Page 44 of Shadows Reel

After rubbing butteron the cold skin of the big turkey, she slid it into the oven and covered it with a sheet of aluminum foil. Then she heated a mug of water in the microwave for a cup of tea that, she hoped, might induce her to want to go back to sleep for a couple of hours. She doubted it would work because she was jazzed by the impending arrival of her family and friends. Tube heard her stirring and waddled into the kitchen and collapsed in a heap at Marybeth’s feet.

Joe had told her about finding the footlocker under Bert Kizer’s bed and she was curious about it. As she steeped the tea bag in the hot water, she found his phone and powered it on. She knew Joe wouldn’t mind if she looked at the photos he’d taken at the crime scene. After all, her past research in the library and on law enforcement databases had assisted him on investigations time and time again. He encouraged her to get involved in whatever he was working on.

She scrolled in reverse order through the shots of the armyuniform and the insignias and back through his photo stream until she found the unopened locker. That’s where she stopped. Marybeth hoped that he hadn’t taken any shots of the burned victim earlier in the day and she had no desire at all to find out.

The cover of the old footlocker read:

R. W. Kizer

U.S. Army

She shook her head. She’d never met nor heard of R. W. Kizer. It was odd that in a single day she was confronted with two military relics from the bygone past, one German and one American.

Was R. W. Kizer Bert’s father? Joe seemed to think so.

She retrieved the album and her laptop from the pantry.

Marybeth booted up her device and googled the name. There were “Kizer Frames” for roller skates and a paper written by an R. W. Kizer on something called Nitrogen Narcosis for the 29th Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society Workshop in 1985. She doubted that was Bert’s dad.

There was a “Ray W. Kizer” on Ancestry.com and she clicked on it. She’d found something, she thought. Ray Kizer was listed as military and his name was taken from an archive calledU.S. Navy Cruise Books, 1918–2009. Her excitement dissipated when it was revealed that he was a Lieutenant Junior Grade C in the navy. The photo on Joe’s phone was clearly an army uniform.

She could smell the aroma of the turkey heating up and it was enticing. So was the dizzying feeling she got when she was on the hunt.

Marybeth changed the search criteria. As far as she knew, Bert had lived in the area his whole life, which meant his dad might have been local as well. She keyed in “Kizer,” “Saddlestring,” and “Wyoming.”

She got a hit. It was a link to a short obituary from the SaddlestringRoundupdated February 5, 2000.

It was titled “Richard ‘Dick’ Kizer.”

Longtime Twelve Sleep County resident Richard “Dick” Kizer passed away at the Bighorn Mountain Senior Center on February 2, 2000. He was 79.

Dick Kizer was born September 3, 1921, in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, to a pioneering ranch family. The Kizer family moved to Casper in 1930 and later to their sheep ranch east of Saddlestring in 1938. Kizer graduated from Saddlestring High School in 1940.

In 1941, 20-year-old Kizer joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, under Major Dick Winters. As one of the “Band of Brothers,” Kizer landed in Europe during the invasion of Normandy and remained with the unit all the way through the Battle of the Bulge and beyond. Easy Company was the first American contingent to reach “The Eagle’s Nest”—Hitler’s Alpine retreat of Berchtesgaden. He was one of two Wyoming soldiers to stay with Easy Company throughout the war.

After World War II, Kizer returned to the valley and married Lorena “Dottie” Neil. He worked as a ranch foreman, a roofing contractor, a school janitor, and a fishing guide. Dick enjoyed hunting, fishing, camping, and attending rodeos.

Dick Kizer was preceded in death by Dottie. They had one son, Wilbur “Bert” Kizer, also of Saddlestring.

Bingo.

Marybeth sat back in her chair, her head spinning.

She leaned over her keyboard and keyed “Easy Company” and “WWII” into the search engine and was suddenly awash with items pertaining to the “Band of Brothers,” “Major Dick Winters,” “Stephen Ambrose,” and scores of other hits. What interested her most was the shoulder insignia of Easy Company.

It was the same patch Joe had photographed on the army uniform.

She sipped her tea and tried to imagine what it must have been like for a local ranch boy who had probably never traveled out of state in his young life, much less internationally, to be sent to Europe to storm the beaches of Normandy and then push through France, Holland, Belgium, and into the heart of Nazi Germany. The things he must have seen and experienced!

And then to return home after the war to be a... school janitor.

It boggled her mind. But his service and exploits must have impressed his son, she thought. Bert kept his father’s militaryuniform and souvenirs close to him. Although Marybeth knew nothing about Dick Kizer, she imagined him to be similar to older men she’d met who survived World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. They kept to themselves, spoke very little about their experiences during the war, and went on with life.

She contrasted that to the self-aggrandizing photo album of Julius Streicher and thought,Thank God the good guys won.

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The reference in the obituaryto another Wyoming resident in Easy Company intrigued her. Always the least-populated state in the nation, Wyoming had only 250,000 residents in 1940. That two of them were in one of the most storied units of World War II was a remarkable coincidence.

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