This is the Curtain-Time USA group with Willi Unsoeld, first climber to scale the steep west face of Everest. He and his companion got caught in a winter storm on the way down and had to spend the night in a hammock 2,000 feet above the valley floor. In the cold night, all of Willi's toes got frost bitten. But he saved his buddy's toes by placing them in his arm pits. In 1965, he was the Peace Corps director for Nepal, where this photo was taken. I'm on the back row to the left of the distinguished, gray-haired ambassador. Several years later I read an article in the Reader's Digest that Willi, while skiing in Colorado, was killed in an avalanche. He was a cool guy!
This is the Curtain-Time USA group at the U.S. Ambassador's home with our royal guest, King Hussein of Jordan and his Australian wife. The only two things I remember about the evening is that the ambassador was drunk and the King's younger brother was a very strange fellow. I think he had mental problems after talking to him for some time. But it was a rare occasion to rub shoulders with a world figure like the king, a very nice man, who for years helped keep a lid on the animosities between the Israelis and Palestinians. I'm again hiding, this time behind Norm Neilsen, our director, who later became the head of the Scera Theater in Orem. His wife, Rosanne Tueller Neilsen, was runner-up to Miss America in 1965.
A few years ago our dear neighbor, Mel Marion, got me in touch with Roy Rogers, because Mel sold him and Gene Autrey cowboy hats. He arranged a meeting with the two of us at the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville, CA one time when I was in southern California attending an academic conference. Roy was my boyhood hero. In all of our games of cowboys and Indians, I always wanted to be Roy Rogers and use my golden six shooters. So, this was a great opportunity to relive my youthful fantasies. He was very kind and showed me around the museum. The most interesting display was a full-size stuffed figure of his famous palomino horse named Trigger.
