Safety patrol plants a seed

EVER WONDER HOW former Boulder County Sheriff George Epp first became interested in law enforcement? Whittier Elementary School students doing oral histories discovered that,very early on, it was the allure of the uniform and the badge:

“One of the really cool things to do at Whittier was to be on the safety patrol if you were a sixth grader. They gave you this white belt that went around your waist and across your chest. And you had a silver badge! You got to be a crossing guard and come in late to class. It was very prestigious  to be on the safety patrol.”

Just goes to show the influence that educational opportunities can have!

The students’ interview with George Epp (OH 1714) is archived as part of our oral history collection at the Carnegie Library and online.  Watch for a more in-depth interview with Sheriff Epp this spring, recorded by oral historian Caitlin McKenna, about his involvement with fighting wildfires in Boulder County.

Tags: oral history, Boulder, Schools, Maria Rogers Oral History Program, Whittier Elementary School, boulder county sheriff

We Didn’t Know Anything About It

A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, we made copies of one of our earlier oral histories for the daughter and granddaughters of Elizabeth (Beth) Pesman. Mrs. Pesman’s daughter had written to us saying, “We had tried for years to get my mother to tell her stories on our audio-tape machine, but she didn’t have any use for “technology,” so we were delighted when a  friend told us she had found this in the library, since we didn’t know anything about it.”

Mrs. Pesman’s story is one well worth hearing. Interviewed by Dorothy Hale in 1986, when she was just short of 93 years old, Mrs. Pesman’s voice was still strong and her memories clear. Her account begins like this:

“I was born on January 31, 1893. My mother died when I was four  years old…. She brought up three stepchildren and then seven of her own, of which I was the tail-end. She died of typhoid fever, or heart trouble—or of raising a big family or something…. After a year, my father married again.”

Mrs. Pesman attended CU-Boulder beginning in 1910, trained as a teacher, and taught in the Wellington Lake School, where she was teacher to nine pupils in seven grades.  She was teaching at the time of the 1913 blizzard, which she describes. Some years later, she married M. Walter Pesman, who became a renowned landscape architect in Denver and was one of the founders of the Botanic Gardens. Much to Mrs. Pesman’s dismay, she was refused a teaching job in 1927 because many schools would not hire a married woman. Although she finally was able to obtain another teaching job, during The Depression the Colorado State Legislature considered passing a law not allowing married women to teach anywhere in the state. Mrs. Pesman lobbied the legislature not to pass the bill and was pleased that the lawmakers were “wise enough” not to let it become law.

Mrs. Pesman died in 1987, only one year after this interview was recorded. The end of this month marks the 119th anniversary of Beth Pesman’s birth. We are so glad that her story lives on in our oral history collection—both for her family and for the rest of us.

You can hear Beth Pesman’s interview here.

Tags: Boulder, education, Maria Rogers Oral History Program, oral history

Voices added in 2011

A Google Earth image of the plume from the Fourmile Canyon Fire, spreading for 100 miles in September 2010

The Boulder Library’s oral history program added 56 new interviews to the collection in 2011, all of them, with audio and transcripts/summaries, available online through our digital archive.  The subjects range from farmers to League of Women Voters activists, from Soviet Jewish immigrants to Rocky Flats workers, and from the Italian-American community in Boulder County to the people who fought and endured the Fourmile Canyon Fire of 2010. And more. 

Here, in the voice of Christopher O’Brien, captain of the Boulder Rural Fire Department, is a sample of the first-person-witness quality of the stories that were collected about the Fourmile Canyon Fire (interview was conducted by Caitlin McKenna):

 

Excerpt from OH 1730, interview with Christopher O’Brien 

Visit us at http://www.boulderlibrary.org/oralhistory to listen to Chris O’Brien’s complete interview and any of the other 1,700+ interviews in our collection.

And Happy New Year!

Tags: Boulder, Boulder County, Maria Rogers Oral History Program, oral history, Wildland fires

December Oral History Mystery Voice

Click on the audio link below for a one-and-a-half-minute clip from an oral history interview with a former Boulder politician who describes the shaky beginnings of her later illustrious political career. Can you guess who it is? Leave us a comment with your guess. Check back to see the answer.

Tags: Boulder, Maria Rogers Oral History Program, mystery voices, oral history, politics

Miss Merry Christmas, 1940

Jane Curtze as Miss Merry Christmas, 1940 (Photo courtesy of Carnegie Branch Library for Local History)

The Boulder Lights of December parade is Saturday! Click the audio link to hear Jane Curtze Muheim describe being Boulder’s first “Miss Merry Christmas” in the 1940 Christmas parade—a time when Boulder really loved its parades.

 

If you’ve been to the Lights of December parade, which part do you like best? (Probably not the cold temps!)

(Audio is excerpted from OH 1189, an oral history interview with Jane Curtze Muheim recorded in 2004. The interviewer is Robyn Crispe. Hear the complete interview here. )

Tags: Boulder, community events, Maria Rogers Oral History Program, oral history

Happy 100th Birthday, Gilbert White!

Gilbert White was the founder and director of the University of Colorado’s Natural Hazards Center and often was known as “the father of floodplain management.” As a scientist and a Quaker, he devoted much of his life to research that blended his concerns of about water policy, human welfare, and world peace.

Gilbert White died in 2006 in his mid-90s. Tomorrow, November 26, 2011, would have been his 100th birthday. In July of 2011, the city of Boulder dedicated the Gilbert White Memorial Flood Level Marker on the banks of Boulder Creek. This elegant memorial dramatically shows the water levels for 50-, 100-, and 500-year floods and also the level of the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 had it happened in Boulder.

This YouTube video includes footage of the flood level marker, of the Big Thompson Flood, and of Gilbert White reflecting, in 2001, on the role that he played in developing Boulder’s flood management plan and on the impact of the Big Thompson Flood.

Gilbert White famously said, “Floods are acts of God, but flood losses are largely acts of man.”  Our thanks to Dr. White for helping people worldwide to make gains in minimizing those losses.

(Thanks also to Jon Raese, who interviewed Dr. White, and Felicia Furman, for creation of the video.)

Tags: Boulder, Maria Rogers Oral History Program, oral history, water