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in Full 102-year-old Clara Leno pg 12
GIRLS Who Code pg 8
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Contents
6 COOKING UP A CAREER 8 #GIRLSWHOCODE Executive Chef Jordyn Bason is not shy about how much she loves her job. She worked her way up from dishwasher in just six years and hasn’t looked back.
Five female students design an award-winning app that delivers for seniors. Now, their once all-girl coding club is trending at Buffalo High School.
12 LIFE IN FULL
Sheridan resident Clara Leno looks back on her life as she celebrates her 102nd birthday. Her advice: Thank God for everything.
Photo: Buffalo High School Teens Code Club Homecoming Girls Who Code.
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Celebrating
Wyoming 's Cool Women
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yoming is full of classy women. Having lived on both coasts and several states in between, I can safely say there’s something different about women who choose to live on these wide-open plains. It starts with a friendliness that feels genuine, like when they ask you a question, they really want to hear the answer. And unlike some women who are fueled by aggressive competition, western women don’t see success as a fixed commodity, and instead, help other women grow and prosper. Wyoming history is replete with stories about tough women who persevered, made names for themselves in a male-dominated landscape, nurtured families and shaped lives in an unformidable terrain. In this issue, we are proud to feature some of these remarkable women, who in their own
right are paving paths and forging lives in the spirit of those early pioneering women. On page 12, we meet Sheridan transplant Clara Leno, who at 102, is still sharp as a tack as she talks about early life on her family’s North Dakota homestead. Jordyn Bason reminds us of the importance of following your passion and driving hard to achieve what, at first, seems like a pipe dream, while five female Buffalo High School seniors show us that coding and STEM sciences aren’t only dominated by men, as they bring home national accolades for creating a Meals on Wheels app to help seniors. In the spirit of all of the amazing Wyoming women, we invite you to sit back and celebrate their stories. By: Jen C. Kocher
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Photo credit Sheridan Travel & Tourism #VisitSheridan
Jordyn
Cooking Up a Career
BASON:
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s executive chef at Frackelton’s Fine Food and Spirits, Jordyn Bason is not shy about how much she loves her job. Bason started with Frackelton’s as a dishwasher six years ago when they first opened, and she didn’t know anything about professional cooking. One day, when the head
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chef asked her if she wanted to work on the line, she showed enthusiasm and he gave her a chance. Bason learned everything she could over the following years. “I kept pushing. I offered to do all the little things to catch the chef ’s eye and worked my way up. I worked every position on the line,” she said.
Eventually Bason became the sous chef. “The last executive chef thought I was good and wanted the best of the best,” she said. “He understood that, at 24 years of age, I didn’t have the experience. I could make specials, but there’s so much more. So, he hired a professional. A guy who could do restaurant rehab. He showed me
everything I needed to know.” The plan was for Bason to move up to executive chef last October, but she had two hip surgeries and was out for three months. “It was a very boring three months, and I was eager to get back to work,” she said. In November, she finally reached the goal she had been working toward for six years. “I love Frackelton’s,” Bason said. “It’s a community in the heart of downtown with big, open windows. I love the people who work here.” In particular, Bason appreciates, as a person with tattoos and piercings, that she doesn’t ever get judged. “It’s a refreshing feeling for me,” she said. “It can be nerve-wracking in an open kitchen. People 2018andTextron are always watching can talk to you, but I’ve never Off gotten any judgement. ” Road Wildcat XX As a chef, Bason keeps pushing forward, $ STARTING AT 20,499 creating new things. She is proud to take feedback and accommodate diners’ allergies and preferences. “I love coming in to my job every day,” she said. “There are several regulars who come in because of the atmosphere.” With its historic building and a progressive atmosphere, Bason said Frackelton’s has a lot to offer. “It creates a little community,” she said. Bason grew up in Story and went to Holy Name Catholic School from pre-school through eighth grade with the same 10 kids. “Living in Story, I was more alone and didn’t have the same stuff town people had,” Bason recalled. “My2018 dog Sadie Textron was my best friend in the entire world. She would walk down the road to meet Off Road Stampede 4 the school bus every day.” $ SheSTARTING developed a AT huge 15,199 love for animals, even snakes and spiders, and the outdoors. “I climbed trees, had treehouses, hung out with deer,” Bason said. “I wanted to be a vet. After high school, I bounced around in my head what I wanted to be - a lawyer, nurse, or a vet. I lost my way after high school.” That’s how she ended up dishwashing and finding her love of cooking. “I don’t know what the future holds,” she said. “Life is always evolving. For right now, I’m pretty content doing what I love.” “If I had to let people know one thing,” Bason said, “it’s this: You work hard, and you get what you want.”
307-675-CATS (2287) 2524 Heartland Dr | Sheridan, WY 82801
By: Kevin M. Knapp MARCH / APRIL 2019
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GIRLS Who Code
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hen Buffalo High School seniors Teaghen Sweckard, sister Addysen, and friends Seren Chapin, Shelbi Kovar and Georgia Wages first put up a poster advertising their all-girl coding club, they took a little ribbing from peers for being part of such a nerdy organization. But when the girls recently took first in the state at the Girls Go CyberStart Challenge several of their classmates – including boys – were suddenly clamoring to join. Today, the club has grown to more than 30 students, and it’s safe to say that the girls have made coding cooler. The win itself was pretty impressive, if not
entirely surprising, even to them, given that up until a year ago only one, Teaghen, even knew how to code, yet none knew what it took to design an app. Now, thanks to their hard work, the Buffalo Senior Center’s Meals on Wheels delivery program just got that much easier with the launch of a new app that streamlines the delivery process. Along with maps and directions to each client’s house, the app also provides schedules, dietary restrictions and other notes relevant to that client’s meal delivery, and can be easily updated on the backend through a spreadsheet. As part of a club requirement, the girls were to required to isolate a problem within the community and create an app or use technology,
to help solve it. Because some of them had been volunteer delivery drivers, they had experienced first-hand the loose-leaf binder cluttered with post-it notes that was the previous system, and knew they could do better. It wasn’t their first idea and it took a bit of trial and error to get there. Preliminary concepts involved
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increasing tourism, helping those who have been sexually assaulted or bullied and even designing an app to allow online delivery for a local restaurant. But due to a variety of reasons, from licensure to skill levels, they landed on the Meals on Wheels delivery app, which was met with considerable interest from the Buffalo Senior Center.
The trick now, was learning how to actually code the app. Enter BHS Technology Director Cameron Kukuchka and Sheridan College instructor Mark Thoney, both of whom worked closely with the team to help them get up to speed. They began working on the project last April and continued
over the summer, meeting weekly at McDonald’s to compare notes and write code. Because they were using a Google application, they were able to work from the same document in real time and each worked on a specific task on the project. This fall, Thoney learned of the Congressional App Challenge and encouraged the crew to apply. MARCH / APRIL 2019
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Teaghen submitted the app on behalf of the team due to team size constraints. After a several month wait, Teaghen was notified that their app had won. They were shocked when they’d heard they won, which along with $250 worth of Amazon web tools has earned Teaghen a trip to DC to the prestigious #HouseofCode and a lunch date with former Gov. Matt Mead, has also sparked an interest in learning more. “They realized how successful they could be with no skills,” Kukuchka said, adding that he’s mighty proud of them. Today, listening to the girls talk about Javascript, Bootstrap, PHPs and Cloud 9 code editors, they are more like characters out of a Mr. Robot episode than a group of teenage girls chatting around a lunch table. They expressed interest in entering a couple more competitions as they peppered Kukuchka with questions about deadlines and other particulars as they relive the highlights of their last cyber security competition. “I can’t afford to lose sleep for another month,” Teaghen jokes, remembering those sleepless days
and nights designing the app. Along with learning code, the experience taught them how to deal with frustration, she added. “It was mentally, physically and socially exhausting,” Shelbi said with a dramatic sigh. “We learned that we might not get it on the first try,” Seren chimed in, “and it might be more like the 40th time but we’d get there.” In that competition, too, they’d scored well in the top 50 schools across the nation, as the girls from the tiny town in northeastern Wyoming continue to put Buffalo on the map. Starting Girls Who Code had been Teaghen’s idea, who became interested in learning how to code her sophomore year after putting together a bionic hand in a science class. Given her future interest in pursuing a career in medicine, learning how to code seemed like a great career move. After approaching the student council to add a coding club on campus, Teaghen talked her friends into joining, who immediately agreed. Having these skills could only help them, and their parents readily agreed.
Plus, as they soon learned, not only was coding kinda fun but was also addictive. Their interest was further cemented after Kukuchka shuttled them down to Boulder during the summer to tour Google Boulder, which more than anything they found most inspiring. For techy millennials, Google is about as cool as it gets, and the girls talked excitedly about how cool the employees were, the slides between floors in place of stairs, all the cool artwork and murals on the walls. More than anything, they were impressed with the stories some of the employees shared about how they’d ended up working at Google. “Not all the Google kids had the same story,” Seren said, pointing out that some of them hadn’t even known much about computers at the time but had just applied and shown a willingness to learn. The possibilities of this resonated with the girls who up until a year ago had no idea of all they could do. By: Jen C. Kocher MARCH / APRIL 2019
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in Full
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any people have a hard time remembering what they had for breakfast that morning, but for 102-year-old Clara Leno, the past is anything but opaque. “I had no expectations that I would ever reach this age,” Clara said matter-of-factly, “but I’m here and I have my full memory back to age 2.” These memories begin over a century ago as a child living on her family homestead outside of Mayville, North Dakota. She remembers sitting in the rocking chair on the porch of the family’s Sears & Roebuck home that had arrived fully built. “We just ordered a home,” she said with a faraway smile as if drifting back to that magical time of carefree summer afternoons when the open prairie yawned wide before her under a horizon of blue skies and sunshine. Back then, she was pretty spunky, she admits. Growing up with German parents, Clara remembers being 5, and telling her parents she no longer wanted to speak German in their home. They were Americans now, she’d told them, and as such felt they should be speaking English. After winning the battle at home, Clara was chagrined when a large entourage of German-speaking Russians infiltrated their mixed community of immigrant homesteaders. With so many German-speaking families now in the region, German once again became the dominant language as churches and local businesses followed suit. Clara had no choice but to learn to speak it and took the mission with her trademark self-determination and drive.
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“I delivered the entire Catechism in German without making one mistake,” she said proudly. “I memorized every single word. I had no choice.” That she would eventually grow up to be a German language teacher, both in high school and later college, is an irony not lost on her, as she smiles at the circuitous nature of events. Among the more memorable moments of her life was her decision at age 16 to leave the family homestead and go to high school in the city. Back then, the Great Depression was in full swing, and as Clara watched her parents struggle to put food on the table for their 11 children, Clara understood if she was ever to make a better life for herself, she would have to do it on her own. “GROWING UP, YOU HAD TO FEND FOR YOURSELF,” SHE SAID. Today, looking back, she believes it was God who spoke to her and urged her to leave the family home to expand her horizons and better her life. Leaving her family, Clara took a live-in maid job with a family in the city and cooked and cleaned before and after school, sleeping on a cot in a nook off the kitchen. With high school diploma eventually in hand, she kept working odd jobs cleaning or clerking in local stores to put herself through college, ultimately becoming a German teacher. “I didn’t want anything to stand in my way, so I just went forward,” Clara said, raising a clenched fist. “I did what I had to do to make my education possible. I did it all on my own.”
She still loves German grammar, she added with a shy smile, as she leaned forward to greet a group of ladies from her Bible study class at Elmcroft of Sugarland Ridge, where she’s lived for nearly a month. The Bible group is one of her social outlets along with evening dinners with others in the public dining room. Her son Darrel and his family moved to Sheridan decades ago, where his son Mike and family now also live, and Clara followed them 20 years ago, moving into her own home and now into Sugarland. Other than occasionally wearing hearing aids, Clara is in perfect health, she noted with pride. Not only does she make her own breakfast, but she also walks a couple miles outside every day and says she feels great. “I DON’T SIT STILL FOR ANYTHING,” SHE SAID. “I JUST GO.” Dark-haired, able bodied and petite, Clara bustled around the dining room like a woman half her age with the same drive and determination that’s defined her life. Darrel said she’s always been like this: very serious and determined about everything, including her 48-year marriage to her husband G.C. or “Doc,” named so because of his doctorate in education, who Clara describes as the love of her life. Doc, like Clara, taught at Mayville College, where the two first met. Many of her best memories revolve around her husband, who died of cancer when he was in
his early 70s. “We didn’t get enough years together,” she said, frowning. “He died far too young.” She remembers meeting him as a young teacher, when the two talked in between classes as students passed through the halls. Somehow, though she doesn’t remember the particulars, the two became an item. They were 24 and 26, respectively, when they wed. “I had no aspirations to marry, but he was always very friendly,” she said. Apart from her serious side, Clara also has a light side and loves to entertain. She recalls all the parties she and her husband had with fellow faculty during their college teaching days. One Christmas, she decided to throw a lastminute party, throwing together an impromptu dinner for “50 or so of their closest friends.” “I jumped behind the piano and we all sang,” she said with a nostalgic grin. The other constant in her life is her devout faith and belief in God, which continues to guide her life today. THIS IS HER ADVICE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE: KNOW THE LORD. “It’s very important for everyone to learn who their savior is because one day you are going to say yes or no,” she said. She knows what her answer will be. In the meantime, she’s more than content with her new life at Sugarland Ridge in Sheridan and is eager to meet more residents. Life has taught her many lessons, she said, and she continues to grow. “You learn in stages,” she said, “and you thank God for everything.” By: Jen C. Kocher
Nestled in historic, beautiful Sheridan, Elmcroft of Sugarland Ridge features spacious accommodations, well-appointed amenities and scenic views. MARCH / APRIL 2019
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