Casper mayor's son remembers him as an industrious leader and an unsettled father.
"Aspinwall in line for mayorship," read a headline from the Jan. 4, 1974, edition of the Casper Star-Tribune. By the end of that year, Richard Nixon would have resigned as president following Watergate, Kmart was still in business, and the newsstand price of a single copy of the paper was 15 cents.
Charles Aspinwall was the vice mayor and, as was customary in those times, expected to ascend to mayorship and he had one year in the position to make his mark.
According to a sketch included in the paper, Charles had a round face and sharp eyes, akin to the sitcom fathers that populated TVs at the time. He took oath on Monday, January 21. Work began almost immediately. Many facets of the city needed attention, if not swift action.
A set of projects — building a joint city-county criminal justice building and a city hall — came to their design, cost and finance under him that year. A less visible, but just as necessary, endeavor began to expand the sewer system. To help finance those projects, voters would pass the first iteration of Casper's 1-cent tax.
The Downtown Casper Improvement Project was also kicking into high gear. Construction would start under Aspinwall's tenure. Benches, planters and the "serpentine" streets, as one dubbed them, would come to life on East 2nd Street and others. It was to be a sort of "downtown mall," the same noted.
That summer, Casper city councilors would meet two times per week for most of the season.
Publicly, Charles was mayor. Privately, he was a husband and father to two adopted children. He was a graduate of the University of Wyoming's Law School and member of the Democratic Party with state senate aspirations, leveraging his position to secure dinners with figures like Dick and Lynne Cheney — Dick Cheney at the time was an up-and-coming power in national politics, becoming White House Deputy Chief of Staff in December 1974 and chief of staff the following year.
Charles died on July 6 of this year from atherosclerotic heart disease of the coronary arteries — in regular language, a plaque buildup in the arteries that bring nutrients and oxygen to the heart.
His son, Cody Aspinwall, has mixed memories: An active, aggressive father who had a lust for life. An adversary who would use his words and actions to hurt others. A defender of Cody and his younger sister, who are both Native American.
"He [was] a flip-flop person, like an owl," Cody said of his father. "An owl will turn his head and smile at you and then flip around and have the worst scowl on his face."
The Hunter S. Thompson of Caspe
"Casper in the '70s was pretty much an idyllic, all-American, apple pie, pickup truck, horse-riding, cowboy-hat-wearing type of community," Cody said almost two months after his father died.
Charles came to Wyoming from Michigan. He shot guns and rode his motorcycle and took his kids up Casper Mountain. Under the all-Americanness, though, was the tender underbelly of a family fraying at the seams.
"He was the Hunter S. Thompson in the Casper world of mayoral politics," Cody said of Charles. "He really was like the party mayor," he added.
Charles spent his free time drinking, doing hard drugs and chasing women. Everything he did, he did to the fullest extent. He told Cody once that he never lost a case as a litigator. He had a "narcissistic" drive, Cody said, to be the best at what he did, even if it was at the expense of others.
On June 28, 1974, the Casper Star-Tribune reported that Charles had declared a bid for a state Senate seat as a Democrat. The mayor believed that "city and county officials are best equipped to solve impact growth problems."
This, Cody said, would be the beginning of the end of the family's time in Wyoming.
Charles did not win the seat. Shortly after, he packed up his bags and took off for Albuquerque, New Mexico, leaving his wife and kids behind. Cody's mother moved to Laramie, where she finished her master's degree in urban planning.
"It was kind of sad, you know — here was this power couple who did everything they could to get to that point, and then it was all just over after he lost the state senate," Cody recalled. "One of the things my mom said was she was just kind of shocked he gave up after that."
But his father had run fast and hard, and Cody took the brunt of his anger, he told the Star-Tribune.
When he was five, Charles tried to kill Cody by smashing his head into a wine rack, Cody recalls. He made his son swear to not tell anyone. Even if he had, his son recalled, nobody would have believed him.
"It was a different time," Cody said. "But how many people get over their father trying to kill them?"
On top of all the internal problems, Cody and his sister often received attention both negative and positive because of their Native American heritage. Cody is half Comanche, half Fort Sill Apache; his sister is half Navajo and half Shoshone.
Casper wasn't as diverse as it is now. The siblings "took a huge amount of discrimination and racial profiling, just aggressive harassment" for their race, according to Cody's recollection.
Though Charles could sit in a drop-top car to ride through Casper in a parade, a banner declaring "Mayor" on the side, his children were not allowed to. Once, Cody said, he walked into a local Democratic meeting only to hear Charles asking why it mattered that he had two Native American children.
Cody was his ticket out of the Vietnam War, Charles would tell him later. The two would not spend much time together after Charles moved.
'Sometimes, people need to slow down'
The Star-Tribune combed through hundreds of editions from 1974 in research for this story. Though Charles was mentioned numerous times, there were no mentions of alleged uncouth behavior.
Mostly, the stories talk about his role in local government and politics. Charles himself would remember the changes he made, and proudly, Cody said.
When Charles mentioned Casper, he talked primarily about two things: the snow and the downtown revitalization efforts.
East 2nd Street is twisty — some might say "serpentine" — partially thanks to him. He did it that way for a reason, Cody said, despite the decision irking people at the time.
"He told me once," Cody said, "he says, sometimes, people need to slow down."
Downtown Casper is much prettier now, Cody, who now lives in Oklahoma, admitted. It's a beautiful city situated in a perfect place, right up against the mountain. He misses it.
"Outgoing mayor Chuck Aspinwall says 1974 has probably included more change in one year than "in all previous years combined,' " a story from the Dec. 12, 1974, edition of the Star-Tribune said.
The Downtown Casper Improvement Project was about 80% complete, the combined sewer facility was nearly complete, capital projects like a fire station were in the plan completion stage and block-by-block street improvements for North Casper were underway.
"More than likely," Charles is quoted as saying, "the next mayor will feel the same at the end of 1975."
Jordan Smith covers Casper and its surrounding municipalities for the Casper Star-Tribune and can be reached at 307-266-0513, or on X Love Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.
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