Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Sometime in the spring of 1984, my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife of 40 years, invited me to a celebration held at the El Toro, a restaurant that, at the time, was a top eatery in Fremont County. West Elementary School, now Baldwin Creek Elementary, was holding its annual year end party, and lacking a better option, Gayla asked me to join her for a night of merriment of the educator variety, where staff members and their significant others get together and commemorate the school year with food and drink.
I accepted, of course, with a little trepidation of being in the company of so many people whom I did not know. But my good friend, Scott Carlson and his then girlfriend and future wife, Lori Wheeler, would be there, so at least I would know one person I felt comfortable insulting and being insulted in return.
That year was my wife’s first year of teaching, and during those months, she was befriended by a veteran teacher named Martha Howard. During the course of the evening, Gayla introduced me to her and her husband, Y.T. Sempert. (As a sidenote, years passed before I understood his name wasn’t spelled Whitey.)
Y.T. didn’t say much and seemed to be as uncomfortable as me being around a crowd, but soon we found out that we had some mutual outdoor interests of hunting and fishing, so visiting with him was easy. However, it soon became apparent to me that, despite my 25 years of living in Wyoming compared to Y.T.’s half dozen, he was much more proficient in those two hobbies than me.
A native Michigander, I learned that Y.T. made his own fly rods and had already scored a Pope and Young bull elk with a recurve bow in the southern Wind Rivers near Lander. But I didn’t hear that information from him. Someone else, whom I can’t remember now, mentioned it to me sometime during the evening.
Never boastful, Y.T. would never have ventured those accomplishments without being asked.
Over the next 5 or 6 years, I would occasionally see him at small gatherings with some of the staff members from West, and he was always the same: a little reserved, but when he did talk, he had a way of making one feel comfortable and valued.
But there was no doubt that he had his own opinions on a variety of topics and was not afraid to share them. With Y.T., what you saw was what you got. He carried no hidden agendas.
In the fall of 1989, Gayla, my older daughter, Erin, and I moved to Winnemucca, Nevada where I started my teaching career. We stayed there for five years and welcomed another daughter in 1993. Those years were some of the most enjoyable years of my career, but we missed Wyoming; so in 1994 we moved back to Lander and continued our investment in the education of Fremont County’s children.
My wife and I purchased a lot in town and talked Mike Sebade and his building crew into constructing a house for us with room enough for four people. Lucky for us, Y.T. was part of that crew. As part of our handshake agreement, I was allowed to be an unpaid worker in what I believed to be an effort to reduce the cost of the house.
I must have learned something that summer because Mike offered me a job the following summer on his building crew, a practice I continued for 14 years.
That summer was probably the most educational one for me in my life. Mike, Y.T., and Boyd, Mike’s dad, taught me a lot about carpentry, but more importantly, I learned that Y.T. was a steady Eddie on the job site, a hard worker, and in turn, expected everyone on the job to work as hard as he.
I learned that he was a Vietnam war veteran, and although he didn’t say a lot about the war, one instance he did mention makes me believe he didn’t spend his time in safe areas while he was in country.
“One day we came back from patrol,” he began, “and spent the night at a Montagnard (a local ethnic group aligned with United States forces) compound. It was the only night during my whole tour that I felt safe enough to sleep completely through the night.”
Fiercely patriotic and rightly proud of his military service, I heard him say more than once, “I’d do it again, if I had to…in a heartbeat.”
A teacher at LVHS, Y.T. was responsible for what was known then as the Stay in School program and the Building Trades program. As the latter title suggests, he worked with kids who wanted something else other than academics and possibly needed a different reason to stay in school and eventually graduate. I don’t know the details of his curriculum, but I do know that, as part of his class, his students would build a house from start to finish.
With the approval of his administration, he provided a safe place for kids on the edge to learn, and he treated his students with the maturity and respect they needed and deserved.
One often doesn’t know the value of one’s work until years after the student has left the classroom. In his later years, Y.T. from time to time would tell me about communications he received from former students who went on to become craftsmen in the building trades and even one who eventually owned his own successful business.
If I was forced to use just one word to describe him, I would have to say that Y.T. was one of the most generous human beings I have ever known.
One morning on a job site, on the front of the house, I was making plumb cuts for the 2×6 fascia boards on a set of trusses we had set the day before, while Mike, Y.T. and one of Mike’s son’s were laying plywood on trusses for the roof on the back of the house.
A beat up truck pulled up to the curb in front, and a young man stepped out and walked up to the ladder on which I was perched.
“Does Y.T. Sempert work here?” he inquired.
Pointing with my thumb, I let him know, “He’s ‘round back.”
A few minutes later, both Y.T. and the young man walked around front to the seen-better-days pick-up, where a conversation took place for five or so minutes. Hands were shook, and the young man climbed into the pick-up and drove away. Y.T. walked by me, back to the rear of the house, without comment.
Each day, we’d take a coffee break at about 9:30. On that day, during our break, I asked him about his visitor, and he simply said, “Oh, he’s a former student. A little while back he needed some money, so I loaned it to him, and he just came by to pay it back.”
Knowing Y.T., I am sure he would have been perfectly fine had the money never been returned.
As with most schools, administration changes, and when a new principal showed up a year or two later, a dark cloud settled over Y.T’s educational career. The new guy came in with the misguided belief that all high school graduates should go to a college or university and failed to see the value of his Building Trades program. It wasn’t long before the program was scrapped and Y.T. was placed in a position for which he was qualified, but hated.
Y.T. didn’t suffer fools gladly, so he took early retirement soon after and went to work for Wyoming Windows, returning to the work he liked best, and his amiable disposition also returned, much to the relief of those who cared about him the most.
Y.T. was also someone you could call at a moment’s notice for help, and he would show up.
In the late 90’s, on a clear October morning about 9:00, I killed a five point bull elk about a mile from the nearest four-wheel drive road. The elk died on the cool, north slope of a timbered ridge. I spent the rest of the day packing the front quarters back to my pick-up, leaving the rear quarters up on the mountain to cool overnight. The pack out wasn’t all uphill, but a good portion was steep enough that by the time I pulled into my driveway that evening, I was bone tired.
I called Y.T. and asked if he could spare a portion of the next morning to help me pack out the rest, and with no hesitation at all, he simply said, “Sure. Let’s get an early start.”
Not willing to let a debt go unpaid, I knew that someday I would repay it. A few years later, on the opening day of the rifle season, about midday, I decided to visit Y.T. at his elk camp a few miles from where I had set up my own camp. The road, if one was in a hurry, could have been a wheel buster; but taking my time, I eventually encountered his pick-up parked beside the road about a mile from his camp.
The truck’s owner was not around, but suspecting that he had been successful that morning, I looked in the truck bed and was not surprised to see the antlers from a freshly killed bull elk there and no pack frame. So, I waited, knowing that Y.T would soon show up, which he did about 30 minutes later with a hind quarter strapped to his much used pack frame.
I spent the next few hours helping him pack out the rest of the meat. When we were done, he simply said, “Thanks for the help,” but for me, the meaning was so much more than that.
I could go on, relating one story after another, offering examples of Y.T.’s character, but what would be the point? If you’ve read this far, you know, if you didn’t already, that he was a good and decent man. Generous to a fault almost, his word was true, as was his friendship.
Y.T. passed away on June 22 of this year, succumbing to the ravages of Dementia. He will be missed and fondly remembered by many, including me.
Adiós, mi amigo. Espero que nos veamos otra vez en el otro lado.