tongue with my damn crampons, I’da been all right!” I see Bob Skinner in a duster and a cowboy hat going across the Tibetan plateau, not knowing a word of Chinese, not knowing a word of Tibetan, looking for our trucks which are way overdue and all of our supplies. By himself. We get to this bridge and there had been an earthquake and the bridge was gone. Bob and Fred Reidman convinced the Chinese they should drive across it. They get another man to ford the river to show them it is possible. He’s out there in his polka-dotted shorts and he’s running around, not knowing that Bob Skinner is the expert in fording rivers. And Bob is telling him, “Now, Brian, run diagonally.” And Brian is giving him a little guff. Bob takes one look at him and peels off his coat. And the Chinese standing there looking aghast at the white “Wyoming Suntan”, saying “We’ll do it. We’ll do it…BUT…if we don’t make it, you own that truck. It is yours.” As they looked at Bob they decided to try it. The next scene shows the water running through the window and the 3 of them standing on the cab and we now own a truck. A young lady photographer from Casper, Anne Stroock, was interviewing Bob. It’s a long interview. You can see the snow coming down. She’s doing it at 22,000 feet. He’s still in his Stetson hat. It’s looking dubious that we will make the summit before winter and the cold temperatures set in. She asks, “How is the team?” He says, “The team is great. If you give us half a chance, we’ll make it to the summit. These packers are 50 years behind! If you’da turned them over to Skinner Brothers, we’d a been up that mountain and had the yaks packed.” He tried to teach them how to throw a hitch. But he said (to Anne) “give us half a chance and we’ll make it because this is who we are.” Anne finishes the interview and Bob is completely out of breath and says, “How’s That?”

Amy Skinner: I met Bob Skinner for the first time in 1988 in Pinedale when they were getting ready to go to Everest. Todd and Doris went off to bed and Bob and I were sitting up. Bob said, “Hey, you like ice cream?” And I knew that I was home. I loved that man so much. Todd admired his dad more than anybody else. He used to talk about climbing in Mexico and how he –Todd – was sick as a dog from the altitude but was planning to catch up to his dad on the summit. Bob would be sitting up there eating greasy salami and cheese and Todd was just trying to keep moving. One of my girlfriends once said, “Gosh, I’m afraid my husband is turning into his father.” I looked forward to the future with Todd because I thought he WAS on his way to turning into his father! Todd admired his dad so much, and so did I.

Quentin Skinner: Holly was 4 or 5 years and had new cowboys boots. She was so proud of them that she came down to the shed where we were doing work and Courtney had that ugly habit of chewing tobacco. Holly was showing Courtney those cowboy boots and Courtney looks over and spits tobacco juice on those boots. Holly’s eyes just welled up with big tears and she runs to mother. Doris tied a great big bow around that cowboy boot and sent Holly down to all those mean, old uncles to show those boots were OK, they had a bandage on them. Holly is certainly following her mom’s and dad’s footsteps in the arts. I think of her ability to write and the wonderful books she has written. I have a lot of admiration for the extreme talent she has.

Todd was at the age when he had to go to the Green River and cover up and float. From the time that God took Todd, he was as skinny as a rail and there wasn’t an ounce of fat to keep him warm. And of course the mean, old uncles were setting there and it’s Todd’s turn and we have to double the life jacket around him and tie it with rope because he was so small. They threw him in the Green and let him float. Todd was so cold when they got him out of there that I had to take him into my bedroll and I got my arms around him and warmed him up and he was just like a shivering little rat. You’ve heard about Todd climbing the dorms at UW. He was a ski racer and I was his coach. I always read the papers, especially the police reports and here’s a little blurb on Todd. And Todd always had a smile. I had a team meeting and I looked at Todd and said, “Todd, you made the newspaper.” And Todd says, “Wasn’t it great?”

Orion was a ski racer at UW and was running the downhill and had earned the first spot and it’s a mean downhill. He was suppose to radio up to his coach. It was the longest time because at the bottom of the downhill there was a curve and you’d hit it at about 60 mph. And there were some condominiums. Pretty soon I hear Orion come on and I said, “How is it, Orion?” He says, “It’s great, but tell them to watch out for the condominiums” because he hit them! I had the privilege of sitting in on Orion’s Master’s Thesis committee. And he had some rough geology professors. They only took an hour with him and I got to take another hour. They said, “Weren’t you kinda hard on him?” And I said, “Oh, I was just having fun with him.” Orion is a wonderful geologist and I admire that talent.

Doris taught me to dance. Doris could jitterbug like you couldn’t believe. We danced to Benny Goodman. To this day I still carry the moves that Doris taught me.

Bob taught me to climb. One time with Sunny Korfanta we were climbing Symmetry Spire. We weren’t roped up and we probably should have been because they had me along. I went to pull on a rock and it pulled out and I was hanging with a 1000 feet under me. Sunny put his ice axe under my belt and pulled me up on the ledge. My climbing turned into what Monte believes, “If you can’t ride a damn horse to the top of it, don’t climb it!” The most wonderful tribute that I can think of for Bob and Doris are the 3 beautiful pieces of art they gave us and that’s Holly, Todd and Orion. Until Arlene and I are asked to leave, Bob and Doris and their families will be with us always. God bless all of you.

Brad Werntz: I came up through Skinner Brothers. There are gifts to be found in tragedy and grief. After Todd’s passing this fall I spent a long weekend with Bob. Up at 4AM and we had to run a medical errand. We’re getting ready and putting our boots on. I asked him how many days we’d done this and Bob said “Maybe a hundred dozen”. I thought about it and it wasn’t a hundred dozen but it was hundreds of days I woke up at 4am with Bob Skinner. Courtney told a story I was going to tell about the Everest expedition. Those of us who were there remember the Garden Motel with no garden, indoor running water, which was a cooler in the corner and it had the only 2-story outhouse we’ve ever seen. We spent 10 lovely days there in the rain, waiting for the trucks to come in. We’d had about enough of it. One morning the trucks showed up and we took ourselves out of town. With one time zone in the whole country everyone got up to go to work at 4am. They would turn on the loudspeakers and we’d listen on our concrete beds. Bob’s up listening to the loudspeakers telling people to get up and go out to the fields.

One thing Courtney didn’t mention about that river fording was that we had Ethan Golden with us. He was our secret weapon because he spoke Tibetan and Chinese and we didn’t tell the Chinese that he understood what they were saying. Bob is gifted in the same way Monte is gifted. We always joked that water parted around them. They’d go into the Green River, raging river and rafts flying everywhere and people upended and Monte would wade in there and he’d come out and be dry. Bob had that skill as well. So we’re at this ford in China and Bob is going to show them how it’s done. He starts ripping off his clothes. It’s cold out. He’s standing in the middle of the Tibetan desert in his underwear. And I have to just mention that his underwear was clean and his skin was whiter than his underwear. The Tibetans were shocked. What Ethan told us later they were saying was, “Please, old man with the snow-white skin, put your clothes on! We’ll do whatever you want!”

That wasn’t the first or last time I’d seen Bob in the water in his underwear. He had a dog named Buck. We took the trucks up to the head of Green River Lakes and we were going in and we were coming up to the pass. There had been a tremendous landslide. It was hundreds of yards wide. It had wiped out the whole trail. And Bob was in seventh heaven. Buck was bouncing around after pikas and running everywhere and then he came back for lunch. And Bob said, “Oh No! He’s rolled in a dead bear!” Buck’s hair was matted down and he was all greasy and poor Buck, he was a cuddler. In the middle of the night he’d try to wedge in the tent and Bob would kick him out. One of my images of Bob is before we got to Elbow Lake and it was pouring raining and sleet and snow and we were going to camp there for the night. Nobody could stand poor Buck. So Bob, in his underwear again and in his hat, of course, drags Buck out into the river with icebergs that are a little greyer than Bob’s skin and he’s dunking Buck in the water with every ton of shampoo we had. And then he takes out his bottle of cologne and dumps that on the dog. And that dog still stank.

We also had lots of adventures with live bears in the Jackson Camp and in the Horseshoe Camp. We had a bear that adopted us up there for a lot of years. We named it Buddy Bear. You’d go out of the cook tent and you’d look for where Buddy Bear was and you’d throw something up the tree. At night as soon as you’d turn off the lights Buddy Bear would come in. One time I was sitting on my cot and the door opened and I thought it was Buck and it was a bear. I had my shoe in my hand and I knocked him on the nose and he took off. The bear got a little aggressive over the years so we took to guarding the camp. Bob decided that we should sleep at each doorway. As an extra measure, Bob put a bag of trash at his head just so if the bear came in, it’d stop and eat the trash. Bob had his pistol, of course. I was sleeping next to Garrett Rice and we had a tent pole about this long, an aluminum tent pole from the old camp between us. We had our weapon. We were ready. In the middle of the night I heard a ‘Grumf. whatareya doing there?’ I turned on the light and Bob had a handful of bear fur! He’d taken a swing at the bear and tried to grab it so he could shoot it. That’s what you do, I guess. Well, I went back to sleep and I was lying with my arm above my head and I look up and I felt something breathing on my face. I see this outline of the ears and the head. And I followed through and this was the best punch of my life. I felt it connect with the nose and the mouth and things snapped and adrenaline was flowing and Garrett and I were beating each other for that tent pole. Bob was real quiet and then he said, “That was my dog”.

We took a crew over to Meadow Lake with Courtney and we were there in the night. I was tired. We had cook sets out there with spilled jello and beans. We’d had a pilfering problem. It wasn’t the bears. It was the kids pilfering the chocolate. So, I laid down with the food. It was in these long bags and I brought them into my tent. I had one down the left side of my body and one down the right side and I woke up in the middle of the night and heard one of these cook tents go WHOOSH. And the heavy breathing. And the lip smacking. It was the unmistakable sound of a bear. And I’m laying there realizing: “I’ve made myself into a giant Oreo - crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. And I thought, “What would Bob do?” I remembered a story he used to tell about going for a picnic one time with Doris and Doris had cooked up a big pot of fried chicken. He was on leave from the military and this chicken was all he was looking forward to. This bear walks up to the picnic table where they were at and Bob said, “I probably weighed 135 pounds and I took off my belt and swung it around and snapped it over. I had the bucket of chicken in one arm and the belt in the other and I just kept hitting the bear in the nose and eventually he went away and we sat down and had a good dinner.”

What would Bob do? Well, I decided I had to take action based on “What would Bob do?” So I waited. This bear was wandering around camp going from one cook set to another. I waited til it was about 10 feet away from me on the other side of the willows and I had some cover. I dove out the bottom of the tent and I grabbed a cook pot and a spoon and I was banging on them as loud as I could. I stood there and expected to see the rear end of a black bear. Through the trees, instead of something 2 feet tall, I saw 3 to 4 feet tall and it wasn’t moving. I realized I was standing there in my underwear ringing the dinner bell! I thought we had a grizzly in camp so I yelled “Everybody get out of your tents. Make a lot of noise. Bang on things, flash you lights!” So, sure enough they did. I had all of these kids shining their lights on me and me standing in my underwear. So Greg Legerski was standing over there and in a graceful drawl said, “Brad, that’s a cow.”

I haven’t always done what I thought Bob would do. But just about every major thing in my life and in my daily decisions, I ask myself “What Bob would do?” It’s a really powerful thing to have a mentor that strong, all these years later. What would Bob do? I ask myself everyday.

Monte Skinner: Now this is going way back. Sunny Korfanta will remember. There was quite a bit of difference between Bud, Bob and I and then Courtney, Quentin and Ole. Growing up in Pinedale we were known as the “Fighting Skinners”. There were the Carson, the Feltners and right on down. All they had to do was look out a window and see the Skinners fighting. Bob and I were in business practically 50 years. But, we got along real well. We fought like hell! We went through various things. I don’t know if we ever got along, but we always got things done. It was enjoyable for me to be around Bob all those years. All those who say how strong Bob was, let me tell you a story. Jim Straley will vouch for it. The 2nd year we were in business (1958) Jim was with us and we were on the Green River. We were floating or starting to float. Jim and I hated water. We still do. We got started on the rafting. We had taken movies. We had just spent $1,000 on a 16mm Rolex camera. Jim and I had taken pictures. We tied that camera on our raft. We got out there in deep water and we tipped this way and Jim and I went around with the raft and just walked back on top (actually standing on the bottom which was now the top). We weren’t even wet! We were standing there and here comes Bob walking up that Green River, “Blankity blah blank. THE CAMERA! THE CAMERA! THE CAMERA!” I don’t know if he turned the raft over, but he got that raft out of there. I tell you, that was strong.

Lee Straley: We were up at the Green River and Courtney had all the kids lined up by size. Todd was the smallest. Courtney was going on and on about ‘Going to war on the river”. He meant putting your boom in the water and getting everyone wet. Todd was a mass of tears. He was just sobbing. We went over and asked him, “What’s the matter?” and he said, “They’re sending me to war and I don’t even have a gun!”

Lucille Whisler: (Amy Skinner’s mother). Our family had done a lot of camping and hiking when Amy and her brother were growing up. Finally we got to meet Todd and we thought, “This is the one. He’s going to be alright.” We were meeting Amy at her apartment to go out to dinner and Garold (Amy’s father) came in – this is in the middle of summer – with a stocking cap on. He had been climbing. Todd walked in and said, “Come with me.” Well, Garold had scrapped his head really bad and the hat was stuck to his head. Todd took care of that so we thought he might be OK. We met Bob and Doris in 1989. We had such great delight with them. We were sorry for the reason that Doris had to move to Lander (her illness), but we were thrilled that we had them in our area and we shared grandkids.

Ole Skinner: We were up at Horseshoe with a group, Tom Lea and his wife (Sarah) and the Leavell’s from El Paso. Bob and Doris were courting at that time. Sarah Lea and Shirley Leavell were sitting there talking with Bob. It was a rainy day. They were talking to Bob about his future and what he was doing about it. He said, “Well, I got a letter from her the other day.” Dad (Clem) was coming up in a few days and these 2 women decided they would write Bob the ultimate love letter for Doris. Tom Lea is a real good writer and a good artist. Sarah had some of those traits. So those 2 ladies sat there all morning thinking of these looove things a cowboy should say. They sent it off with dad. I guess it was the next day Dad came up with this wonderful horse that fortunately Bob and Monte got rid of the first fall. Trailing horses back from the Jackson hunting camp. His name was Saboo, grandson of Man-of-War, the famous race horse. He’d as soon kill you as look at you. And he tried many times. Dad brought him as the pack horse. He got up there and said, “Oh, I brought you a wonderful surprise. I brought you a watermelon.” We were getting packing and Saboo decided ‘You’re not getting this watermelon’ and he decided to blow up right in the middle of camp as we were unpacking him and the watermelon scattered from here to hell. But it didn’t bother those 2 rich ladies. They gathered up every little piece and “We’re going to eat this anyway.” Well, they sent that love letter off and Bob & Doris were married the following winter. I talked to Doris about it and I thought she said she saved it. It was a wonderful, mushy, cowboy letter.

Fred Reidman: I was very fortunate when I was 12 years old that my parents said I was a handful and sent me off to Skinners Camp. Much to their surprise I liked it so much I kept coming back every summer that I could until I finally graduated from college. I managed to join a few other trips with Bob and Courtney after that. I have been very fortunate in the experiences I learned up there at camp. When I was 13 or 14 we were hiking from Leavell Lake up to Mt Baldy. Bob thought it was awful funny to give me a whole case of oleo margarine and put it in my backpack. He thought it was even funnier how I couldn’t hardly stand up and that when the backpack frame popped apart, that was pretty funny too. Well, to get into the humor, I found this rock along the way and put it in the top of Bob’s pack. I thought that was pretty funny. Bob didn’t see it. We got up to Mt Baldy and Bob’s group was going to go camp higher up on the mountain. Boy, was that hilarious that Bob was carrying that rock all the way up to the top. Bob had this deep, deep belly laugh. When things got really tough you could just hear that belly laugh coming. A little bit later Bob comes just flying down that mountain. He’s got this rock in hand. I thought, “Oh, no. I’m dead”. He’s just laughing. He thought that was hilarious. What was funnier than me putting that rock in his pack was the fact that I carried that rock all the way back to Burnt Lake.

Another time, down at the ranch, I was helping Bob shoe horses and as the day went on, Bob’d go faster and faster. I felt I was always trying to catch up. I never could quite keep up with Bob because the faster I got the faster he got. It came to lunchtime and Doris came out and said, "Bob, you gonna come up for lunch?” And Bob said yes. And she goes, “Who’s down there?” And he said “Reidman.” And she “Well, grab another loaf of bread then.” I had a way of eating a little bit in those days. What was so memorable for me about that lunch was that for some reason we didn’t just go right back to shoeing horses afterwards and I had a chance to talk to Doris. The Univ of Wyo had already started and Orion and Todd were back in school and Doris was talking to me about Todd’s exploits in climbing. She was telling me how Todd was doing and where he was out climbing and about a climber who came up to Todd after he got off this one area where he couldn’t climb because he couldn’t get his protection in. Said, “Don’t you have any friends?” Much to Todd’s annoyance. He said, “Yes. I’ve got lots of friends” and not realizing that was a new piece of climbing gear hardware. Over the years I’d check back in and Doris would tell me how many friends Todd was having and how things were going. That afternoon Bob’s laugh got bigger and deeper the worse my shoe shaping got. I wouldn’t have gotten through that day if Bob hadn’t been able to find humor in all that hard work.

Forever Bob, Doris and Todd are going to be a part of my heart and my soul.

Loleen Denney: I’d like to say something about Doris. There’s a lot of us in this room that have climbed spiritual mountains with Doris. I moved here 20 years ago and the Bible Study that she and Eileen (Hopkins?) were having was one of the first things I got into. Doris has left an incredible spiritual heritage here in Pinedale. She has prayed for many, many families and everyone who has been to camp. The way that Orion walks with his hands behind his back and how he waves his arm – that is just how Doris would gesture when she was teaching us something. Doris has been a huge part of my life for 20 years and until she had to go to Lander, we prayed every single week for years and years. I’m so grateful for her.

Jake Skinner, Todd and Amy’s son, told an Elephant in Camp story that, unfortunately, did not get recorded.

Mary Kay Skinner Lundell: I’m Monte and Donna’s daughter. No one has talked about what a great cook Bob was. He was cooking lots of meals at camp when cooks got fired or cooks ran off. He was always scrubbing the floor or something. He thought his nieces and nephews and children ought to be able to cook too. So we were all counselors at camp and we had to cook for the camp. Well, Bob, I don’t think that was such a great idea. I think Orion made something with barley – barley soup. He used the big, aluminum pot and he put so much barley in there that it cooked up all the juices and we went through the line and everybody had to take a spoonful and it was just this glop. I know with Bob, people liked to go on pack trips because he was such a great cook. Another thing about Bob was he was my ski coach along with my dad. He taught me to dream. To try as hard as you can and have a dream. Well, I never made it to the Olympics but that was always my dream when I ski raced.

Doris taught me perseverance. My childhood memory about Doris is, she always took us arrowhead hunting. Skinners weren’t quite ready to have girls in camp until I was 15 years old. So, Doris would take us out to the desert and arrowhead hunt. In the earlier days when Orion and Todd and Holly were too young to go to camp, we’d go out to the Cora Y. I only found one arrowhead in all those years and years of arrowhead hunting with her. I was such a bad arrowhead hunter. But, Orion always found them. I was running ahead of Orion thinking, OK he’s going this way. I’m going to see if I can get that arrowhead before he does. And I stopped one time and he said, “Mary, would you pick up your foot,” so I did and he picked up an arrowhead right out from under my foot! Whenever I’m out in the sagebrush or in a meadow or even in the mountains, I think of Doris and arrowhead hunting.

Carol Chidsey: My brother Chris was with Skinners for a long time. Chris always had great things to say about Skinners. Chris and Todd and I – we all climbed the Grand (Teton). We got up there and we were climbing Middle and that night Skinners decided instead of carrying cheese and carrying salami, they’d put it all together – a roll of it all. Then I made dinner. Todd and I were up all night long, sick as anything. We were staying at a hut. I didn’t want to climb again. So Todd climbed with Chris and he threw up the whole way. Chris felt so blessed that he had a chance to climb with Todd.

Ntala Skinner Quintilio: (Ole and Karen’s daughter). My earliest memory of Bob is with his hair, swinging around. (She makes swirling motions). When I was really young they used to run the horses from the ranch up to camp (their house adjoined the ranch). Bob was the uncle who didn’t yell quite as much as Monte. Just quiet control of some sort. I remember Dad said “Tala – you gotta go out to the road and block the horses off”. At that point I think they had 75 horses. So, I’m out at the driveway and I’m probably as high as Sarah and hair down to here and I’m like this (stretching both arms out). Down come these horses at full gallop. They’ve been on grass since May and it was the middle of June. Bob was somewhere near the front and these horses started to turn into the driveway. He took this whip. I don’t know where this whip came from. It was like “I’m the Man From Snowy River”. And he must have hit those horses in front of the nose and they just turned and headed straight up the road. It was the most amazing thing.

Bob and Doris were always great to us kids. Doris was really good to me. I used to ride up and down the pasture with just a halter head stall on and when I got hungry I’d go up and knock on Doris’s door and say, “I’m ready to sit for my picture now.” She’d make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I’d sit there and pose for her. I’d have peanut butter out my sides. I’ve often wondered why she didn’t paint the peanut butter in.

One time up at camp Bob was going a lecture on snares. Bob had all this elaborate log fall and all this other stuff set up. It’s getting hot. He’s going through this stuff. There’s a little path. On the other side of this log it looked like a nice, shady, cool spot to sit. So, being the great niece that I am, I demonstrated a leg snare. I walked over the log and stepped right into his snare! And Bob was like, “Ah Ha! I knew I’d catch you!” Another story was at Open Session. Some kids brought up a bottle of Jack Daniels, all the way to Leavell Lake. Bob found this whiskey. He had to make an example out of it. I wonder what he was thinking because he had to pour it out in front of all of us. Poor guy. Didn’t even get to drink it himself. He probably thought later he should have kept it. Anyway, they’re wonderful people.

Alyssa Skinner: (Orion and Lauren’s daughter). Doris was my grandmother. Two things I learned while arrowhead hunting with my dad & Gramma Doris: #1 - Never let them have a window seat on the way there. They will have us stop the car so they can get out and pick up an arrowhead. The 2nd thing I learned is never look for arrowheads behind them. They will just clear the way. You either need to go a half a mile away or as far as you can run away and then you may find something. I never found an arrowhead and I remember one time with Dad, he picked one up and he chucked it in front of me just so I could find it. When we were going camping with Aunt Holly and Uncle Dan, we borrowed Todd and Amy’s car. We broke down in the middle of the desert of Wyoming. We couldn’t roll down the windows because the battery died. It was like 110 degrees in there. We finally got to a gas station where they would fix the part and Uncle Todd came to pick us up in the van and we told him what happened and he just laughed at us.

Orion: These 3 very special people created quite a ripple that’s still expanding and hopefully between all of us we’ll keep their impact going for many, many years to come. Thank you all for coming.