THE WEATHER OFFICER

The only things rolling around Wyoming’s capital were tumbleweeds, and when Alonzo and Betty first saw one spinning down the middle of the road, they wondered if they were in an episode of Gunsmoke. This was going to take some getting used to. Wyoming operated under de facto segregation up until 1957 when the state passed a law that banned race discrimination in all public facilities. This type of legislation was becoming more commonplace around the country in areas outside of the south as the national push for civil rights strengthened. Still, there were many White residents in Cheyenne who held on to their pre-1957 attitudes. The good news was that Miss Robinette was still living at the same house in the southwestern corner of town where the Black residents lived. She didn’t have space in her modest home for a family of three, so she referred Alonzo and Betty to a good friend and neighbor. Miss Frances was a widow and was more than happy to have the Smiths stay with her for as long as they needed. Cheyenne’s Black population was miniscule. Two percent of roughly 43,000 people to be exact. Some of the Black residents had been there for decades—the descendants of homesteaders, ranchers, and those who’d escaped racial horrors in the South. Even in her advanced years Miss Robinette was remarkably civic-minded. An educated woman, she was passionate about mentoring young people, and along with some of her associates, she organized the community to fight for equal opportunities, although she lamented having an uphill battle. Many residents had either lost hope or didn’t feel the full weight of Wyoming’s tempered oppression. However, Miss Robinette was fiercely undeterred, and when she met Captain Alonzo Smith, Jr., she’d found a new partner. She wasted no time getting “The Captain,” as she called him, in front of the young men, and immediately he felt a sense of purpose, realizing that maybe God brought him to Cheyenne for a reason other than his job. When Alonzo first drove through the gates at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, he felt the weight of history and the responsibility of continuing an important legacy. He was following in the footsteps of courageous Black military men who’d been stationed there, including the all-Black 9th and 10th Calvary, and 24th and 25th Infantry—the Buffalo Soldiers, said to be honorably named by the very Indian tribes they fought against. General Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., Alonzo’s longtime hero, was also here in the early 1900s. Originally an army installation during the Indian Wars, Warren played a critical role in America’s westward expansion, serving as a training post for soldiers whose job was to safeguard railroad workers from the Great Plains Indians (history recorded these indigenous Americans as being hostile, when in fact, they were defending their land). However, what made Warren different from the other bases Alonzo had been assigned to, was that there were no pilots, no planes, and no runways. This was the height of the Cold War, a time when the country feared a communist takeover by the Soviet Union (Russia). As a deterrent, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was using the threat of nuclear weapons, and Warren’s mission was to maintain and operate intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), most which were located in underground silos around the region, the first of their kind deployed in the U.S. Eisenhower’s policy was accelerated by intelligence reports that stated the Soviets were producing weapons at a much higher rate than the U.S. The report was later debunked, but not before a nuclear arms race was put into full swing. The first ICBMs came under Warren’s jurisdiction just four months before Alonzo’s arrival, and there were few precedents in which he could look to in this new missile wing, the first fully operational ICBM unit in the U.S. Air Force. Working under the 13th Air Division as the sole weather officer, Alonzo’s job was to provide weather support to the division commander, as well as those working in the base’s command post and disaster control office. He had no background in weather support for missile operations, but failure was not an option. Weather was weather, he reasoned. It didn’t make a difference if he was forecasting for pilots or missiles, the process was the same. His first order of business would be to familiarize himself with the base’s weather station. That is, until he discovered there wasn’t one. No facility on the base where weather data was gathered and analyzed. How on earth does a weather officer do his job without a weather station? That was for him to figure out.