Mary Louise Greever

Mary Louise Greever
born Oct. 3, 1921

"Cody is a great place to raise kids. I think that's it more than anything else. They can go any place and do anything, and there's no big danger, no problems," said Mary Louise Greever.

She ought to know, as part of a large family growing up in Cody since the early 1930s.

"There were nine of us all together. I was the fifth. I mean the fourth," she said, losing track for a moment of her own place among the five boys and four girls of Lloyd and Louise Taggart.

"It's crowded, but I wouldn't change it," she said of her big family growing up. "No one is concentrating on just you."

Greever was born in Cowley, and came to Cody when she was 10 years old.

"It was a big change. Cody seemed like a really big town when we moved up here. I was just overwhelmed with it," she said.

"My graduating class was around 50 or 60 people," she said, adding that the small school size tended to "limit the dating pool."

Greever's father was a contractor specializing in road construction who built some of the roads in Yellowstone National Park. He also owned the Two Dot Ranch, north of Cody, although the family lived in town.

"I never was particularly interested in the ranch, as such. I was kind of a city girl," she said, adding that she rode horses, but mainly to get someplace, and seldom just for fun.

"I'm not really a horse person. I think I'm about half afraid of a horse. I've just never been friends with them. A shetland (pony) is what we started out with, and they are just mean," Greever said.

Except for a stint in Washington state when her husband, Bill, worked as an electrical engineer for Boeing, Greever has lived in Cody all her life.

"Washington was so cloudy and rainy, it affected Bill's health. He couldn't stand it any more," she said of her late husband. The two were married for 63 years.

Greever said she has enjoyed volunteering around Cody, including working for 20 years as a docent at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and also as a hospital aide.

There's not much Greever would change about Cody if she could, she said.

"There's too many tourists, but we can't get by without them," she said. "Otherwise, I think we're doing all right."