The fustrating nature of biographical snippets.

Yesterday, an event occurred meriting this update on our Today In Wyoming's History blog:

Today In Wyoming's History: January 30: 2016.  Kenny Sailors, inventor of basketball's jump shot while a student at the University of Wyoming, died at age 95.  Sailors had a spectacular university basketball career and went on to play professional basketball after graduating from US.   Sailors went on to become an outfitter in Alaska before returning to Wyoming in retirement.  He was living in Laramie, where his fame commenced, at the
time of his death.

I had to hunt for the details on his post basketball career, although I think I've posted that on that particular blog before.

Okay, even a non sports fan like me knows that the jump shot is a big deal.  But even Wikipedia doesn't  detail Kenny Sailor's 35 year career as an Alaskan outfitter. That's interesting, darn it, and says a lot about the man.

This sort of neglect of the post "big event" careers of people is aggravatingly common.  A person will show up in an obituary of this type, or in a book, as a snippet, as though their entire lives are that event. They aren't.

I'm always interested in what came after, and before.  We often get the before, but we often do not get the after, which quite often defines a person more than the singular big event does.  It's sad that such details are so commonly omitted.