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For the last couple of weeks, the media has simply identified him as the “74-year-old man who had a heart attack while evacuating from the Caughlin Fire.” Well, we now know his name and the events leading up to his death.

Born in 1937, Gordon Cupples, grew up in Red Bluff and joined the U.S. Marine Corps as an aviator after attending Oregon State. After his time in the service he became a commercial pilot, flying for United.

Cupples was also a member of the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office Air Squadron search and rescue team. It’s this background that lead Cupples to start helping his elderly neighbor get out of the path of the oncoming blaze.

It was a combination of the smoke-filled air and continually rushing up stairs to his neighbor’s home that caused him to suffer a massive heart attack. Obviously, he put others before himself and it cost him his life.

As it states in the Bible: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 (NIV)

He’s survived by his wife, Roxana; and children, Jim Cupples of Carmel, Calif., Bill Cupples of Anchorage, Alaska, and Lyn Hudgens of Grass Valley; stepson’s, Marcus Carlson and Kris Carlson of Reno; and sister, Susy Martin.

A service for Gordon Cupples is planned for noon Wednesday following an 11 a.m. viewing at the Mountain View Mortuary. And while I didn’t know him personally — I think I’ll be in attendance to honor my now fallen fellow Marine.

It’s a memory I’ve kept to myself for years, fearful that the person it involves might not recall things as I do. But I’ve decided to share it anyway – since I ain’t getting any younger.

We were playing along the fence line, jus’ beyond the swings and the twirler bar before school started at Margaret Keating School. I can only remember one other person aside from myself, and that was Kathy Markel.

What game we might have been playing is also lost to my recollection. But what I do recall is she tackled me and then sat on top of me, refusing to let me up.

I was very distressed that a girl had me pinned like she did.

Before I knew it, she had my arms trapped to the ground over my head and we were face-to-face. That’s when she quickly kissed me on the lips – jumped off me and took off running.

The moment she was off me, I got up and started chasing her – intending to return the favor. However the recess bell rang about that time and we had to start lining up to go inside to our first grade classroom.

Kathy moved shortly after that. And I wouldn’t see her again until we were freshmen in at Del Norte High.

By this time though, we were running in different circles and hardly had contact with one another. I always wanted to ask if she remembered wrestling me to the ground and kissing me – but I never had the courage.

In 1864, the Crystal Peak Company founded a town in Washoe County near the mountain of that name, a couple of miles north of where the Truckee River exits Truckee Canyon. Part of the town was in Nevada, but part of it was in California.

Fortunately, Sierra County, California did not squabble over taxation and local authority, which is what Plumas County, California did to cause the Roop County War of 1863.

Crystal Peak was a mining and lumber town and reached a population of 1500 residents. However, it was not long-lived. The Crystal Peak Company found gold, but not any veins of profitable concentration. It also found coal, but none of commercial utility.

When the Central Pacific Railroad built-in 1867 the nearby labor camp that became Verdi, it offered competitive wages for lumbermen and perhaps more attractive living conditions. By 1872, when ice and lumber merchant Oliver Lonkey built the first mansion in Verdi, the town of Crystal Peak was dying.

For the last six months Kay has been working the Weight Watchers program. She’s have success with it too.

This new eating life-style has led to some odd recipes; some having tasted rather delicious – while others, not so much. Either way, I try to encourage her to stick to the plan and try different things as the program suggests.

When she first started, she was in to what I coined as “juicing,” using the Jack Lalanne’s Power Juicer to concoct some very strange beverages. One day she “juiced” a ripe avocado to see how it would taste.

Let me tell you – it tasted Gawd awful.

However the pulp the juicer left behind made a wonderful avocado sandwich with a little mayo and salt and pepper. So it wasn’t all for naught.

At present, Kay is into pumpkin recipes. Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin cakes and pumpkin lasagna – which none has been bad to the taste buds.

But one has to admit, it has been an adventure to see what the hell she’s going to come up with next. I don’t mind – jus’ as long as I get fed some how – which does include making way for me to use the stove from time to time.

Then we were watching the movies, “Julie and Julia,” when I was struck with a neat idea. I looked at Kay and asked, “Why don’t you write a blog about your experience with Weight Watchers?”

She looked at me with a frown.

I added, “You can call it “Weighting – w-e-i-g…”

Kay interrupted me by saying, “Are you kidding me?”

“No,” I shook my head.

She jus’ rolled her eyes at me. That’s the last I spoke of it.

I thought it was pretty good idea – and I jus’ love the title.

In 1871, the newest EI Dorado in silver was Tuscarora in Independence Valley. The town was 25 miles away from one neighbor, Cornucopia, and 45 miles away from another, Columbia.

At its liveliest, perhaps there were 4,000 inhabitants.

A rush of men journeyed to the area when the silver was discovered. As usual, more went than the prospecting and mining could support.

A decline in population was not long in coming. However, ten years later, the town still had 2 churches, a newspaper, and 150 students taught by 3 teachers in a building converted into a school. (In departure from usual Nevada practice, one had never been built.)

There were more general stores, twelve, than saloons, eleven. Tuscarora was a lasting, prosperous town. It was not an ‘overnighter’ such as Treasure Hill.

His death rocked the news and broadcast community throughout Northern Nevada. JK Metzker died November 13th after being struck by a vehicle while crossing North Virginia late Saturday.

He was only 41-years old and a father of three young boys.

The news practically shattered the staff of KTVN, where he was Sports Director. The TV station cancelled that evenings newscast — finding as Weatherman Mike Alger said — “it’s jus’ too hard for any of us here at Channel 2 News to focus on the work that it takes to produce a newscast.”

My co-worker Landon Miller, who interned at KTVN for several months, was visibly shaken the evening of JK’s death. He invited me and my friend Kay to accompany him to JK’s funeral, not wanting to go all by himself.

I’ve found funerals and memorial services affect people this at sometimes.

Services were held in the beautiful Our Lady of Snows church in Reno, where it was literally standing room only.  It’s the same Catholic church where JK and his wife, Jaimie exchanged vows in 1989.

The friends and family members who stood and spoke on behalf of JK, told of a man who had a strong sense of family and self, a solid work ethic and a wickedly quick sense of humor. Some of the tales relieved those gathered of their tears — at least momentarily — as they enjoyed a laugh.   

His passing serves to remind me to appreciate the people in my life — and to tell them how much I DO appreciate them..

In April 1860, the Pony Express Company was started. It’s only link to the US Post Office was that the letters it carried had to have stamps on them.

This enabled them to be dropped in the mail when a city with a post office had been reached. The delivery cost of a letter between San Francisco and the Atlantic States was $5.

A relay system for changing horses every 25 miles and riders every 75 miles made the Express the fastest way for a letter to cross from Missouri to California. By changing horses every 10-15 miles, riders in 1861 carried Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address from St. Joseph, Missouri to Carson City in five and three-quarter days.

That translated into almost 13 miles an hour, then a record speed for travel. However fast the Express was, it could not compete with the telegraph.

It went out of business in October 1861, soon after San Francisco was linked by wire to New York City, already by then the economic center of the United States.

It began, at least for me, at about 12:25 Friday morning. I was listening to the scanner in the station’s newsroom, when I heard a fire crew tell dispatch they were unable to get a handle on brush fire  burning in a ravine, between Cashill Drive and Skyline Blvd.

A second crew was sent and even before they arrived, it seemed as if the first crew was requesting more assets be dispatched to the area. From the description the crews were giving, the blaze was caught up by gusting winds and was sent southwest up the draw.

Next thing I heard was that the blaze had split in two, one burning towards Gibraltar. The other, racing up hill towards McCarran Blvd.

Crews immediately closed down McCarran between Skyline and Caughlin Ranch Parkway. They would make a stand in that area, fighting to keep the wind from carrying the fire to the opposite side of McCarran.

Shortly before sunrise authorities discovered the fire had jumped their line, starting a new blaze near the base of Windy Hill. That fire eventually burned a portion of the Bartley Ranch area, before it was stopped.

For the remainder of my morning I listened to fire crew arriving from throughout Northern Nevada and Eastern California. My shift ended at around 4:30am and I headed for home, smelling smoke and seeing the eerie orange-glow of the fire reflected in my truck’s rearview mirror.

Officials stopped the major portion of the Caughlin fire by that mid-afternoon. At one point more than 470 firefighters were on the lines.

A state of emergency was put in place for the effected area, but has since been lifted.  In the end the fire destroyed 32 structures, burned 2,000 acres.

Fire crews did save 4,000 homes and were able to stop the forward movement of the sudden and unexplained blaze. The fire forced the evacuations of more than 95-hundred people, caused the death of a 74-year-old man, who died from a heart attack while evacuating his home.

It left 17 people injured, including a firefighter, who was hospitalized with first and second degree burns. He’s listed in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery.

About 2,300 customers were left without power overnight as the result of the fire. Late into the night and early Saturday morning, the weather turned from heavy winds, to a light snow to the valley floor and near freezing temperatures.

By Saturday night’s sunset, fire crews had the blaze 80-percent contained, with full-containment expected by mid-week. Now the hard part gets underway — the recovery and rebuilding of lives.

This series was written as a part of a advertizing campaign that Paul Stewart and I dreamed up for KONE Country. Unfortunately it never got beyond this stage as the format changed from Country to American Standard music.

We had intended them to be voiced-over by Norm Nielson, who had some fame as one of the writers for the TV show, “Bonanza.” He went of to create his own radio vignette called, “Tales of Nevada,” and writing two books bearing the same name.

Sadly, both Paul and Norm are no longer with us today. I’ve decided to rename the series “Silver Tailings,” which hopefully one day I’ll turn into a book or two.

In November 1864, it was proposed that Gold Hill be permanently separated from Virginia City, which had been urging consolidation of the adjacent town for a year. Gold Hill would be the seat of a new county that would include American Flat and some of the mountains between Gold Hill and Washoe Valley.

The proposal was made because of the indebtedness of Virginia City and Storey County, over $200,000 and $300,000, respectively. The citizens of Gold Hill claimed they had no part in running up the debt, but were being asked to help repay it.

Nevada’s State Legislature, which met for its very first session on December 11, 1864, ignored the proposal. They probably felt that the residents of Gold Hill had received more gain from the debt than they admitted to.

However, the idea of splitting Nevada counties into smaller units gained a foothold and was not forgotten. Over the next 55 years, the original nine counties became the seventeen of today.

Time and again I’ve heard the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd and their offspring, “Occupy Oakland,” “Occupy Seattle,” etc., tell a news camera they have a right to assemble and protect. And I’ll go so far as to say they are absolutely right and I’d defend that right with the last bit of my strength.

But what they’re missing is the difference between assembly and encampment. There is no guarantee to the right to set up a tent city on local, state or federal properties, unless you’ve secure a permit for such an activity.

“Occupy Reno,” took the step to secure a permit to develop an encampment – or base of operations, if you will – by approaching the city council and requesting one lawfully. The permit was granted and they are currently set up at the now-closed Moana Swimming Pool facility.

The problem with the majority of the Occupy crowd I hear about daily in the news, is they’ve decided to interpret the U.S. Constitution.  In my opinion, there should be no interpretation of this document — as it reads exactly what is written.

Thus they’ve come to the conclusion its okay to establish an encampment because it’s an assembly. And because of this, they feel its okay to clash with police – after all their rights are being stepped on.

Not.

This kind of tactic may have worked well when the Bolshevik’s overthrew Russia’s Czar Nicholas, dragging him and his family before a firing squad, but I doubt it’ll have the same effect on the average American. If you think civil disobedience will get you anywhere, then stay and learn, otherwise its time to pack it up and go home.