Sir Samurai T. D. Luckey, PhD

director.Dad was taciturn, very knowledgeable, and the strongest man I ever knew.During my birth, my mother, Lily Waggener Luckey, had a near-death experience.She was ill for several months following my birth and my Aunt Floti Waggener took care of me during this time.Although we always had enough to eat, mother worked and acted as if we lived in poverty.I was the youngest of five with three sisters and one brother.We lived at 415 So.Beech St. My B average shattered my siblings' haloes of academic achievement through high school.I played basketball, clarinet (poorly), sang in choirs and musical productions, and, in 1933-34, was president of my 300 member freshman class at Natrona County High School.Summers were spent on our ranch.Our ranch was about 60 miles north of Casper, about halfway between two famous spots in Wyoming: Kay Cee of the famous Johnson County range war in 1892, and the Hole-In-The-Wall, the only breech in a 30 mile red cliff through which "outlaws" escaped from the more settled country onto our range.The ranch consisted of about ten family/friends' homesteads of 640 acres each which controlled about 20 square miles of range on both sides of Murphy Creek.We eventually had about 500 cattle (5-8 were milked), about 150 horses (about 20 were used for work and riding), and 1-2000 sheep.The ranch provided a practical education in biology.I worked hard (half-days from 7 years old and full time from 11), mostly in hay fields, and became a good rider.I was not a cowboy, never had chaps, boots or spurs.Without radio, electricity, telephone, TV, or books, a boy had to do something.My hobby was snakes.I knew every part of Ditmar's (1931) encyclopedic volume on snakes.When I was about 11, "milking" rattlesnakes and collecting dried venom was a preamble to becoming a biochemist.When the ranch went bankrupt in the summer of 1935, I became foreman with one hired hand, a cook and a few remaining animals.I