Twyla's Gun

by JimT, Texas, Monday, May 30, 2022, 18:05 (844 days ago)

Some years ago I was working in the shop when my phone rang. It was JJ Miller and as I had not heard from him in some time I was happy to take the call. When I said "Hi JJ!" I could tell he was upset. "What's going on?" I asked. He stumbled a couple times and then he said, "I was going through my stuff and I found Twyla's pistol!" I was a bit confused and said, "Her pistol? What pistol?" He said, "The Smith & Wesson .45 Colt that she won at the Holiday."

Blindsided I fumbled for words and finally got my brain working and said, "I forgot completely about that gun JJ. How did you end up with it?" He told me how he found it in his collection .. did not know how he got it ... and wanted to send it back to me. I said, "JJ .. maybe we gave that to you when we were there." He started crying and said, "No. And I want it to go back to you and your family."

Well by this time we were both in tears. Some wounds stay kinda raw forever.

The short story is that a few weeks later I had the pistol in my hands. A S&W 645 Classic, it was the last one out of the factory. It was not the last one produced but it was the last one shipped. Ken Jorgensen worked for S&W at that time and he had the gun shipped to John Taffin and asked him to put it in the raffle at The Shootists Holiday. 1t was 1997. All the paperwork including Ken's note to John were in the box.

After she won the gun we gave it to Tedd Adamovich and he engraved her name on it, the date and made a nice set of grips for it. The original grips were in the box with the paperwork.

I took the gun out on the range with some standard velocity loads - 250 gr. RN over 6.0 gr. of 700X. I shot it for a few months and then gave it to my daughter. It will stay in the family.