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
