JYG CONFERENCE, WEST DES MOINES IOWA: ITINERARY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28:
Arrival/check-in/Registration: 9:30 a.m.^×9:30 p.m. Vendors all three days--Social
Wandering Minstrel: Lonesome Ron, James-Younger Poetry, Open Forum, Lunch & supper on own
4:00-4:30: Lecture by Robert Leonard "Dutch-Catfish" Pribble II of the Pribble Museum of Arcadian Life, Osprey, Florida: "Jesse W. James^×Arcadian Folk Hero."
5:30 ^Ö 6:30 P.M. Welcome cocktail reception & BUSINESS MEETING FOR ELECTION OF OFFICERS
6:30 ^Ö 7:30:Welcome Ceremonies:
1st Speaker: Vicki Comegys, Director of Sales and Service, Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau.
2nd Speaker Des Moines Mayor or other public official. (Paulette Lester is looking into the city official options and will be contacting me today or tomorrow.
3rd Speaker: Jack Koblas, JYG President, on itinerary review with bus trip preview & short talk, "Jesse James in Iowa."
8:00^×10:00: JYG Square Dance conducted by Caller Gale Ramberg with Gale's Gang, four professional dancing couples who will show us how to dance, lead us onto the dance floor, and join us in hoe-downing away the evening.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29:
Bus trip: Buses depart at 8:15 a.m. from Country Inn Suites. Stop #1: 9:15^×10:30 Wyatt Earp House, Pella Historical Village, Pella, Iowa. The restored boyhood home of Wyatt Earp is located in the Pella Historical Village, a collage of more than 20 buildings^×some more than 150 years old. These structures are nestled in a courtyard laced with brick walkways. Stop #2, 11:30^×4:30^×Corydon, Iowa, where on June 3, 1871 Frank and Jesse James, Cole Younger and Clell Miller robbed the Ocobock Brothers Bank. Private tour of the Prairie Trails Museum of Wayne County, a large main brick building housing 25,000 artifacts in five galleries covering over 21,000 sq. ft. The museum is home to a first person account of the actual robbing of the bank as well as the actual safe tapped by the boys. Lunch on your own and lots of free time. Buses Depart Corydon at 4:30 p.m. and arrive West Des Moines 6-6:30.
7:00-10:00--.Supper on own, Social, Open Forum.
Alan Crawford lecture: "Why Cousins Marry Cousins" and little known James family history.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
8:30-9:15, Guest Speaker Mark Boardman, "Bands of Brothers: The Trail of the Renos and Jameses."
9:30-10:15: Guest Speaker Gary Chilcote, "Strange Case of Greg May," or "How an 1883 letter to Frank James led to the Chainsaw Murder of a Northeast Iowa Man in 2001."
10:30 11:15: Guest Speaker: Rick Mattix, "Midwest Banditry and the Jesse James Tradition."
11:15-1:30: Lunch with soft music by Lonesome Ron
1:30-2:15: Panel. Moderator Chip De Mann, authors Boggs, Mattix, Boardman, Chilcote, Koblas and Northfield Historical Society Executive Director Hayes Scriven. Panel topics^×The later years of Cole Younger & Frank James focusing on their Wild West Show, and also Jesse James activities in Iowa.
2:15-7:00: Autographing by authors; social. Free time and/or Optional tour to Adair train robbery site 45 minutes away.
Banquet
"The Desperadoes" performing cowboy music (45 minutes)
Silent Auction
Guest Speaker, Johnny D. Boggs, "Jesse James In Fiction and Film: Separating the Fact from the Myths -- Or Not."
Tomfoolery
BIOS
Mark Boardman has been interested in the Old West since he was a little boy, watching Westerns on television. For the past six years, he's lived his dream and worked full-time on Old West projects. He is the Chief Purveyor of Scarlet Mask, a company that sells outlaw and lawman books. He's also published two books^× REVENGE! And Other True Tales of the Old West, a collection of previously unpublished articles by some of the top writers in the field, including Robert DeArment, Chuck Parsons, and John Boessenecker. One of the pieces, by Nancy Samuelson, looks at the family connections of the James-Younger Gang. His second book came out this summer--Deadly Affrays, The Deaths of the US Marshals, by Robert Ernst. This is a listing of all of the members of the marshals service who have died in the line of duty since 1787--including several in Missouri, Oklahoma and other areas during the outlaw era. In 2004, Mark was a featured expert on the History Channel's program Investigating History: The Dalton Gang's Raid on Coffeyville. He has written for a number of publications, including True West, Wild West, the Montana Magazine of History, and the journals of NOLA and WOLA. He is currently the features editor for True West magazine. Boardman is a recognized expert on the Reno Gang of Indiana, which ran roughshod across the southern part of that state in the 1860s--and which helped create the art of train robbery later adopted by the James-Young Gang.
Gary Chilcote. Following his presentation to NOLA, Mr. Chilcote testified at the Makoketa, Iowa. murder trial of Doug De Bruin in April, 2005, where his girlfriend, Julie Anne Miller, told how they strangled the Jesse James artifact collector, then dissected the body with a chain saw at Bellevue, Iowa. The torso was thrown into the Mississippi River; arms and legs tossed from their car, and the skull placed in a bucket of concrete, hauled 400 miles south and left at the truck stop at Kearney, overlooking the grave of Jesse James. It was 3 years before the skull was reconstructed and identified as Greg May's, just in time to provide a body for the murder trial. At his sentencing, De Bruin noted they were best friends and fellow tattoo artists. Each morning when he gets up, the first things he sees are the tattoos his murdered best friend placed on his arms.Just goes to show that people fascinated by Jesse James are still getting dead a century-and-a-quarter after his death.
Rick Mattix is one of the leading authorities on 1920s-1930s gangsters and is well versed on our boys as well: Books co-authored by Rick "Mad Dog" Mattix: Thompson, the American Legend: The First Submachine Gun; Public Enemies: America's Criminal Past, 1919-1940;Dillinger: The Untold Story (Expanded Edition)The Complete Public Enemy Almanac: New Facts and Features on the People, Places, and Events of the Gangster and Outlaw Era, 1920-1940. Mattix has served as a research consultant to other authors and to various true crime programs such as the A&E Biography episodes on Ma Barker and Bonnie & Clyde, documentaries on Dillinger, Capone, and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. He was recently interviewed for an upcoming two-hour History Channel presentation on Midwest Depression gangs entitled "Crime Wave"airing this Fall.Webpage:www.geocities.com/teaser_4224/RickmaddogMattix.html
Johnny D. Boggs is a two-time winner of the Spur Award from Western Writers of America, and recipient of the prestigious Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Booklist magazine calls Boggs "among the best Western novelists at work today." His two Spur Awards came in 2002 for his short story, "A Piano at Dead Man's Crossing," and in 2006, for his lyrical baseball novel, Camp Ford. In 2004, Boggs won the Wrangler for his novel Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs . Boggs, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., is also a frequent contributor to many Western magazines, including True West and Wild West. Other novels include Arm of the Bandit: The Trial of Frank James, East of the Border and The Big Fifty. He is currently working on a novel, Northfield, scheduled for release next year. His website is www.johnnydboggs.com.
Robert Leonard "Dutch-Catfish" Pribble II is the curator of the Pribble Museum of Arcadian Life, Osprey, Florida, which features a Jesse James exhibit.
Jack Koblas is the author of 51 books, including a dozen on the James-Younger Gang, and is currently serving as president of the JYG.
Alan Crawford is a long time James Family historian.
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