Summer 1960 "The Arm"

A Great Story from Sally Sanders Wakefield

Summer 1960
Bible Standard College ,as it was called then, [Eugene Bible College and now Hope University] encouraged Summer Outreaches from students to their churches.

JoAnn Vaughn, Juhala, Melba Harvey, Rilea, Loretta Graham, Williams and
Sally Sanders, Wakefield answered the call to go to the "Midwest" from Eugene, Oregon to hold Daily Vacation Bible Schools in the day time and Youth Crusade meetings in the evenings.

Leo Wakfield let us use his 1952 Chevy for transportation.

We spent the summer touring Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota.

This story involves our time in Lusk, Wyoming.
It was a summer evening.
Summer evenings in the Midwest are wonderfully warm and inviting.
We were all very young, way to full of energy and had time on our hands.
The Pastor of the church we were working in had a teen aged daughter
who enjoyed spending time with the 4 of us.

We all climbed into the car.
We began to discuss a Midwestern happening of a few years prior.
There had been a traveling murderer who had passed through the Midwest.
If memory serves he put his victims in the trunk of his vehicle
and that is how he was ultimately found out.

We got to talking about "What If" "I wonder what would happen if"

We decided it would be Such Fun to put someone in the trunk of the car.
Let that someone dangle their arm, hand limp out the partly open trunk.

Who best to put in the trunk?
The Pastor’s daughter begged to let it be her.
So we pulled over into a darkened spot.
Put her in the trunk and then drove up and down Main Street slowly.
It was not long until the "Bubble lights" were following us. We pulled over,
2 officers slowly approached our vehicle, if memory serves a gun in one hand and a flash light in the other.
The Pastors daughter let go of the trunk lid, She had been holding the lid down with her "Non Dangling Hand"
The officers, of course recognized her at once.

Since this was a much more innocent time nothing horrible happened.
However, the evening was not over.
We were escorted to the Church office.

We were not aware that Pastor Bozart was also the Chief of Police of Lusk Wyoming.
He of course had been given a call by his officers.
I seem to remember him as a rather large man with a graying crew cut.
We had to wait a bit, shaking in our boots, for him to come to the office.
Needless to say we were no longer giggling and having a great time.

He came in and to our surprise after he had talked to the officers and they were told that they could leave.
He spoke to us briefly, calmly and then told us we probably should get some sleep tomorrow would be another busy day.
Our relief at his response was huge.

To our knowledge the event was never reported to the College.
Testament to a very kind hearted pastor.

The attached picture is of the 4 of us with Leo's car the morning we left Eugene for our Summer Adventure.

Filed in Loving Memory of JoAnn
Sally Sanders Wakefield