3 10 216 https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/198a561cec49a8dd75447660b7d4262a.jpg 2d6c39079a1d9c14d16f8c53ecb2a065 https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/505bbfab3f20f866c54f01ad1bd733a7.mp3 65e655b1b8730ba18a1d8ff1d2068ca8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1 hour, 30 minutes and 07 seconds Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rod Grove Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-02-25 Subject The topic of the resource Grove, Rod; Interview; Ignacio; Colorado; Southern Ute Tribe; Ute; Native American; Oral History Description An account of the resource An interview with Rod Grove conducted by Renee Morgan at the Ignacio Community Library on Thursday, February 16th, 2016. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/797230e24cabb64003532b4c43dc4859.mp3 45ffe75d9c2d1fa1757f3275362d583e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33 minutes and 23 seconds Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Renee Morgan Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Subject The topic of the resource Interview; Ignacio; Colorado; Morgan, Renee; Oral Interview Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Description An account of the resource An interview with Renee Morgan conducted by Liz Wheelock at the Ignacio Community Library in 2016. https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/48da76a0276587a7a0529ea19161ac57.mp3 8bebf80008cc30844e79f88afc46a4d8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 49 minutes and 45 seconds Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sylvia Valdez Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016 Subject The topic of the resource Interview; Ignacio; Colorado; Southern Ute Tribe; Ute; Native American; Valdez, Sylvia T., 1926-2018 Description An account of the resource An interview with Sylvia Valdez conducted by Tony Corona at the Ignacio Community Library on Saturday, January 14th, 2016. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/78100176c51d2eb09016a4ed559fd244.jpg ab0ec233e7e5b3c9036c71112f5c53fe https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/62a6f8f117239c549abdf4898dc470a8.mp3 cebc7a3b05fe97d2c8bf983a792e1f85 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 59 minutes and 29 minutes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Tina Martinez Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-18 Subject The topic of the resource Interview; Ignacio; Colorado; Martinez, Benestina Lucero "Tina", 1944-2017 Description An account of the resource An interview with Tina Martinez conducted by Liz Wheelock at the Ignacio Community Library on Wednesday, May 18th, 2016. Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/b21418dca45659a1e6631b31a07ac0f3.jpg e1e68a94b7f4ad7d3d76363417bfbc2e https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/2c9d488bd746621562cf3e5d402919f8.mp3 2bdc6648c0d2b1a800fcffbb2df3f2e7 https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/1d3309cb13ba6b7604e332409ad4ec67.pdf 789f586a4ed9027d7914506bfa88cb42 PDF Text Text Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 My name is Liz Wheelock and I am conducting an interview for the Ignacio Oral History Project entitled, “Voices of the Ignacio” at the Ignacio Community Library on February 5, 2016. I have with me the namesake of the McClanahan Community Room and a volunteer of the library, who has graciously permitted me to interview her. Please tell me your name, your birth date and how you came to live in Ignacio, Colorado. McClanahan: My name is Jean McClanahan and my birthdate is May 2, 1924. I was born in Ignacio. Wheelock: How did your family come to move here? McClanahan: My grandparents came here from Missouri in 1904. Wheelock: That is wonderful and what brought them here? McClanahan: I really don't know. They just wanted a change I guess. I’ve heard it was my grandmother's health and one person said she had lost her first born child and she was so depressed that grandpa thought a change would be good but why Ignacio I have no idea. Wheelock: And where did they settle? McClanahan: Right here. Wheelock: In the town of Ignacio? McClanahan: 2 miles north of Ignacio that's where I live. Wheelock: Oh my goodness! So you are on the homestead? McClanahan: I live on part of it. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: Did they have a lot of land? What did they do? McClanahan: They farmed. They bought it and had already been homesteaded. They bought the land. They bought a hundred and 20 acres bordering the reservation, later they added 80 acres more across the road to the County Road and 5 acres of that was the school but they bought the other 75 acres. So he had quite a bit of land. Wheelock: Did they raise cattle? McClanahan: No, I don’t think they raised any cattle just hay and grain. I am sure he had milk cows, but as far as cattle, I don't think so. Wheelock: So did you go to school in Ignacio? What was school like? McClanahan: We learned everything; not only reading writing and arithmetic but we learned oral hygiene. We learned stuff like that. We had to keep our fingernails clean and brush our teeth and that kinda stuff. We learned the names of our teeth. You know, first and second grade. Wheelock: What was your childhood like before you started school? McClanahan: I don't remember much about it. We lived on the farm. I remembered we went to a country school up there. It was on the corner of my granddad's land. Evidently, it was easier to get to school here than it was to go there and it was about the same distance. They used that country school for all kinds of things: dances, box suppers, pie socials and evangelists would come through. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 They just used it for everything. I think everybody attended everything because that was their social life. Wheelock: Do you have brothers and sisters? McClanahan: I had three brothers. Wheelock: Older? Younger? McClanahan: One older, two younger. Wheelock: Are they here also? McClanahan: No, one just passed away. The oldest passed away 20 years ago. My other brother is in Cincinnati where his son lives. Wheelock: Let's go back to school. Let's talk about first and second grade. You went to school at the elementary school at the end of the block? McClanahan: Well you’ve seen the pictures of the old school, the tall building. Half of the building was stone blocks and the other half was stucco. It was two-story and went 3rd through 12th. 1st and 2nd grade-we had another building, it was… 1st and 2nd grade was in one half of it. The other half Mrs. Leonard taught Spanish kids to speak English. Wheelock: Where was it located? McClanahan: Right here on this property… no, not here- across the road where the other school was on that property. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: So they tore down that property and put a school that we now have there which is now a Community Center. Well, that is interesting. So even K-12 was there? McClanahan: No kindergarten. It was 1st through 12th. Wheelock: You went to school there also, right? What kind of sports and what kind of things did they have in high school there? McClanahan: I did not go to high school here. When I finished eighth grade my dad was working for the government and they transferred him to Towaoc, so I graduated from high school in Cortez. Wheelock: Did you notice any change when you came back? McClanahan: Well, not much. I came back about 10 years later. I think. Of course some change but it was still a small town. Wheelock: Was it still the School like it was before? So when did that change? McClanahan: I think they built the new Junior High. They built it first and Mr. Palmer made the bricks for that school. He made them right up close to where the Patio is now. I don't remember, my brother was 36, I believe it was in the late 50s when they built the Junior high and then Mr. Deeds came. Can find out when he was here in the 60s. Around 1965 they built it the high school and it was still the elementary, down here. They tore down the old building put the new elementary down there. That must have been about… about 1960. Because… Cindy was one of the… it was pretty new when Cindy started, they had �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 kindergarten. Cindy was born in ‘57 so it would’ve been about 62 or early 60s. Wheelock: Did you meet Butch here? McClanahan: I came back here. I was working at the store. He was a butcher at the store and I got a job at the store. Wheelock: A buddying romance? McClanahan: We worked together for many many years. Wheelock: You didn't own it at that the time? McClanahan: No, we didn't buy it till 1965. We both worked there for 20 years before we bought it. Wheelock: And who was the owner of that at that time? McClanahan: Mr. Lunsford. Wheelock: Okay. McClanahan: He was the one that started it as a locker plant and then he added groceries. He gradually added more and more. Wheelock: What did you do? McClanahan: I was a bookkeeper. I had gone to business school. Wheelock: So from 12th grade you went to school in Cortez. You said in Cortez, then you went to college? McClanahan: I went to Barnes Business School. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: And where was that? McClanahan: Denver. Wheelock: In Denver, and how many years was that? McClanahan: Just one. Wheelock: Then you came back here? Was there a reason? McClanahan: My folks had moved back here by then. Wheelock: Were they retired? McClanahan: No, Dad got transferred back over here. Wheelock: And that's when you met Butch? And when did you get married? McClanahan: Oh, we got married and ‘53 but we didn’t start dating for a while. He had another girlfriend and I had another boyfriend. Wheelock: (laughs) And you bought the place? Were you already married? How did that come about? McClanahan: Yes we were married. We had been married for 12 years. We married in ‘53. We had been married for 13 years and Mr. Lunsford tells us he's not feeling very good and he wants to go to a lower altitude. And he wanted to sell it and we worked for him for so many years. He could see that we would make a success of it. So he sold it to him and gave us a good deal. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: And you've had it... that's a wonderful place! McClanahan: Yes we loved it. We got up every morning till late at night. We like that store. Wheelock: What did you and Butch do when you were first married? What were the pleasures that you did for enjoyment? McClanahan: We were good friends with a couple. We played cards with them. Went to dances on Saturday night. We went to their place for dinner and they went to our place for dinner. You know we had a good relationship with them. Wheelock: Was a train still going through at the time? McClanahan: No, it quit about 1959. Wheelock: Had you seen it in your early years? Did you ever ride it? McClanahan: No, I never did. I don't know why, I just never did. Didn’t have an occasion to. We always had a car. We went to Durango and I never had any reason to go to Durango other than with me parents. My grandparents lived in there- one set of my grandparents lived there. My mother’s family, so I never had any occasion. But, it was here and it was good. We read the old newspapers. They shipped a lot of freight out here, a lot of grain; a lot of sheep, a lot of cattle, a lot of stuff went out here, turkeys. Allison had a turkey co-op and they shipped their turkeys out of here, clear to New York! Wheelock: Oh my goodness, did your friends come here using the train? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: Not for us, but a lot of people did come in. The salesmen that came into the stores that showed their wares. They had their little suitcase and they used to come on the train. And, there were two or three… at least two, all the time, hotels. Wheelock: Where were the hotels? I remember the one over here at the casino. McClanahan: At that time, where the SUCAP building is, that was one. The other one was down close to the hardware is now, where the motorcycle shop is now and there was one up at the agency. Before that, the agency was here first. I think there was a hotel up there, too. Wheelock: Where they full? McClanahan: Yeah, they were busy. Evidently, but they burned. One of them was a commercial hotel and the other one was the Ignacio Hotel, but the commercial hotel burned in 1937. I think it was, just before we moved to Towaoc, because my dad helped clean up the mess. Wheelock: Were you here when they decided not to have the railroad? Do know why the railroad left? McClanahan: I think the trucking got to be a thing, and it was quicker. The train was slow. I think you could ship things out by truck a lot more quicker. That's my idea. I don’t know? Wheelock: Do you think it hurt the economy here at all? McClanahan: Well, I don't know. I think it caused some things. I am thinking it might have a little bit. I think about all the �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 stuff that they hauled down here and that the train wrecked a lot. I don't know. It seemed like a lot to me, every once in awhile the kids would put something on the rail, probably some are like that. Wheelock: (laughs) Do you have any memories of the train as far as you can think about concerning the train? McClanahan: No. Wheelock: What about when the gas line came, were you here when that came about? Would you like to elaborate on that? McClanahan: Well, I don't know too much about it. I remember the first from reading the old newspapers. Way back then they wanted people to lease their land to explore, to drill some gas but they never did get enough people to sign up. So they never did for years and years but there was one story about the Ritter's: They had put well down and I guess the gas came out of it and when he came home, he had a little too much to drink and she wouldn’t let him in the house and he went out there and lit that gas to stay warm! Wheelock: (laughs). McClanahan: But I remember, I don't know what year it was, they drilled a deep well, in my mind, it seems like it was where the houses are near Cedar Point, they drilled a real deep well and it was an exploration well, and very so often they took a test to see what was down there. It took a long time to drill that they went down a mile or more. It took a very long time. A lot of people that came in with it, the �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 roughnecks… They brought a lot to the economy. I think that was the first I remember. Wheelock: Do you feel they really helped the economy here? McClanahan: At that time they did. Yeah, they brought in all these people they rented houses and they bought groceries. And the wells, they had to have something they used in the wells, I can't remember what it was. Some of the people worked for them (some product), so it was good for them but it didn't last. I don't know how long it was before they came back and they kept drilling and everything. It was several years, I think. Wheelock: Now Williams Gas and Oil was in that area there, do you know when or how that came about? McClanahan: I don’t know. Wheelock: What do you miss most about what it used to be? McClanahan: I don't know, just the pace. And everybody today you know…of course, when we had to store I knew everybody. Today, none of those people are still around. It’s all new people, and I don’t know very many and that’s what I miss. It always just thrills me when I go to store and I run into people I still know and they'll give me a big hug and we’ll just visit a little while and I really like that. Wheelock: What are you the most proudest of in your life? McClanahan: I don't know, my kids! My kids all graduated from Ignacio High School. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: Can you tell me some stories about the kids growing up here, and the changes you have seen? McClanahan: We all walked to school. They all walked to school. We lived up on the hill. Wheelock: Candelaria Heights? McClanahan: No, up where… next to Donna Young. So our kids walked to school -- I walked to school. I walked about 2 miles, once in awhile; we’d get a ride. I tell everybody that especially in the wintertime, me and my little brother (that's not very good language) my little brother and I, if we’d get out from the house down her lane, down to the highway, down to the county road there was a guy that lived just up the road up another mile. He took his daughter to school. And if we’d get out there in time, he would give us a ride. I don't think his daughter liked that very well, because it was a pickup and those old pickups weren't very big, so we’d squeeze me in and him on my lap. But he just didn't have the heart to pass us up. (the driver) Wheelock: We had people like that too! What were the roads like and that sort of thing? McClanahan: They weren't very good. I don't know when we first got gravel, but the road used to come down the hill through the pasture behind, came down right in the middle of the Justice Center Building, you know where that street comes out from the Justice Building, that went straight up the hill and there used to be a low spot in there and people got stuck. They used to have to get out and push, so they weren't very good for a long time; then they �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 got graveled. I don't know when they finally got pavement. The gravel was really good. Wheelock: How about your classmates, what do you remember about your classmates? McClanahan: They were all nice. They were good kids. Wheelock: Any stories you can tell? McClanahan: Well, I remember hearing this story, my cousin was ornery than the dickens and he had a friend that was just as ornery and the Sanchez girls told us that they rode horseback to school, and they’d tie up their horse. During the day, sometime, these boys would go out and aggravate the horse and they’d go and tie that knot so tight that those girls couldn't get them undone! Wheelock: How old were they? McClanahan: Grade school! Wheelock: Did a lot of kids ride horses? McClanahan: They did in those days. I did the first year or two my brother. I didn't like riding with him because he was ornery too. First, I was real little and I’d sit in the saddle with him and he'd squeeze me, so then, I sat behind, and he and Bonnie Kent and had Ida behind him and they rode a horse to school. Donald and Bonnie would have to have a race, and Ida and I was sitting behind hanging on! (laughs) Wheelock: (laughs)Did you win? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: I don't remember (laughs) Wheelock: When did you ride the horses? McClanahan: Just a couple years then I didn't like it, so I said I'd rather walk. Wheelock: You were starting to tell me about your kids and some of the memories that you have of them? McClanahan: I don't remember too much. Judy was a whiz she studied. She got good grades. So they all did all right with grades. I don't know, the kids, Cindy was a cheerleader and Dale wrestled. Greg played basketball and I can’t remember what else? A lot of school activities, they were all in all of them. Wheelock: Did you also go to school with them and help them out? McClanahan: I tried to go to all the games and everything. Shirley Waters was working at the store and her son Dan who’s the same age as Dale and they were playing football, and I remember we took off one day and went to watch them play over in Dulce. So I tried to watch them when I could. Wheelock: Did you leave the store often? Did you take vacations? McClanahan: Not very often, if we did, it would be in February because that was our slow time that was when we got married, in February. Then, during the slow time, we took a trip once. Butch had a sister, whose husband was in the Air Force and they were in Texas. They were in Mobile, Alabama. We took a trip down there to see them. One time we went to San Antonio and took a trip there but �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 that was later, way later. I had a brother who was in New Jersey and we took a trip back to see him. That was about the only trips we took. Wheelock: Did you go to Vallecito, Navajo Lake? McClanahan: We used to go up there all the time. We’d go waterskiing, fishing, and we went to Navajo. Wheelock: Were you here when they made Navajo Dam, can you tell me a little bit about that? McClanahan: We used to go down there on Sunday and take a picnic lunch and see what was going on, just kind of keeping track of it. It was interesting. Wheelock: They had a town; they actually got rid of Rosa and that sort of thing. Did you know any of the people there that were displaced? McClanahan: No. Now Rosa was actually in New Mexico, and it was quite a town. I kept telling everybody, the people that drank, Colorado was a dry state, they couldn’t get liquor here, so they would go over to Rosa and get their liquor. And I thought it was legal but I talked to Ed Marquez the other day and he said, “No it was moonshine they got over there!” (laughs) Wheelock: I wonder who was making it? McClanahan: Well, probably several people. (laughs) Wheelock: Well, when they got rid of that, where did he get the alcohol then? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: Well, by that time you could buy it here. I saw on one of the papers that people had voted down making Colorado wet. It said it won't be wet until we vote on it, and we never did vote on it. I’m sure, they just decided it was all right to buy it here. They just made it legal- I don’t know who did. Wheelock: When did it come into this area, or do you know? McClanahan: Well, I don't know just when it was. Wheelock: How do you think… were the relations pretty good with that? McClanahan: Oh yeah, everybody got along. The city had an unwritten agreement, just an oral agreement with the Spanish people. Most of the Spanish people lived south of … I don’t know what that street is- not the bank the one next down, down after the bank.... Wheelock: Browning? Goddard? McClanahan: The street that went across. I don’t know whether it was Navajo or Pine, one of those streets. Most of the Spanish people lived down there. They had some that were really interested in politics and took part but the city had an unwritten agreement that they had six on their council, and three would be white and three would be Spanish and that’s just the way everybody voted. You know, just because that was the thing to do! Wheelock: That was wonderful, they did that! Did you know how that came about? McClanahan: Well, I don't know? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: Was the government that way right in the beginning? McClanahan: Well, I don't know whether it was or not. I don't know? Just the people. Everybody was interested in the city and things that went on. They didn't have any trouble getting a mayor or people in the council because people were interested. They wanted to do things for the town and wanted to be right and they were willing to do that. You know, they didn't get paid; I don’t think any of them ever got paid in the old days. Wheelock: How are the relations with the tribe also? McClanahan: I think they got along well. I don't remember them having any problems. We had a lot of people that worked up at the agency that were government employees that were white people. I don't know… just everybody got along. Wheelock: Did you enjoy school? You said you enjoyed school. How do you think your classmates would remember you? McClanahan: (laughs) I don’t know. Wheelock: You were such a pillar of society in this community. McClanahan: Well, not in those days- we didn't even live in town. We lived 2 miles out of town. We could never vote on the council or anything. We could never participate… the Lions Club came and went a time or two. A lot of the people that joined the Lions Club… then it kind of petered out somehow or rather then one day somebody would come in and was gung ho, and they’d have a Lions Club �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 again. They were real active- they had an Odd Fellows that was the first part of the Shur Value locker plant. It was the odd Fellows Hall building. They built that. I think It was an Adobe building. Wheelock: I know when my in-laws lived here. Martin and Irene Wheelock, that was in the 50s and I remember Rick talking about the dances and square dances and I think they were also part of the Lions Club and that sort of thing. Do you recognize the name or anything like that? McClanahan: I had seen that name (that Wheelock name) and then I wondered, “If he was related to him?” Wheelock: It was Irene Wheelock, and she was Finnish. Did Butch live here? McClanahan: Butch lived here. He was born in Montrose. Wheelock: Can you tell me a little bit about him? McClanahan: He lost his dad when he was about 13, when he, I think just finished his junior year in high school and one day, it was in summer and he and his friends were loafing around town and Lester Lunsford came along and he said, “Do you boys want a job?” “Oh yeah!” Butch, he always had a job, even when he was young, he worked at the theatre, delivering papers, delivering doughnuts. They said. “Sure!” Lester was working for a lawyer who had sheep and he had his sheep up on Mount Wilson. I don't know how to tell you where it was, by Slick Rock. Wheelock: I've heard the name. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: It's up by Dove Creek. Wheelock: By Naturita? McClanahan: Somewhere in that area he was taking care of these sheep and he needed some help. When school came he worked for them. Butch didn't want to go back. He liked it there and the other kid must’ve of gone. Wheelock: And how old was he at the time? McClanahan: He was a junior. Wheelock: About 16 or 17? McClanahan: So Lester worked there a couple years and they were good friends. He was kind of proud, a father figure to him and Oakley was Lester's brother, and he just opened his locker plant and needed a butcher and Lester was a butcher, but he had lost an eye. He had a glass eye and, of course, he was very self-conscious of it and that was when he went to hills with the sheep. In a couple years later, about that time he got used to it, he was ok with it. He came to Ignacio to help Oakley in the butcher shop and he brought Butch with him. He never left. Butch worked around the theater. He did everything there. Wheelock: Now the one here or in or over Montrose? McClanahan: No, the one in Montrose. The theater here was for sale, so Lester said, “You come with me and we’ll buy that theater and you can run it!” By the time they got here someone else bought it, so he became a butcher instead. Wheelock: So that sounds wonderful! So you guys met! �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: His name is Bruce and I never asked Butch how he got his name. How he got his nickname Butch. I suppose he always had it. Someone told me, when Lester ran into these boys and they asked him what’s your name? My name's Bruce, but they call me “Fats!” but “ Well, I'm gonna call you Butch” and that’s how he got Butch. Butch didn’t tell me that, but it sounds like it might've been true. I don't know. Wheelock: Was Butch's mother alive still? McClanahan: Yes, she was 96 when she died. Wheelock: Still in Montrose? McClanahan: Same house she lived in a long time, not all of he life. They came out from Ohio to the Montrose area from Ohio. Wheelock: How did his father pass away? McClanahan: He had a perforated ulcer. He was working down in reservation. He was a carpenter and he was working down in the Navajo Reservation, out in the boonies and when this happened. They took him into Window Rock or Gallup or someplace. But it took them too long to get to there and they couldn’t save him. Wheelock: Was his wife with him at the time? The family? McClanahan: They were living in Winslow. He was only 40 something. Wheelock: What was she doing when that happened? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: Well, when that happened, she had no skills. They moved back to Montrose because this was where they still had a house there. She went to work for the school lunch program as a cook and later she worked at the hospital as a cook. She got a very small pension, 35 dollars from his veteran’s pension, the kids helped out. She needed a new refrigerator. We pooled our resources and bought her a refrigerator. I remember the different things we bought for her. She had an old coal stove. It was thing in the basement where you stored the fire furnace. It made her house dirty. I remember she’d clean and the walls. She had paper walls. She would have this pink stuff to clean and the walls. She was quite a lady, a wonderful person! I loved her a lot! Wheelock: She still lived there instead of coming here? How many children did she have? McClanahan: She had four. She lost one when he was very small. So she just had three of them. She had a sister, older. She had a sister who is older and still living in Montrose. She's 93, I guess. She had a younger brother and he passed away. I think about 10 years ago. So Butch died on October 11, 1990. His mother passed away six years later on the same day or two days earlier, on October 9th and his brother passed on the October 9th, six years later after that. Isn't that odd? The sister is kinda worried about that last one but she’s still here!(laughs) Wheelock: Now was Butch ever in the military? McClanahan: No, he had varicose veins real bad. They wouldn't take him. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: What are some of the lessons you learned in your life? What are some of things you feel are good that you want to tell us about? McClanahan: I don't know! Relax! Don't get in a hurry! Wheelock: You know people are pretty much in a hurry. McClanahan: And here, people are in such a big hurry, that's when I stopped driving to Durango. People are just in too big of a hurry. What are they going to do there, in a hurry, they run reds lights. Wheelock: What was Durango like? McClanahan: It was kind of a small town. My grandparents lived there. We’d go in on Saturday, and visit with them, do any shopping we needed to do, and sometimes you get to eat lunch at the Mandarin Café and sometimes grandma’s would fix lunch for us. There was a card table out there. We'd play cribbage with them and the house was always hot and now I understand. Wheelock: Did they use coal? McClanahan: I think they had gas in there. My mother's brother just lived two doors down from them and kind of took care of them. They needed anything, we would visit with them too and Thanksgiving, we’d get together with them. Mom's twin sister lived up the road about a mile from us, so on Sundays most of the times we’d get together. In the summer, on the Fourth of July we started eating fried chicken. We always got baby chicks just barely big enough by the Fourth of July. We started when they were little and they got too big. We hadn’t any way of freezing �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 them back then, so every Sunday we had fried chicken. We either went to their house or they came to our house and sometimes uncle Charlie would come out and it was just nice. Wheelock: Sounds like it was a good life! McClanahan: It was! Wheelock: When you and Butch got married, could you tell me a little about your ceremony and how was it different from what was going on now? McClanahan: We just went to the preacher and got married and our friends stood up with us and then we went and had breakfast and went to Aztec where we got married, then we took off and went to California, we were gone for four or five days. Wheelock: Were you still like working at the store as employees? McClanahan: Yes. Wheelock: Did you have a house here? McClanahan: We had rented a house, that house south the hardware, that purple house. They just tore it down not too long ago. We lived in an apartment side of that house. He lived in it. He worked on it and moved into it and we lived there about a year, then we bought the house on the hill and it wasn’t a real old house. It was built in the 30s, I think. It had a room for bathroom but it didn't have any fixtures or running water so we just took all the pennies we had and worked on it and we lived there for 37 years. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: Oh my goodness! McClanahan: 34 years I guess, the last three years we were out there, before Butch died. He only lived there about three years. Wheelock: Is that the one across from the Meltons, that area where I’m thinking? Where you lived before you said, by the Young’s? McClanahan: Where I live now. We lived right next door to the white house, I think the town cop. Wheelock: The Sheriff. Wheelock: Well you fixed it up a lot. McClanahan: We did quite a bit. We were always working on it. They had done a lot to it since we had it. Wheelock: Did you say the Young’s house that those houses were there before? McClanahan: They were there after we moved there. Wheelock: I always thought that the Young’s owned all that land? McClanahan: Donna's dad was Oakley Lunsford, they used to live there now then. They lived in the big house, the white house there, next to us and Donna's grandparent’s owned that land. I think there was 20 acres there and they both had lived in the house that we bought, and they both had died and Oakley bought out all the heirs and then he owned that land. I think there was more to it. I think Ed �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Duncan owned that first but maybe Oakley owned it. I don't remember, but anyhow, he just sold us the house. He had land around it but also the land where Jerry lived wasn't part of that. I think there was 20 acres that was square. Our place and Christino Casias had 5 acres off of that and the rest of it was owned by Oakley. He died. I think Donna got the rest. She got the rest. Wheelock: So with “Cow Heaven?” Who owned that?(laughs) McClanahan: And that went with the store. When we got that the slaughterhouse too. Wheelock: How did he get the name, “Cow Heaven?” McClanahan: I don't know who dubbed that. Wheelock: When we moved here we saw the sign “Cow Heaven,” we just thought that was the greatest thing! McClanahan: I think as I remember, who was it, El Paso built those houses there. There was this road in front of our house. It was a street. There was a road through there, but Oakley had closed it up to Donna’s. Donna and Jerry built there then and I think that El Paso wanted to come through there instead and come up that hill so, Oakley didn't want all that traffic. So he wouldn’t’ t sell it to they. They had to get another route up there so that's it. Wheelock: So that is how that road came about. Do you remember anything else about El Paso coming in? McClanahan: It was kind of exciting to have new houses over there and who got them, it was good. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: So you had the kids up here then, what was some of things they did for their past time? McClanahan: Well, they played. There were kids at the El Paso housing and they played baseball. We had a broken window every year, wore the grass out, things like that. They just played together a lot. One time, one of the kids over there was playing with Cindy-- with Judy and somehow or other a BB gun was involved and she had glasses or she wouldn’t had problems. She had a problem anyhow, but she got glass in the eye. He shot her in the eye with a BB gun. It was pretty hairy! It was on Sunday and we had all this company coming, several couples coming. So Butch loaded her up and took her into the eye doctor. They thought they had all the glass out. It was still scratchy. He had to take her back and they still had glass in there. Wheelock: Oh my goodness, where did you take her? McClanahan: I don't know where he took her. Wheelock: Did you have doctors here? Where were the doctors? McClanahan: Durango. Wheelock: So you had to drive all that distance. So what kind of healthcare did you have here or did you have health care at all? McClanahan: We didn’t have any health care. We didn't have anything. We didn't take any antibiotics. We were healthy people. We didn't have all these preservatives. We did our own cooking instead of buying stuff that was already cooked. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: That brings up, what was the store like comparing the store back then as to now? McClanahan: Oh golly, it was small. I don't know, I don't remember too much. I remember we sold kerosene. They brought their own containers and had eggs in a paper sack. Wheelock: Local eggs? McClanahan: We bought eggs from farmers and they came in and traded them for groceries. Well, we had vinegar in the barrel. We sold Ranch Way Feed. We sold cattle feed. Wheelock: I guess it would be a mixture of different things. McClanahan: What else? Wheelock: Did they sell things like hay? McClanahan: No. You know before they built the slaughterhouse on the hill, I think they slaughtered down by the river someplace. I think all the stuff went into the river, maybe. Of course, when I got up on the hill and didn’t have things like that anymore. You know, you think back when we were kids we had outhouses. The school, we didn't have any running water. I don't remember any sinks to wash her hands in. Things weren't as sanitary at all, but we are all better off for it, I think! I think we put too much emphasis on the sanitary. I don't know, I think sometimes that makes people sick. Wheelock: Back to the school again, did they have outhouses in back of the school and did have boys and girls? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: Yes. Wheelock: Did they have someone watching them? McClanahan: No. Wheelock: You hear stories of pranks? McClanahan: At Halloween, people would tip over the outhouses. Not that much here. Mr. Clark, the barber, used to get so mad at the kids at Halloween because that was reason they did the things they did! But they had more fun tormenting him. (laughs) Wheelock: Where were the barbershops? McClanahan: Well, one was there, where the old SUCAP building was, they added to the store. That was the original barbershop there upstairs and that is where Mr. Clark had his barbershop. There was a little apartment upstairs and I think attached to it was a little hamburger shop and just a counter with a few stools. Wheelock: Up on top or down below? McClanahan: Down below, and when they closed the barbershop there were couple restaurants that went in there and they didn’t seem to make it. Then SUCAP bought it, I think they rented to Tom Wiseman and we bought it from Tom. Wheelock: When did SUCAP come about and why? McClanahan: Well… I don't remember when it was. It had to do with community action. They had those all around. I don't know what they were supposed to be for. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: I know it was supposed to be the Southern Utes and probably just the town Council here and so the Spanish, English and Whites might of all got together? McClanahan: Community Action Program was a government program. I think the Southern Ute, SU sponsored it. Most of the community action programs were closed but the Southern Utes kept there's as they kind of sponsored it. They took it over. I think, I don't know when exactly it started or what the purpose was. It had a purpose. Wheelock: I'm sure it did but when you brought it up, I wonder how it started. Wheelock: Let's go back to the store, when you ran it, when you first started with it, what were some of the produce and vegetables? Were they local or came by train? Wheelock: I can't remember much about the groceries. The store, when I first started, was really small. It was only 25 feet wide. Meat was their thing. They had a meat case. They had some shelves, some groceries, probably what people bought most. You know, I think I remember now, looking back to the women, they never came to town to shop. The men came to shop. I think it was because they only had one car. Women didn't drive. Women made the list and the men came down and did their shopping for the groceries. I can remember, single old men used to come to the store and they’d go around. I remember one guy, his name was... anyway he was in the war and he got shell shocked or gassed or something. He was kind of hard to understand but he’d come in with his wife’s list and if she had crackers on the list, just the two of them, and he took the biggest cracker box we had, and he’d get the �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 biggest stuff. He always had to have a carton of some kind, chewing tobacco. He went to the back, I can't remember what it was, Redmond or something, the kind that came in small pouch, (laughs) and I remember him so well. The men liked to come in and visit. I remember Mr. Saulyers with the agency. Do you remember him? He’d get off at 5 o'clock up there and we didn't close till six, and he'd go home and have dinner with his wife and he'd come around and come in, hang around and visit. We’d try to sweep the floor and get ready to leave and we’d have to move him. Wheelock: Sounds like you had some good memories? McClanahan: We had a good time! Wheelock: When you bought the store was it expanded? McClanahan: No, it had already been expanded. It's a long story, when Oakley thought he wanted to retire and Jerry and Donna got married, Jerry had taken over my job in the groceries and stuff. Wheelock: What were you doing at that time? McClanahan: Well, I retired. I was having babies! (laughs) They had a partnership... Jerry, Butch and Oakley and somehow this went on for a year or two. That didn't work out so good, so Oakley bought it. So Jerry sold out. Oakley bought the other guy out and Butch said, “I've got so much already in the business.” So we had so much already in the business. We bought it and then a year or two later, Oakley's health was declining so we had to do something. He'd went down and talked to the banker and they told �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 him, they said to go ahead and roll over the FDA loan to us, so we got it. Wheelock: So that was up to the old SUCAP building before. They had added to it? McClanahan: I think that Oakley had bought all that land. The Odd Fellows had bought it to begin with and I think he bought it from the Odd Fellows. He got it from the Odd Fellows. When he did, he got that whole vacant lot between Mr. Butler’s store and a barbershop, and they added that while the partnership was going. Wheelock: Is there anything we didn't talk about that you would like to add? McClanahan: No, nothing in particular. Wheelock: I remember both of you when I moved here, and how wonderful you were to Rick and I. McClanahan: You know the lady came in the store, I ran into a lady in the story the other day. She lives out north of the town hall, and she said, “I always remembered when we moved here, we didn't have a phone (and those days they didn’t have a cell phones) and we came in and you let us use the phone.” She thought we were great people because we let them use our phone. Those are just things you did, you know. Why not, why wouldn’t you let her use the phone? Wheelock: You just have a kind heart and Butch and your children. McClanahan: I remember Tom Givon. He was here for quite a while. His wife wasn't with him. She was still up in Oregon. He’d �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 go back up there up to Oregon to teach... whatever. He’d come back, he told me this, he said, “Every time I’d come back to the store you would say, “Oh your back!” I don't know, it was just a fun time and our employees would stay on and on. We didn't have all the employee help they have today, and we didn't pay them all top wages. I remember when we took over the store, Butch gave them all a raise because Oakley wasn’t in paying very much at all, so we gave them all a raise. So I gave raises as we went along. We didn't have any trouble with them but we had those women who worked there for 20 years or more. They worked different cash registers.(laughs) Wheelock: That’s something, what about the technology, watching your technology grow? McClanahan: Well, the different ways we’d mark groceries. We had a stamp thing like a dater. That's the way we marked our groceries to begin with, then we got these little tags, and I don't know... then one day we put up shelf tags and we started ordering by scanning and we had to get scanners. We put in scanners. I can't remember how it evolved, we started in, what did he call it? We put in this kind of cash register and it just opens the drawer. I can't remember just how it worked. You punched in the amount; somehow it was a “casecooler” or something like that. It wasn't much of a cash register and then went to the kind you pulled it. And then we went to the ones you used to punch it in, on the side, before we got the scanners. Wheelock: So we had several of bank robberies in this town. Do you know anything about those? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 McClanahan: I remember that last one, when they caught the guy. I remember it. I don't remember about any of the others but read about them in the paper. It told what they got away with. It wasn't much in our standards today, but it in those days it was a lot.(laughs). Wheelock: Did you have things stolen from the store? Do you have any stories about that? McClanahan: Yeah, we were robbed two or three times. One time we had a safe that we put our bills in, our folding money and it was cemented in the wall. You went down into it. We kept the coins in a little cabinet and one time they came and took all the coins. They didn’t know about the other. They couldn’t get in. It was just before the weekend when we needed all those coins.(laughs)They never caught the people. They didn't know about the safe and couldn’t get into it. I don't think they ever caught the people. Another time they took more than that. They never caught anybody. Wheelock: They just did that! McClanahan: It was just one of those things! Wheelock: Well, I think we pretty well talked about everything that I can think of. McClanahan: I can’t think of anything else. Wheelock: You have been wonderful it’s been wonderful hearing all the things that you’ve been here and done here and as I said you are a pillar of this society of Ignacio, because I know as I said, you helped Rick and I so much. In sense of �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 just your warmth, your kindness to us. You always have a smile and you're always greeting and enjoying life! McClanahan: Before I went to work the store and I was never out going at all. I was very shy and it did a lot for me. In a situation like that I had to meet people and I had to smile, but I loved them. I like people and I like visiting with them once in awhile. They didn't visit very long and just talk a little bit and I imagined I’d asked the same people where their kids are going to college a dozen times, and they never said, “Don't you remember!” (laughs) Wheelock: Well, I know your children and your grandchildren were a pleasure to work with, they were fun. Cindy was great. McClanahan: I love those kids. I am a family person! Wheelock: It shows and you’re a community person. McClanahan: Yes, I love my town. I drive down the street and I think this is a nice-looking town and it is. There are one of two places that needs to be demolished or fixed up but all in all it is pretty good. Wheelock: What do you think are the attributes of this community? McClanahan: What do you mean by attributes? Wheelock: What are the positives of this community? McClanahan: I don't know. I think the library is really a good thing and that it has brought a lot of people together. And it does a lot of good for the community, and the new store is good for the community and we needed that. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 Wheelock: We did! McClanahan: I don't know. It's just a nice town. Wheelock: I think so too! It's a good place to grow up. McClanahan: We just don't have any place for new people to come in, to live! There’s quite a few rentals and I just don't know. We don't have a whole lot of place to expand except on the hill and behind Candelaria Heights. And I thought there was 60 acres the town bought to keep the motorcycles out. They were afraid they were going to buy the land up there. They bought it but didn't have any money to develop it, so I think I they turned it over to the tribe to develop, but I don't think the tribe didn’t do anything either. They had it kind of plotted out. I think they were going have trailer houses here and apartments here, whatever. I had wished that the tribe would build some more apartments. I would think they would want to, because they had so many employees here that would have to drive to work everyday. I would think they would want to put in apartments. Maybe it's one of their priorities. Maybe they'll do it one of these days. They are pretty secretive about things. They don’t say much. You know, where the old casino was, would be a nice place for an apartment house. Wheelock: Yeah, I wonder what they're going to do with that land? McClanahan: Who knows, one of these days we'll find out... if we live long enough? Wheelock: Well thank you very, very much! McClanahan: You bet it was my pleasure! �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Jean McClanahan Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: February 5, 2016 [End of transcription] Transcribed by: Burt Baldwin, July 6, 2016 Audit edit by: Renee Morgan, August 3, 2016 Final edit by: Renee Morgan, August 4, 2016 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Jean McClanahan Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-07-06 Subject The topic of the resource Interview; Ignacio; Colorado; McClanahan, Jean, 1924-2021; McClanahan, Butch Description An account of the resource The transcript of an interview with Jean McClanahan conducted by Liz Wheelock at the Ignacio Community Library on Friday, February 5th, 2016. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/583e611da9675ac47f38d96afbf54c59.jpg 9eead35bde0c210dc6cccbc9255e1598 https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/709e33acc8481e8faf4d10235c6522a2.mp3 ef50f71b30221103e55a42c3e1e4403c https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/6cd9fb6e350744a2a17be08a0f1f2092.pdf 7e9d079ac6d3d9caaf4405c8f0927640 PDF Text Text Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 My name is Liz Wheelock and I am conducting an interview for the Ignacio oral history project entitled Voices of Ignacio, at the Ignacio Community Library on Thursday, May 19, 2016. I have with me a local member of the community and she has graciously permitted me to interview her. Please tell me your name, your birthdate, and how you came to be in Ignacio. Campbell: I am Linda Campbell, my birthdate is 3/29/42, and I moved to Ignacio in 1978. How we came here? I was born and raised in Montrose, Colorado. Grew up on a sheep ranch, my dad was a sheep rancher in Montrose and our ranch was in Cimarron, Colorado. I grew up living in the summer up in our ranch in Cimarron which was twenty-one miles from Montrose and then living in Montrose during the winter months. So would ride the school bus when we got to school age we’d ride the school bus in the fall until we moved down after hunting season is usually when my folks moved back to Montrose. Went through all the grades of school. Dropped out of kindergarten because I couldn’t stand the naps. (laughs) Outside of that, went straight through. Went to Western State College when I graduated from high school. Did my student teaching in Montrose at the junior high there which was really great because all of the teachers that I’d had when I was in junior high and I was their peer. It was probably one of the most fun times of teaching in my career. Well, no, not the most, but it was a great experience. Then my friend that was teaching there at the time in Montrose had graduated, she and her roommate had graduated from CSU and they had worked at Lake Tahoe the summer before and so she talked me into going out to Lake Tahoe. Wheelock: How old were you at this time? Campbell: Just graduated from college so twenty-two. She had her job at Lake Tahoe at Harrah’s club because she had worked there the summer before but we had no teaching jobs so we just thought, we’re going to wing it. (laughs) So we went all the way to California and I had a little black Volkswagen. She said when we move to California what you have to do is get a flower for your antenna because the parking lot at Harrah’s club at Lake Tahoe is bigger than the whole town of Montrose. There’s more cars than the whole town of Montrose. So I got a columbine and I had my little black Volkswagen and she had a Camaro, I can’t remember what kind of flower she had. So we drove to Lake Tahoe without any jobs, well 1 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 she had a job, I didn’t have any jobs, and had not a worry in the world. We thought we could always sell pencils on the corner if we had to. We could do it. The first night I got there, because basically I have never drank in my life and Western had a three-two bar, which was the Rambling Inn and I used to go out there but I never ever drank, and so when I first walked into Harrah’s club it was so far beyond what I ever imagined. People were gambling people were drinking, people were…you know and I thought, Oh my God! What did I get myself into? So then the next day, because she was the keno writer, Barb, and the next day I went to apply for a job and they had it was the back of the parking lot and there was just like a window back there and a whole huge line where people would just walk up and so you could tell… Wheelock: To apply? Campbell: Yeah, to apply because in the summer they hired 3,000 people and most of them were just graduated from college or first year teachers or for summer jobs. That was my first opportunity to apply for a job so as I was standing in this line you could hear what they were saying to two and three people in front of you and I remember the one person was a guy and they said, he had acne pretty bad I guess, and they said, “You cannot work at the front, we’ll have to put you somewhere in the back.” And then there was a lady a couple in front of my and they said, “Go lose ten pounds and then come back.” And I thought, “Oh shit!” I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. So then I get up there and they said, “Dealer school.” So I went to blackjack dealing school. You went for five days but in the mean time before it started we drove down to Sacramento where Barb’s roommate all through college lived to apply for jobs in the San Juan school district in Carmicle, California which is a suburb of Sacramento. So we got our teaching jobs right off. I was at La Sierra high school and she was at San Juan high school. At that time San Juan school district was the second largest in the state of California so there were ten high schools with 2,000 kids in each. It was big. Wheelock: It was high school that you got a job. Campbell: I got a job teaching P.E in California. We got an apartment right away. Everything just like…not a worry in the world, right? (laughs) Life just falls into place. We taught at different schools and then I kept my job at…oh and then we went back down to Lake Tahoe 2 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 for work during the summer dealing. Dealing school. That was pretty much an experience for me. You definitely know how to count to twenty-one in every way you can possibly do it. You went to school for five days. Three days you were in a class learning how to do it and then the fourth day you went out and just observed a dealer on the floor and then the fifth day you were that dealer and another person was with you and then after that… Wheelock: You were on your own? Campbell: You were on your own. It was a great experience then what took us down to Sacramento in between and got our teaching jobs. Worked all summer at Lake Tahoe as a blackjack dealer and then during the school year when school started I still worked at Tahoe. I’d drive up on weekends to Lake Tahoe from Sacramento. Wheelock: How long was the drive? Campbell: It was probably ninety miles or something. I had a little black Volkswagen and I would only fill it with gas once a week. Drove to school every day and then go to Tahoe and back and it would go and it cost me like five dollars or something for gas. I think gas was pretty… Wheelock: Twenty-eight cents. Campbell: Twenty-eight, twenty-nine cents. And you got blue chip stamps and (laughs) all of that stuff. Then after that Ben, my husband-to-be, he had gotten back from the Olympic games because the Tokyo Olympics in ’64 and so he was teaching, so this was in 1965 I guess, and so he was teaching in the San Juan school district and he was teaching adaptive P.E. at that time. So he went to all of the different high schools. He was giving a class for teachers, mainly for P.E. teachers to Judo, to teach them how to instruct Judo because he wanted it in the curriculum as an activity, a P.E. activity in the district. My roommate, who was a Home Ec. Major, she said, “Let’s take that class. Find out if he’ll let me go because I’m home ec. So we can go back to Montrose and flip people.” Because nobody had ever taken Judo in Montrose. I ask him and he said, “Yeah, that would be fine.” Then we took the class. First thing he did was totally insult me like he said, “Okay, if you’re as big as Linda you’ll take a size five Judo gi.” I looked and I said, “What?” And he said, “I mean as tall!” So one thing after another and then he had a friend there and so they decided they wanted to ask Barb and me out so 3 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 they flipped a coin to see which one. (laughs) Anyway, time went on and Ben and I got together and dated for three months and he had Judo camps up in Squaw Valley, California that summer and we dated three months and got married. We’re still married today so that’s pretty amazing. Wheelock: You knew right away. Campbell: Yeah, I guess. Wheelock: Now did you still have your teaching job after this? Campbell: Oh yeah. I was teaching at La Sierra high school. Taught for four years, I think it was, there and then I got pregnant with Colin our son and had him out in California. When ben and I first got married he had the Judo club and it was on Jackson road in Sacramento so we had a trailer that we lived in right behind the judo club and then I’d drive to work. In fact, we’d drive together and then he’d pick me up or whatever after school. We went to different schools. Wheelock: So did you have a big wedding? Campbell: Oh no, we got married at Park’s Wedding Chapel in Reno Nevada and we weren’t even sure it was legal. (laughs) Wheelock: Did your parents come? How did your parents take this? Campbell: We were at Judo camp up at Lake Tahoe that summer in august, I think. We started dating, I guess it must have been about may or something and one day he had me go up to camp with them to take care of all the records and stuff of all the people that enrolled into the camp and worked and so and then one day he just said, “Go call your dad and tell him we’re getting married.” I said, “What?” Very romantic. Wheelock: It did it for you. Campbell: It did it for me. So basically, I mean, I was totally fine not having a wedding because the summer before my sister had gotten married and all I heard all summer long was wedding plans, wedding plans, wedding plans just for…and then my best friend at that time got married that fall when I was, well it was still when I was still in college, and all I heard all fall was wedding plans, wedding plans, and I thought, “Oh I never want to go through that!” So I didn’t. Then we decided we’d come back to Colorado and we came back to Colorado and I got a job teaching GED through the Win program in 4 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Montrose. Ben had a hard time finding a job there in Montrose because, I don’t know, he wasn’t…So he decided he was going to go back to California and get a teaching job. He was there maybe six months or something then he went back and I stayed and I had Shannon, because Colin and Shannon are just a year apart in age. Shannon was born in Montrose and Colin was born in Sacramento. Then, after the end of the school year, Ben had gotten a job teaching in Allgrove, California. I finished teaching that year in Montrose the GED program and then went to…back to California. Wheelock: With two little ones. Campbell: With two little ones. They were like twins all the time. Then we bought a place, I said, “Well I want to live on Sheldon road in Allgrove if I move back.” So he found… Wheelock: Why? Campbell: Because it was a horsey place and I’ve always had horses, I’ve always ridden horses and had horses, you know a ranch and I just wanted and I don’t know it was like out in the country. At that time, it was zoned A2 it was…It could only be divided into two acres was the smallest acreage you could buy. A lot of big dairies and horse ranches and stuff so that’s where we lived for the next, I think, ten years. I think it was…the kids, they were second and third grade when we moved back here and Ben just decided it was right after proposition thirteen went through and passed California and they were letting - proposition thirteen was cutting back on property tax because property tax and stuff were so high and then what happened was the crime rate went way up because there were so many drugs and whatever in California it got…and we decided… Wheelock: Now did you work then, during that time also? Campbell: Yeah, at Allgrove High school. Wheelock: So you went back there again. P.E.? Campbell: Yeah. So I taught P.E. then GED and then back to P.E. and then one day he said, “We need to get out of here while the kids are little because you can’t take kids away from California when they get in high school. It’s not fair to them. So if you’re going to move you got to move while they’re young enough.” So I said, “Okay. You go find a place and I will take care.” Because we had a ranch there and we had raised horses, raised quarter horses so we rode all the time 5 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 and did all of this. Ben was working at the school district and then he was working for the sheriff’s office at night and then he got back into doing jewelry then so he was working like three jobs. Wheelock: What about his judo? Campbell: He still coached the armed forces team and stuff when we were in Allgrove. It just kind of phased out of Judo, you know. It had just been a part of his life for so long that and that’s when he really got back into doing jewelry. I said, “You just go and find a place.” So he was headed to Codey, Wyoming and I said, “Well at least just look at Durango.” Because it would be just right across the mountain from my folks and my family and so we’d be close enough where I could go and, you know. He went to Santa Fe, no he went to intertribal, Gallup intertribal, and then there was two weeks in between it and Santa Fe Indian market and he had a trailer with his shop set up in this trailer and he met Jimmy Keen, that lived in Ignacio and who was a jeweler at intertribal and he said, “Do you want to just come up and stay in that area for a while and look around between it and Santa Fe Indian market instead of going, you know. So Ben did. He got to Ignacio and the tribe, when they found out he was there, they wanted him to run Sky Ute Downs horse center and so Ben said, “Well I’m in Ignacio, Colorado.” And I said, “Where in the world is Ignacio?” I had never heard of it and I’d lived in Colorado all my life. I said, “Okay.” This is in 1977, when he came back. So then Colin came back with him later… Wheelock: In third grade. Yeah he was in third grade and Shannon stayed with me because I was going to stay to sell our house and our place in California and do that and I think it was, it was in the fall because school had already started in California or here in Colorado when they came back. Ben took Colin over to Jeff Medina was the principal at the elementary school and he took them in there and it was kind of later in the day and so Jeff took Colin into Mrs. Keller’s class. Hellen Keller. Killer Keller. (laughs) Colin was always such a bright student. He was always way ahead of even though they started school they were a year younger than all of their classmates here because they started when they were four in California because their birthdays were October and the cut off was when we’re here the cut off was in September. That first six months, Colin and Ben lived in the camper in the back of a pickup, you know. They set it off down at 6 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Sky Ute Downs. Shannon and I came back out here on Thanksgiving that year because I was working in California. Colin just hated school and was having such a difficult time because every time he would do something the teachers would rip it up even though like on math he would just write the answers down because he just knew how to do it and didn’t want to go through the whole process of writing the whole problem down. (laughs) She would rip it up in front of the class. It was not a pleasant time for him. So when I came during thanksgiving I went to school and Jeff Medina, I said, “I want to have a meeting. He hates school and he’s always loved school.” So he had a meeting with me and Ellen Fromm and Helen Keller and Jeff Medina and Colin and I were there. Wheelock: Why was Ellen there? Campbell: Because she was the other third grade teacher. So he was going to move Colin into Ellen’s class, out of Keller’s class. The meeting was a little bit different. Hellen Keller, I said, “I can understand how kids are terrified of you.” She was very structured and big and tall. I said, “You scare me and I don’t even scare very easily. I can imagine what you did my little kid.” Jeff Medina told Colin, he said, “I’m going to put you in Mrs. Fromm’s class but that’s the only place I can move you. If you don’t work out there, there isn’t any place else to move you.” So then I was like, oh shoot. I came back during spring break and I went to parent teacher conference, Shannon and I came back out during spring break. I remember going into Mrs. Fromm’s room and going, “Oh, no.” Because Colin hadn’t complained anymore at all because, let me skip back, when Ben went to pick Colin up that first day, Mrs. Keller had given him a test and Jeff Medina had told her, “Just let him sit and get used to things, don’t be pushing work on him to start with.” So when Ben came in to pick him up she said, “He needs to be moved back to the first grade. All California kids are behind Colorado kids.” Ben said, “I think she had no idea who she was talking to.” Thinking that Ben was probably…I mean who knows what. (laughs) He said, “Well don’t you think it would be more fair to you and to the student, to Colin, to observe him for a while before you come to a decision like that?” Of course, that didn’t go over real well with her. She already had her mind made up. So then she picked on him the whole time. It was bad. I think that’s one thing that people don’t realize that if parents don’t stand up for your kids when, you know, somethings going on and you know that they were good students and did 7 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 really well and then all of a sudden hated school, you know there’s something. So when I came back spring break and I had to go to parent teacher conference with Mrs. Fromm and she said, “Well, all I can say is he needs to be moved up a grade, not back a grade. He is amazing.” After that I loved Mrs. Fromm from then on just this difference and I thought, just think of how many kids are ruined. Where they hate school from then on if parents don’t take the initiative to check out and see why they don’t like it because there are personality conflicts and there are personality conflicts with teachers and students. Whether you believe it or not, there are. Then Shannon and I came back after the end of the school year and we lived down at Sky Ute Downs, rented a trailer from Becky and Joe Sparks down there and Ben ran Sky Ute downs. We had bought fifty acres and then we’re building up on 334. I was in painting Ben’s office one day at Sky Ute and the Superintendent who was Harrig, I can’t remember what his first name was, he was the Superintendent of schools and I guess he heard that I had a teaching degree and so he said, when I was down there painting and he came in one day and he said, “I think I have a job for you.” And I said, “Well I don’t know that I want a job.” (laughs) So I thought, eh. (??29.25) So I applied and got the title math job at the high school and I started teaching at the high school. I taught there for three years, I think, up at the high school and then moved down to the elementary school. Wheelock: Why? Campbell: Because they dropped it at the high school, the title program I think, and they needed somebody down at the elementary. I had never taught at elementary because I was always at high school in California and then at Dals and stuff. That year, oh those cute little kids, how they hug on you and, you know, I got everything! My immune system really was built up after that. I never got sick anymore. (laughs) After all those. Wheelock: Oh I thought you were just going to say that you got everything just from the love. Campbell: Yeah, you did. So then taught there and then taught both at the elementary and the intermediate, went back and forth for twentythree years I worked in the school district. In the meantime, Ben was still doing his jewelry, he ran Sky Ute Downs for probably five years, maybe. Then we started the 4-H horse, 4-H club. Ben started it 8 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 before I got out here and then I took it over and Genie Whiteman and I did it, it was called Sky High 4-H club and it was a horse club. Went to state fair, had all of these kids that we taught them riding and we did the horse activities and then the next year we started another club that was called Wind Riders. Our club won state fair, first time ever in La Plata county that our 4-H had won. There was five on the team and there’s Colin and Shannon, and then Mark and Stacy Lawler and Mike Lawler was CEO of Community Hospital at that time, and then he had moved to Mercy and became the CEO of Mercy Hospital and then Chad Midcalf, Midcalf and the Karen and Chuck, she was with Blue Cross Blue Shield and then she became the, when Mike moved to Mercy from Community Hospital in Durango, he had her come and be the director of the foundation which she is still to this day. So it’s those five kids that won the state championship and nobody has ever matched it since or before so we still have our plaque. We went to horse shows after horse shows after horse shows. Our whole family rode so that was good. Then we got into politics by accident. Wheelock: How did that happen? Campbell: By accident and then we bought the Lee place, Russel Lee place that was right…bordered our place. It expanded our place to 115 acres. Wheelock: Now did you design your house that your now in? Campbell: Oh yes, we did. When we built our house, Melvin Haga, Melvin was the contractor and it was when, because we moved into our house in 1979 and we had seen these log homes in California, they were lodge pole pines from Montana, and Ben just always wanted a log. Our house, we were at Sky Ute Downs because we were down there all the time with the horses and Melvin Haega and June Haega and their whole family, Anita May, who teaches down here in Ignacio. He was the contractor and we were sitting in the bleachers and Ben said, “We want to build this house.” He wrote all what the cost would be, everything, on a paper towel. (laughs) Ignacio…It was so amazing. I remember when we were building because we were living in the trailer down at Sky Ute Downs and when Ben would go up to check on to see how they were doing because we had to put a road in, we had to do everything from scratch. 9 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Wheelock: Was there anything up there at all? Campbell: Not on that part of the building because we bought, Ross Raegan’s place but the only thing was the old barn by Wes Raegan’s was the only structure that was on the place. We decided to build our house right at the edge of our land where it wasn’t irrigated. So we had to build a road in from the county road and stuff. Melvin Haega was amazing. I don’t know if he hadn’t done very many log homes before but he said, “There is not any two square corners.” He had no idea of all of the fitting that you would have to do. So Ben went up there, I know, I mean he would go and check on them all the time and it was getting later in the fall and they would be all playing cards during their lunch time and Ben said, “Come on! When are we going to get this house?” And Melvin said, “I thought you moved back here to slow down.” And Ben said to Melvin, “Yeah, but not to stop.” (laughs) Our whole life here Melvin was always, because he went, kept his contract right to the penny that he had written down on the paper towel. I think I still have it somewhere. It was just thinking, wow, it’s too bad things aren’t like that today. Then we put our big barn, a Quonset Hut that was 300 feet long and 75 feet wide and they had to bring it in with cranes and they had to do half at a time all the time because they tried bolting it all together and then lifting it up but because it weighed so much. All of the people around here, the ranchers and stuff would say, “in the first big snow storm that comes, that buildings going to collapse.” It was going to totally collapse or the first big wind storm it just…well it’s still there, the snow doesn’t even stay on it, it just slides off. Sounds like an avalanche when you’re inside when there’s a lot of snow and when it stars sliding… Wheelock: Is that where Ben’s man cave is? Campbell: No. We had a riding arena in there for the horses. Wheelock: I remember Libby telling me about it. Campbell: Yeah, everything was for the horses, you know, that we did for a lot of years. Wheelock: So how long did you live in the trailer before Campbell: I moved back here in 1978, I think it was. We came after, it was in the spring I think, Shannon and I did, because Colin and Ben were already here because it was that spring that I was helping Ben, I 10 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 was painting his office. Then we moved into our house in 1979 so I started teaching in the fall of ’78 here. Jackie Morlen and I and Mary Lou Joseph and Bert was teaching… Wheelock: Environmental Ed? Campbell: Environmental Ed and Mary Jo whatever her last name was, I don’t know if they were with BOCES or if they were with what program. Jackie Morlen, that’s the one in Bayfield. Yeah, Jackie started teaching the same year I did at the high school. Wheelock: Here in Ignacio. Campbell: Then Ben kept doing his jewelry and he quit down at Sky Ute Downs and just concentrated on doing his jewelry works and went to show all over the country and one everywhere and developed his name. He had before we left California but really pushed it. Then one day, Dotty Brown, I don’t know if you remember Dotty Brown? Wheelock: I remember a Dotty but I’m not sure what the last name was. Campbell: She was pretty involved, she got involved in school activities and school stuff. Her son, what was his name? Travis? She had an only son. Anyway she called and wanted to know if Ben would go to the central committee meeting in Durango for the Democratic party. I was like, “I don’t think so.” (laughs) I don’t think so, you know. We had a plane at that time so we were going to go to Aspen or something for the day, fly over. It was storming. Wheelock: Does Ben fly? Campbell: He got his piolets and I soloed. Wheelock: Oh really? Wow. I’m impressed, Linda. Continue. Campbell: We were going to go over to Aspen for the day and then he thought, maybe I’ll just go to that meeting down at the fairgrounds for the Democratic party. Because Al Brown had been the sheriff or he was the sheriff but he had graduated from San Jose State in California where Ben graduated from. Ben said, “I’ll go down there and support him.” They were looking for people to run for the fiftyninth district for the state of Colorado. Don Whalen of Fort Lewis college, he was running as a Republican and so nobody wanted to run against him. Ben had gotten up and spoke about Al Brown because he’s a really good speaker and so when they kept asking people if they would run for the fifty-ninth, he said everybody had a 11 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 reason why they wouldn’t. I’m too sick. I’m too busy. I’m too whatever. The last one standing on the floor was Ben and they said, “What about you?” And Ben said, “I don’t know. What do you have to do?” and they said, “Oh not much, we’ll do it all. We’ll help you.” “How much does it cost?” “Oh not much at all.” “Well…” he said, “Well…” Wheelock: Now had you gone to the meeting? Campbell: No, we were supposed to go to Farmington because we had some horses in training down there we were supposed to take some hay down and finally he came home and I said, “What in the world? I thought you were just going to be gone for (laughs)” and he said, “Guess what?” I said, “What?” He said, “I’m a candidate.” I said, “A candidate?! For what?” (laughs) He said, “For the fifty-ninth district state representative.” I said, “What do they do?” He said, “I don’t know.” I said, “How many of them are there?” “I don’t know how many.” And that night we went to our first event over in Pagosa and the next headline the next day: Dems announce surprise candidate. I’ve got all of the scrap books from Dave. Wheelock: Do you? Wow. Campbell: Yeah. Ann Brown called him up and she had been mayor in Durango and she said, “Do you need some help? Do you know what you’re doing?” “Heavens, I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing.” She said, “You need help?” He said, “Well yeah, I guess so.” So Ann, thank god for Ann, she became his campaign manager because she knew everybody around her. She lived here forever in Durango. She said, “First thing you have to do is you got to go talk to Sam Means, get his approval.” So Ben thought, okay and he went down there. Ben said, “What chance do you think I have?” He said, “You want to know what chance I think you have? You’ve got two chances, little and none.” (laughs) Wheelock: Now was he the lawyer here already? Campbell: For the tribe. Yeah. So Sam said, “Little or none.” Ben thought, well, that’s not going to happen but nobody knew he was a competitor. Nobody knew he went to the Olympic games, nobody knew, you know? They just thought he was…(laughs) Wheelock: So he was a surprise. 12 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Campbell: He was a surprise candidate, yeah. Colin and Shannon, they were little when he first got into politics. Then he won, beat Don Whalen who stayed a friend for the rest of his life. Wheelock: Don is a wonderful man. Campbell: They were great and it was a shock to him that he lost. I think because he had been everything. He was Fort Lewis, I think he was the interim president or president and the athletics and then he was on the airport commission. I mean, he had been everything that he should be before you run for office. (laughs) In fact, his Gary is still really close friends with us, his son. So then Ben went to Denver and I stayed and taught and took care of the ranch and took care of the kids and did all that. He was only gone six months or seven months; you know when they’re in session at the state legislature. So he would come back on weekends, fly up and fly back. Wheelock: It’s good that he got his pilot’s license. Campbell: Well he didn’t do that though. I mean he flew commercial because it’s too dangerous to fly private over these mountains because when you have to go you have to go. It’s not like you can say, “Nope, not going today.” So I kept teaching here. I think I was down in the elementary and intermediate school when he was first elected. I took care, we had cows, like fifty Brangus cows and calves and horses and the kids and the 4-H and teaching… Wheelock: Now did you have help with the ranch at all? Campbell: No. I didn’t. Wheelock: I’m impressed. Campbell: Jake Candelaria used to help me a lot. He would come and help do different, you know, with the cows and stuff. But no, pretty much on my own. Ben ran two terms and he was going to come home because it is a real hardship on a family that people have no idea. Then also on the state legislature there is no help. There’s a secretary for the pool of legislators but not individual so I would type his letters. It was before PC’s and so you’d get all the way through and then make a mistake and…It was awful, awful. When he first went in to office, I think it was ’83, 1983 there was no cell phones, there were no fax’s, there were no computers, you had to write a letter or call long distance to talk to your legislators because there was no other way. They didn’t pay much at all. I think he made 13 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 14,000, 15,000 or something. It was pretty low. But then we were making not very much teaching either. Wheelock: That’s the only thing you did pretty much was through your ranching. Campbell: Well yeah. It was hard. He was only going to do those two terms and then come home and then they talked him into running against Mike String for U.S. congress. He was in there already so he was an incumbent and so what the heck? (laughs) Oh my god. So we, because we would travel all the time, weekends I would go with them and help them and the kids would too, we did parades and all of this stuff and teaching all week and stuff for campaign and that year that he beat Mike String there were only five congressmen that beat incumbents, where incumbents were beat, Ben was one of them. Wheelock: Through your help. Campbell: Well, the whole family. There has to be somebody that takes care of everything here. Or you couldn’t do it. You can’t. So when you see J. Paul you need to thank him because, and Debbie especially. It’s a hardship. It’s a really, really hardship on families. Wheelock: But, like, with J. Paul, his boys are already big and he ran pretty much when they were already [cross talk 52.46] Campbell: They were out of school. They were out of school. [crosstalk 52.48] Wheelock: Compared to like you. Yeah. Campbell: Yeah because they were in elementary school. Wheelock: Deb really doesn’t work. Campbell: She works at the ranch but she doesn’t work outside of the home. Wheelock: So you’re definitely… Campbell: Everything. You’re everything. So then our political thing. He did three terms in the U.S. congress and was going to run one more term and then come home. I was listening to the radio at home, doing everything and I heard on the radio Tim Worth decided he was not going to run for U.S. Senate and I said, “Oh no.” My heart just, like, oh my god. Pretty soon I get a call, it’s Ben, he said, “I’m going to go for senate.” I said, “Okay.” He said, “Up or up.” We went from two-thirds of all of Colorado was the third congressional 14 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 district, you know in the state legislature it was six counties. It was San Juan, Archuleta, Montezuma, and La Plata. I guess it’s four counties. We had to travel all over the district all the time and go to events in those four counties which turned out to be not that big of a deal. Then when he ran for congress it was two-thirds of the state because the third congressional district takes up over two-thirds of the whole state from all of from Grand Junction as far to the Utah border to the New Mexico border, Arizona border, up to Pueblo. Colorado Springs isn’t in it but up through Pueblo. It’s a huge district driving and most places you had to drive because there’s not flights unless you chartered flights or something. It’s a commitment. Keeping up with that and doing that so then when he said he was running for senate I thought, oh my god, that’s the whole state. He announced and Terry Considine was the republican that was running and he’d been running for two years and this was in May or June that Tim Worth decided he wasn’t going to run so it didn’t leave much time from June to November. Wheelock: Now what year was this? Campbell: He ran for state rep was from ’86 to ’92 and then he ran in ’92 for U.S. senate. He was there from ’92 to 2005. Wheelock: And you were still doing all of this? Campbell: I was doing everything. We still had to 4-H going for a long time plus we were breeding horses because we were raising quarter horses, show quarter horses and stuff. When he ran for senate, the minute I heard that Tim Worth wasn’t going to run on the radio I was just like, “Oh no, they’re going to get him to run.” I just knew it and I was like, “Oh my god. Why can’t we just stay in something that’s easy for a while?” Because once you’re in it’s, and you develop all of these relationships and you develop all of this constituents, you know, it’s much easier than going through the whole thing. Anyway, he ran and we went, I would haul, he rode Scamp who was Colin’s horse, that big black and white paint that you see [cross talk 57.49] I would haul him to Grand Junction to all of these parades so Ben could ride him in the parades because he was such an image and stuff. Pretty much did it all. Hauled that horse over Red Mountain, all of these passes, all the time. Sometimes, the kids were like junior high when he first got into the senate or they might have been like freshman, eighth and ninth grade or something. Sometimes they would go with me and sometimes I would just go by myself and haul 15 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 them over to Montrose and Grand Junction and up to Pueblo and all over the state and teaching. Wheelock: Yes, yes, and a very good teacher at that. Campbell: Teaching and taking care of the ranch and doing everything. I think when he first ran for senate Ann Swing, Ann was the principal. Ann and I had grown up in Montrose. Wheelock: You were next door neighbors right? Campbell: Well her husband, Larry Swain, his folks lived right across the street from my folks. Ann had lived down the block in Montrose so her husband’s folks were really close friends with my folks. Wheelock: And so she lived just right there, so they were like childhood sweethearts then? Campbell: Yeah, they had gotten married before she got out of high school. Wheelock: Oh, okay. Really? Campbell: Yeah. Wheelock: Did she go to the same college as you? Campbell: They got married and they had kids and then she went back to college after the kids were grown. Wheelock: Well that’s remarkable too. Campbell: She went to Western State, yeah, she did. Larry might have gone but I know Ann didn’t because she had kids to take care of and stuff. Wheelock: By the time she moved here… Campbell: She was divorced and… Wheelock: Her kids were already grown. Campbell: Yeah her kids were grown when she moved back here because I hadn’t seen her for years when she moved back here and she was the principal and then we became really close friends because in the mean time we started riding Harleys. Wheelock: That’s right, I forgot about, now tell me about your Harley. 16 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Campbell: I think it was in ’92 when after Shannon came up with this idea. She said, “Mom, if dad wins for senate, let’s get him a new Harley and take it out on the stage.” He had ridden bikes forever and I had ridden, well I’ll have to bounce back to…when he won senate, then we got him the big dresser of Harley. I rode behind him for a while. He had taught me how to ride dirt bikes in California. He had couple little Hondas in the parking lot at the Judo club. I think we were married, he was teaching me how to ride them and there were these great big trees at the end of the driveway and on these streets so I went (driving sounds) right in the tree the first big thing. Well, it didn’t hurt me though…(laughs) but then we rode those. I took him up in the foothills in California and we rode them all the time, these dirt bikes. We just rode them everywhere and did all that stuff. So, I’d ridden but never on a street bike. I rode with Ben and he decided, well Shannon, she had to been sixteen or seventeen then because, in ’92, because he got us a bike that we were going to share, Shannon and I. So we went up, sportster, black sportster, that we had to take the rider safety class so we went up to community college Denver, in Denver, not sure what the name of it, and took this class, both Shannon and I did. That was the first time I’d ridden a street bike, you know, and they’re pretty powerful. Then we rode all the time and then Ann start…when she was teaching here I said, “Ann you ought to get a bike and you can go riding with us.” Colin had bought a bike out in California. He had graduated, he was at GIA, he had graduated from Fort Lewis and he found this bike of one of his students that also were at GIA that lived in Japan or somewhere and wanted to sell it. He had it shipped back here and then he taught Ann how to ride it. So Ann started riding. Wheelock: She didn’t have to take the class? Campbell: Oh yeah, she took the class. She rode with us for years, we rode everywhere. Then we started Harley Angels. (laughs) Did that… Wheelock: You did all kinds of… Campbell: Maneuvers, yeah. Wheelock: That was fun to see. You guys were good. Campbell: Yeah, we were good. (laughs) The bike whole world was another whole thing but anyway, then after Ben was elected to senate he was the grand marshal of the Rose Bowl parade in ’92. He and 17 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Colin hauled the horse all the way to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl parade, for the grand marshal. That was one of the really fun things, you know what I mean? One thing, there was a lot of sacrifices but there was some good things too. Just going to the Rose Bowl and being part of that. Wheelock: Now did you ride your horse also? Campbell: No, they had a buggy for us right behind them so we rode and the horse was covered with flowers and the kids both rode in it too and the whole family was. That was a really fun, fun great thing to do. Skip ahead to…bikes kept going. We kept going to more and more bike things and then he started the rally here in ’93 is the first poster I have. When he and Mike Lovato started the rally in Ignacio. It grew and grew until it was like 30,000 people. Wheelock: I even helped in that. Campbell: Yeah, Danny [crosstalk 1.07.03] used to pick up trash. Wheelock: He still does that. Campbell: Yeah, Danny with all of his space camp kids would do that. Started the rally here and some people were for it and some people were against it. Whenever you do anything but, to bring… Wheelock: Sure did bring a lot of income in. Campbell: Oh my gosh, I mean, just the amount of people it brought here and how Ignacio… Well when ben was running Sky Ute Downs too, skipping back a ways, we started these quarter horse circuits before he quit at the Downs he had the longest quarter horses circuit in the whole United States. It was nine days and it was just before the cutoff for points for world championship. People came from Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona; I mean they were from all over. It was three days, a break, three days, a break, three days, a break. They could get a lot of points for… The amount of things, I think, that we as a family brought in to this community was pretty significant. Wheelock: Oh I think so, I definitely do. Campbell: Just like the quarter horse thing never once we quit down there and once the kids were in 4-H, they stayed in it until high school. Then it all just kind of died back, unless you have somebody that’s really going to do it. And then the rally, they live up to huge thing and then…once we dropped out. 18 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Wheelock: It’s definitely not the same. Campbell: Never been the same, never been the same since. I think we haven’t contributed near like a lot of families that have been here their whole life but I was in Colorado my whole life. I think it was pretty significant, the different things that we got going. There was no horse 4-H club here until we started it. There was no quarter horse circuit here. And the rally and just different things like that. Wheelock: Well you were also a lobbyist. Can you… Campbell: After I quit teaching. Wheelock: Why did you decide to quit teaching? Campbell: Dare I say it? Wheelock: You don’t have to. You may do it. Campbell: Ben stayed in the senate, his first term and then he switched parties. Wheelock: That was hard on a lot of democrats. Campbell: Yeah but they need to get over it. (laughs) They need to get over it because the whole thing, it was just the extremes in both parties are wackos. Most people are right in the middle and Ben, as a Democrat when he was in the U.S. senate, they rate him from one to one hundred and he was always forty-eight to fifty-one, right in the middle, and he always won the women’s vote, the Hispanic vote, the minority vote. He always won labor. Then when he switched over, so he’s the first person in Colorado that ever switched parties and won in both parties. He won by the same percentage that he did, he won by over ten percent and he won the same groups of people. His voting record was always between forty-eight and fifty-one, as his rating. So the most extreme liberal which was, what was his name? I can’t remember. To Jessie Helms, to the far right. Party shouldn’t mean anything, I don’t think. I think it’s getting stuff done. When people get so hung up on parties, look what’s happening to the country now because of it. Everybody’s just worried about getting reelected that they are afraid to do anything. In all those years Ben got more bills passed than all of the former senators in the U.S. senate Colorado in history because he was able to work both sides. People are people. Doesn’t matter whether you are a democrat or republican. Wheelock: When you quit teaching… 19 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Campbell: I quit teaching. I should have taught at least twenty-five years, you know, I should have stayed longer. The reason I didn’t, it was after he won U.S. senate the second time, it’s because there were so many things I couldn’t do and Ann was always fabulous about, in fact when he first announced that he was running for senate and it was all spur of the moment, they wanted me to come up to Denver to be with him for his announcement and I called Ann and Ann says, “Go.” At that time, I was still working at the elementary and Roy Lyons was there and he was an asshole about doing anything and yet I never took a day off sick leave, I never used any of my sick leave ever. He just instead of saying, Oh my god. Think of what that could have done to this district if he would have been, you know, think of what could have really happened for here. The same thing that Ben did for Mercy hospital and Fort Lewis college. It was just so short sighted and it was such a hassle to do anything. Ann said, “You go. We’ll figure it out. You just go.” So I called Roy and he just gave me all kinds of grief he said, “You’re going to be docked.” I said, “Are you kidding me? Don’t you even see the big picture?” I said, “Forget it, I’m not going.” So I didn’t go. It was just like oh my gosh, is this worth it? To stay here and work and not have the flexibility. It was Ed Cutslet though that set up the thing because he saw the value where Lyons was just… Wheelock: I’m glad it worked out though. Campbell: Ed and I are still great friends. He was just totally…anyway, we’re almost up to present time. I think one of the things…I was a sponsor for the U.S.S. Mesa Verde which was a really fabulous, it’s U.S. Navy warship which was really, really fun and fabulous to be able to be that because there’s not very many sponsors in the whole country of ships, warships especially. I was the one that christened it. I think I was still teaching then because…no, no because I was on the Fort Lewis board then. Ron Cross, he gave me a big bottle or something to use. Just to be able to do those kind of things and be part of it was neat and to be able to take off because we’ve traveled all over the world which I couldn’t have done if I had stayed teaching. There’s no way that I could have taken that much time off or been working for nothing. I retired or quit teaching I had like 180 sick days. Wheelock: That’s like me too. Campbell: So the benefit was to be able to travel. We went to Africa, we went to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Russia, everywhere all over the world. 20 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Egypt, places that you wouldn’t really want to go today. To be able to go like we did, without going through security and all that. We always went on military flights and be able to meet the people, the Queen of England, all of these people and the opening of the NMAI that Ben was a sponsor for the National Museum of American Indian Museum. Just to do those kind of things made all this other work worthwhile. I love the kids and the kids… Wheelock: They loved you. Campbell: They come up all the time, “Oh, Ms. Campbell, Ms. Campbell.” In fact, we bought the bakery building and David Silva… Wheelock: I had him as a student. Campbell: I had him and I said, “You were a little shit. I believe in you and I’m miss, I’m going to give you a chance to do it.” He can do it and stuff and just to have those memories and the number of people around here that you know from teaching here and how they never forget you. I remember one incident, Thali Silva and Diane Waters, they were in my advanced math class when I working with you, I worked with you a lot. We worked really well together. Wheelock: I think so. Campbell: I think so too, but they kept saying, “Ms. Campbell, Ms. Campbell, can we come home with you and stay with you for a while?” I said, “After spring break.” This was in the fall. (laughs) Then they said, “Ms. Campbell, spring break’s coming up, after can we come stay with you?” I said, “Well, you have to get notes from your mom, you have to do this, you have to do that.” Thinking they wouldn’t do it. The day I said, “Oh my gosh.” They said, “Okay, we’re ready to come stay.” I said, “Well, we have a faculty meeting down at the district office, you’ll have to come down and get my Jeep.” I had a little jeep. When I came out of that meeting, they were there. I thought, oh my gosh. I took them out on the four-wheelers, we were feeding cows, we were doing all of this stuff. Thali still talks about it all the time, every time I see her she talks about it. And now Mahvish (?) is always saying, “Oh my god.” I just think it’s so sad… Wheelock: I talked to the grandmother of Thali and Dianne Waters and she said that that’s one of the highlights of Thali’s life. One of the wonderful times. 21 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Campbell: Yeah, because what’s-her-name was the counselor in there, she told me, Dianne Waters, that she had her and she said that Dianne, because I guess she moved to Durango after or something, and said that too. I think, what a shame our society is getting so bad that if I thought to do something like that now, oh my god, the liability, everything. Dianne stayed there the whole week, I never ever heard from her mom. I’d take her to school and Thali, her mom only let her stay three nights, I think. She said, “You can’t. You’ve got to come home.” I said, “She’s fine. She’s fine.” I think, what a shame that you can’t do that and you can’t hug kids. I would be hesitant to pick up a kid walking along this road now and isn’t that awful? It is awful that they’ve gotten to that far being such a, you know, protective where kids don’t have experience because I remember in first grade, Mrs. Hanes was my first grade teacher and she had this long bobsled and she would load up all of her first graders every year and drive them around the streets in Montrose behind her car, pulling them on that sled and I remember that as if it was yesterday. I mean just what a fabulous memory to have something like that, a teacher would do that with you. Wheelock: Well, my trips when I used to take the kids to Albuquerque and we even saw the Ice Capades. It was wonderful. Campbell: I know, I know. It’s fabulous and kids never forget it. You don’t forget it. Wheelock: Well I know you’ve been a wonderful influence. Campbell: I don’t know about that but… Wheelock: I do. Campbell: I think this community is pretty amazing and the people in it are, because when we first were going to buy here the realtors did not want to show us property, or show Ben because I was still in California, property out here. They said, “You don’t want to live out there. You don’t want to. You want to live in Durango.” He said, “No, I think we want to live out here.” I think, if people even got to know this community like it is, it is so amazing and it’s so great and then the people in it are so wonderful. Now, I wouldn’t want to do business with the town anymore though, after what David went through. That was a horrible experience, I would never buy property in town again to have to deal with the harassment and stuff that we went through, that David went through opening a business here but 22 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 that’s my only negative thing I’ve ever experienced in town. Well, because we live out of town but we also have another building here in town, an auto parts building which has never been an issue or hard to deal with. Wheelock: Is that the one with Chris May? Campbell: (Affirmative noise) So that’s my only negative thing that I would say. Wheelock: Well I don’t see you as a negative person at all so… Campbell: No. Just to go through that, I wouldn’t do it again. I figure it’s hard, it’s hard to own a business, it’s hard to open a business, our daughter has two galleries in Santa Fe and in Durango, Sorrel Sky, and just knowing what people go through that own their own business. Wheelock: Now, did she have as hard a time in opening a building there as David did here? Campbell: I don’t think so. Wheelock: Really? Campbell: Part of it was people didn’t want the competition and did everything they could to drive him broke. Wheelock: I’m worried about it just because right now I don’t see a lot of people there. Some days I do but, you know… Campbell: It’s pretty good [cross talk 1.25.49] Wheelock: I’m glad to hear that because we were so excited to see it open. And I ate breakfast, Rick and I ate breakfast there and it was wonderful. Campbell: The food has been great. Wheelock: The food is delicious. It really is. Campbell: It is really great. Wheelock: Big servings, I couldn’t even eat all mine. Campbell: Yeah. You have to take it home with you. When David came because I knew him when he was a kid, he and Daniel. I said, “Okay, I’m going to take a chance on you. Don’t prove me wrong.” 23 �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Linda Campbell Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: May 19, 2016 Wheelock: He’s a very good man I think. Campbell: And such a worker. When you see these kids that want to follow their dream and you don’t do everything you can to help them achieve that dream and then something’s wrong with the system. When you’d rather see them on welfare or getting food stamps instead of being a productive citizen and providing jobs and tax revenue for the town then something’s wrong. Something is wrong. Anyway, that’s that. That’s the end. Wheelock: Linda thank you so much, it has been wonderful and I’ve learned a lot. I’m glad I was able to get you because I know Ben is there but I think the women, there’s something about the woman… Campbell: And I got two awards. I got the Mara Lee Ballantine woman of the year award in Durango, through them, chamber of commerce in Durango, and then I got the extraordinary woman award from three of us from the woman’s resource. Wheelock: Well I can see, I’m glad, because you deserve it and thank you so much, I appreciate you doing this. Campbell: You’re welcome. [End of transcription] Transcribed by: Megan Chambellan July 6, 2017 Audit edit by: Final edit by: 24 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcript of Interview with Linda Campbell Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2017-08-06 Description An account of the resource The transcript of an interview with Linda Campbell conducted by Liz Wheelock at the Ignacio Community Library on Thursday, May 19th, 2016. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Subject The topic of the resource Interview; Ignacio; Colorado; Campbell, Linda; Transcript https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/50ea85ad24331df9b3ff35658f308fab.jpg f44fea20cd0593a471a46c07a71fa0be https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/741a280c08c42d5477ff0c7f65361d81.mp3 700be3f617acef54c6e666c5799acc0f https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/7e64cc10e92831d6f105c84359f87a6f.pdf 04e4f8ae3aa99df48d6011ef7d5521ac PDF Text Text The Bank Robbery By Rosemary Aiken This story is true and based on the facts as I remember them. It was high noon on a hot, summer day, Monday July 3, 1989. The bank lobby was crowded with customers at the Norwest Bank in Ignacio, Colorado. There was quite a buzz of conversation and you could hear a baby crying. I was a loan officer at that time and had left my desk on the south side of the bank and went behind the teller line to our documentation vault. As I was leaving the vault, I noticed the teller to the left of the vault motioning me to stay inside. I backed into the vault and a minute later a teller walked past the door. A masked man had her by the arm and was holding a pistol to her back! She was carrying a sack and I saw her empty the cash from the teller drawer into that sack. The robber was wearing a floppy, brown hat and a bandana covered his face. They walked back past the vault and I lost sight of them. The thoughts that went through my mind were swift. My first thought was to become invisible so he couldn’t see and shoot me. Then I thought, “No, it’s a joke. It’s not really happening.” Then I thought, “I wonder if I could sneak up behind him and hit him over the head with our check protector or one of the metal boxes containing our money orders and cashier checks. That thought left as quickly as it appeared. I remained in the vault for a few more minutes and I noticed the deadly quiet that had overcome the bank. The baby had even stopped crying. The robber again passed in from of the vault door, but this time he had a different teller. I later found out he had asked the first teller if she had a car and she wisely said, “No.” That was not so lucky for the second teller who he grabbed. He told her to get her keys. The only male employee, also a loan officer, got up from his desk and walked across the lobby and started talking to the robber. The robber kept shouting at him to shut up and go sit down. He finally told the employee, “If you don’t want blood all over the bank, you’ll sit down and shut up.” As stated before, I finally saw the bank robber and the teller pass in front of the vault door. They headed out the side entrance of the bank. When they were out on the sidewalk the robber asked the teller where her car was. At that point the teller realized she had grabbed her teller window keys and not her car keys. They could not re-enter through the side door because it locks when it is closed. The front door was also locked by a bank employee as soon as they left the bank. There was an old Dodge pickup idling outside where the robber and teller had exited and he forced the older couple out and forced the teller into the truck. Morbid curiosity had made a couple of us look out the side door and we saw them race away and head south on highway 172. We later realized how stupid we were to look. He could have decided to start shooting at us! �The Ignacio Police Department is just a half block north of the bank. We later learned that one of a police officer had started running down the street to the bank, pistol in hand, tripped and fell and the loaded pistol went flying down the sidewalk. Much later we laughed at how that was something Barney Fife would have done on the Andy Griffith Show. Before the bank was locked a male customer had left the bank and got into his truck. When the robber sped past heading south, he followed, a safe distance behind. When the robber got to the top of the hill by the Ignacio Cemetery, he slowed down and ordered the teller out. She later told me she was shaking so hard she couldn’t find the door handle. The robber then reached across her, opened the door and pushed her out. The bank customer, who was following them, picked her up and took her back to the bank. The first responder, after the robbery went out over the radio, was a Southern Ute Tribal Wildlife officer. He came upon the abandoned truck just a mile or so past where the robber had dumped the teller. The robber was running across an open field to the east of Highway 172. The officer took aim, but because another vehicle was heading towards Ignacio, and was in the line of fire, chose not to fire his gun and put others in jeopardy. Several minutes later there was an exchange of gunfire and another officer said all he could remember was bullets whizzing past his head. The robber was not captured that day, but was apprehended sometime later in Abiquiu, New Mexico. He was brought back to La Plata County, stood trial and was sentenced and placed in the Colorado State Penitentiary. The male loan officer kept telling me after the robbery and before the robber was captured, that he recognized the voice, but just couldn’t place it. I guess it was kind of like watching an animated movie and not being able to place the voice until after the final credits are being rolled. We also found out that customers had recognized the hat the robber was wearing as it belonged to his wife and she always wore it around town. About nine years later, the teller that was abducted in the robbery was contacted by the FBI and was told the robber was being released. I am now the manager of the bank, so I called my FBI contact and he confirmed that the robber was getting out of prison. He also told me the robber could not come into the bank or contact any bank employees. I have been told he still lives in the Ignacio area. Another bank robbery occurred several years later. But, that story will have to be told at another time, by another employee who was actually there, because I was retired by then. And I’d like to tell you a few fun facts or two fun facts about the bank… When I first stated working at the bank our shipment of cash from the Federal Reserve Bank in Denver was mailed from them to our post office. The postmaster would call us to let u know now it was there. Two bank officers would walk across the post office, while a third employee would watch from the inside of the bank. Now an armored vehicle with armed guards delivers the cash from the Federal �Reserve. I guess, since it is a federal offense to rob the post office, that’s why it was originally shipped by mail. They figured it was the safest way to get to the bank. Also, after the robbery, the entire lobby area was remodeled. The teller line was moved to the south side of the bank, next to the cash vault and totally enclosed in walls and locked doors. If you would like to pursue this robbery story, I’m sure the Durango Herald has archived all of what happened during the robbery, what happened during the trial and what happened after he was released. Transcribed by Liz Wheelock February 2016 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "The Bank Robbery" by Rosemary Aiken Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Subject The topic of the resource Bank Robbery; Ignacio; Colorado; 1989; History Description An account of the resource The written summary of a bank robbery that took place in Ignacio, Colorado on Monday, July 3rd, 1989 by an employee that worked at the bank at the time named Rosemary Aiken. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/4c0eb724797195ffea3a2c926ef850c4.jpg f44fea20cd0593a471a46c07a71fa0be https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/b0c3f233e92202ced93f6e77cb6e4b52.mp3 a1645a3d56275b3ff2a0309cd75e5437 https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/44412f424825b90f319cf3b5073fe2b3.pdf ef58951b9ea6682912587f11bfd3dcf9 PDF Text Text Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 I am Ms. Liz Wheelock and I am conducting an interview with Rosemary Aiken for the Ignacio Oral History Project entitled “ Voices of Ignacio” at the Ignacio Community Library on Wednesday, January 27, 2016. I have with me a local member and volunteer at the library who has graciously permitted me to interview her. Please tell me your name and your date of birth and how you came to live in Ignacio, Colorado. Aiken: My name is Rosemary Aiken. I was born 6/29, 1955 and my parents relocated here with the El Paso Gas Company with my Dad's job. I was three years old that was in 1958. Wheelock: Where did you live when you moved here? Aiken: When we moved, we moved with the company, El Paso Natural Gas and they had a housing complex up on the south end of Ignacio up on the hill. The offices, Quonsets and all were all below the hill. We lived in house number seven of El Paso Camp. Only the employees of El Paso Natural Gas lived there. Wheelock: And those houses were just for this area? Aiken: Yes, they had different housing developments in other areas in New Mexico for the employees El Paso Natural Gas for the New Mexico locations. My dad was part of the Ignacio field so they located him in Ignacio with my mother and with my two brothers and my sister. Wheelock: Your family was one of the first families to live on El Paso; those houses were used just for the area. Had your father been working long for El Paso Gas? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Aiken: No, he had probably been working for them for just a few years. I’m not exactly certain when he went to work for the company. I know he was 51 years old when he retired. He's been retired for about 30 years, for 35 years. He hadn’t worked a long time for El Paso. My grandfather was also an employee for El Paso. He worked in the Farmington office a number of years. He had gotten the jump on the job from my father then it came available for us to move up here. That's what my dad chose to do. I must mention here that I first moved up here when I was three years old. As I remember there were no paved roads there, no sidewalks and no gutters. My mother always lived in larger cities. My mother said, “No way I can live here!” My parents, both lived here and are both 87 years old. Once my mother became acquainted with the community they both fell in love with it and they're still here to this day. They've been here for the past 57 years. Wheelock: That was a long time. You went to school here. Do you remember Mrs. Morris the first grade teacher? Aiken: She is still alive and well! She retired some years back, but I think she worked for the school district for 50 some years. School is a great place to go to. I can truthfully say that when we got snow and we got lots of snow, I walked back and forth to school. My brothers used to walk me when I was 10 or smaller. As I got older, I started walking to and fro to school. I had to walk up the hill and both ways in the snow. Now, I graduated from Ignacio High School in 1973 and I raised my family here. Wheelock: So, do you have any stories, specifically or fond memories of going back to high school? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Aiken: You know the fondest memories that I have growing up in Ignacio Campus, we called it El Paso Heights, that's what it's called now. It was called Ignacio camp basically. My neighbors got transferred out so it had different people moving. Fifty percent of us grew up there. Our fondest memory was the playground behind their houses. We had a basketball court; a concrete slab would be fill it up with water in winter. We would ice skate. We’d take our sleds and we would go down the hill where the office buildings used to be. Some of the kids were in 4-H. My brothers had carrier pigeons some twenty-three. The neighbor boys, on days, would take the pigeons out and put bands on their legs and send messages to other people outside of the Ignacio. They had all kinds of steers and I wasn't in 4H. They had pigs and steers down there. We would play hockey down in Salt Creek which runs below the hill, Rock Creek when it froze over we’d play hockey down there. I was a big tomboy, so then there were sport’s wise things I could get into which I loved. I can remember fondly getting my first little sled. I was nine or 10 years old at Christmas time. We had a lot of time off during Christmas from school. We’d slide down that hill and a lot of times my dad would entertain two groups of sleds and they would get behind his pickup and drive us around. All the neighborhood kids wanted to come. He would drive us around the camp and it was always a lot of fun as well. We did this probably till I was 10 or 12 years old. Also times back then were much easier then. We’d still go out such as after dinner. We could hardly wait to go outside to play. We would catch fireflies down in the meadow. We’d build forts and build tree houses and all kinds of things. It was a time when your parents didn't worry about you and you went out and played. You went out as soon as you could in the morning and on the weekends coming back until it was dark. As far as high school and �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 the rest of the schools, I got good grades in school. I was in the Pep Club and on the Pom-Pom drill team. I was a drum major in our band, played trumpet and French horn. We had good sports teams. We supported our teams and we took a lot of fun trips. I remember taking a trip with one of my science teachers. Mr. Bruce Bruton's, the science teacher took us on a science trip to Denver. Went to IMAX Theater. Went to Museum of Natural History. It was just really a fun time. That's just some of my fun memories of Ignacio. I got married actually when I was a senior in high school. I got married in February and graduated in May and I was just shy of eighteen and then I went to work at the casino as a waitress and then I went to work with Butch McClanahan, wrapping meat. My son Adam and my daughter Krista and I found myself in a divorce and I had to go to work and then I went to work at the bank. I have some fond memories of working at the bank when Adam was twenty-one. I started doing general ledger accounts, got moved to the teller line, worked in administration, escrow computer, and I got head bookkeeper. The bookkeeping part I did for four years then I went back to the administration line and in charge of all administrative jobs. And then I became consumer loan officer, commercial loan officer and finally, 1991 I was promoted as manager of the bank. I was managing the bank in 2006-9 and retired at age 51. We went from the Bank of the Ignacio to United Bank of Ignacio, to Norwest Bank of the Ignacio and finally to Wells Fargo Bank of Ignacio. I have fond memories when I worked at the bank and Mr. Emmett Hott had been deceased for many years. He was a cashier at the bank and he was new in town. He would ride his horse on days when days were bad. He'd get there in his vehicle drive or on his horse and stoke the fire at the little bank. It was a one-room bank at the time. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Wheelock: Same location, just a one room bank? Aiken: Yes, when the bank was there, south of the bank was a little five and dime store. I remember buying my dad a pair of black socks on Father's Day. I paid a nickel or dime for them. Just south of that was Ute Motor Company, they did mechanical work there and there used to be gas pumps outside. Out in front, I believe it was owned by the Carlsons but I'm not quite sure. I can't remember and across from the bank there was another gas station which later became a feed store, which now is a pawnshop and next door to that was the post office, before it moved south of town in a bigger building. There used to be a bakery and a print shop down there. Then going north of the bank Mr. and Mrs. Phillips owned a little kind of like a five and dime clothing store. They sold shirts and pants and some groceries, candy. That's Bruce Phillips parents, he was my English teacher in high school but now there's a pawnshop there that Silva owns. Mrs. Morris owned another, it was kind of a dry goods store, but I could remember you could take a nickel and buy a whole bag full of candy. They had this one countertop with nothing but penny candy, five pieces for a penny for nickel or a dime. You could buy a bag of candy. Going further north there is a grocery store owned by the Lunsfords and her daughter was Donna Young. I do not know Donna's last name but it was owned by the Lunsfords and then they sold it to their son in law, Jerry Young. He owned it with Butch McClanahan and they owned and operated it for several years. Butch McClanahan bought out Jerry Young and then they renovated the building. He expanded the building and then down from their store was the SUCAP Building and there was a drugstore at the end, which was owned by the Sparks. I think David and �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Bruce, not sure they were Mr. and Mrs. They sold it and it became the French Drug Store and they carried some items but they had the best deli, hamburgers, soups and sandwiches and going down from there was the El Amigo. It was owned by the Siebels. Georgia Siebel was a beautician. I got my haircut there several times and also going down from their south, there was a place called the Black Cat. It was a bar and I think it had rooms up above. It was kinda of a motel. It was where SUCAP Building is today. They tore that down. I don't know who owned it before the SUCAP building, crossing toward the Baptist Church and you're going north, and then from there was the Quick and Handy and it was something. There beside that, and we cross the street, there used to be a gas station there. A Conoco. It was owned by Mr. Esparza. And there was a little café called Cope Café. I say it was owned by Wayne Cope. He was the coach in high school and had the best chicken fried and steaks and shakes there. There was also another gas station where the 7Eleven is. It was owned by Benny Valencia and across from street from there, coming down, where the library sets was this building that used to be a furniture store and it was also owned by Benny Valencia. And then Marlin and Marie Brown owned it. Marlin also worked for El Paso Gas. He lived up the street from us. They lived in the most northern house, which would be number one, and they owned the furniture store and sold traditional NavajoNative American jewelry. Where the chiropractor is, used to be a sports memorabilia store. It had billiard tables and had the old games... pinball games and also on the back Street from Browning you would go down south of town where Miralax is now, the Wiseman’s had a store. You would go west towards Browning there was a little grocery store and that used to be owned by Spider. They had a few groceries mainly, something like old 7-Eleven store. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 They had chips and pops and stuff like that. Now it is been converted into someone's home. Wheelock: Did and they have a movie theater? Aiken: Actually the movie theater was right next-door, next to the locker plant, which was Butch's. They had a movie theater. We had the Buckskin Movie Theater. We had a drive-in movie theater. It was out of town, a mile or so, which is just past where the casino was, on the west side of the road. you top hill, now there is house to the west. Wheelock: I believe it’s the Boxes? Aiken: No, Chris Walker lives there and that used to be the old Buckskin Theater. It was a drive-in theater. There were a lot of good times there, going to the drive-in, and then there was a video store the Meisners owned. It was just south of the grocery store; not sure, maybe a liquor store. They might've remodeled it after burnt. I think it might be the Wells Liquor store now but they had video rentals there. They also owned Meisner Sound, the video rental south of town and they owned another liquor store just north of the library. I think it now is closed. They were the original owners when I was growing up. Wheelock: Now during that time, when you're going to school, was there a lot of intramural sports because the southern Utes had that? Did you try to be involved in that? Was there a lot of intermingling? Aiken: If there was, I am not sure. I never knew it. It was predominately Spanish, Native American and White and until I was in high school probably my junior and senior year, there was some of that. I never knew there was a �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 difference. I went to my friend’s houses. We didn't know any difference. They were just my friends. They came to my house and there was a lot of Navajo students as well. We were going to school. They would bring the Navajo students off the reservation and they lived in dormitories. Some of the dormitories were torn down. Some are now Southern Ute tribal buildings but not all. We all intermingled. We went to each other's homes. I never knew the difference. If there would be any kind of ethnic racial difference, it would be when I was in high school and when I started going out to basketball games and district games at Fort Lewis or a tournament in Denver or something like that, then you started hearing these things. I never grew up with that kind of thing. My household, my parents wouldn’t tolerate that stuff, never. Yes, there's a lot of intermingling with all the different races we didn't know any different we were just friends. Wheelock: Now, were you around when the railroad was here? Do you remember much about that? Aiken: I think that was before my time, but I remember there was a bridge south of town. I remember the buildings that were down there and I can remember when they started pulling up the railroad tracks and we'd be looking out for the railroad ties, the nails and spikes which keep the railroad ties down. As far as I understand, the railroad was there. I think I heard this from my parents, or if I actually read it. I do remember the bridge, the railroad bridge. I remember the buildings, in fact one of the buildings used to be part of the video store. I am not sure of this stuff. I heard from my parents it was there when I was younger but I do remember the bridge. It is no longer down there. Part of the train depot was next to my house. Someone bought a lot and renovated it and put it next to my house �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 where my home is, and then, in the Annex building was for the Catholic Church. One of the old buildings came from the depot. Wheelock: Then did you travel through Tiffany and La Rosa? Were you around when they built the Navajo Dam? And then they filled it. Do you know anything about that area over there? Aiken: Not much, but I do remember one of my teachers actually went there. My brother's teacher was Mrs. Nossaman. She lived out there at Arboles. She had to move from her home because when they built the Navajo Dam she had to move. It's probably under the lake somewhere now. A lot of my friends grew up there. I was a horse lover and when I was in town I never had a horse and all my friends had horses who lived near Allison or the Arboles area. So I traveled out there, playing or riding horses. As far as the history, I'm not familiar with that. Wheelock: What about the Tiffany area? Aiken: I rode horses to the Tiffany or the Arboles area but I don't know any history about that. Wheelock: You mentioned that many of the roads were not paved. Do you remember were there roads from here to Durango? Aiken: I believe those roads are paved but I'm not sure actually, you have to get with my parents about that, but the town of Ignacio, itself, had dirt roads. There were no curbs or gutters, no sidewalks. The sidewalks are wooden boards, like back, when they looked like an old Western. I don't know exactly where that stopped and when they paved �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 roads because most roads, I remember, were gravel county roads and where we rode the horses. But I can imagine that it wasn’t much. When I got here in ‘58, there were no paved roads sewers or gutters, no curbs and I member it was kinda of a big thing, but I was kinda young when they started getting the sidewalks and curbs and gutters in and the paved streets. So I would think that they came in ‘58 or 10 years later. They had paved roads but I don't know how far out or towards Bayfield and Durango they weren't paved. You'd have to talk to someone who lived here longer than I. Wheelock: Now, you lived in the edge of town, that area from down the hill is El Paso Heights, it was a camp-you called it. Was the road going out towards the dam still here or even the one going off to Farmington hill? Aiken: The hill yes, all those roads of course from Ignacio going out to Allison or Arboles, they probably went down, I would say, at least to the border of the Colorado and New Mexico. 318 didn't exist and when we first came here to Ignacio, the road that went over the dam to New Mexico and that did not come into play. Once they built the dam to New Mexico for the water people, people came up to use the facility. As far as the roads going from Allison to Arboles, they were in existence. And I believe when my parents went to Farmington, where my grandparents lived, we would have to take the road going towards Durango just passed the Williams Field Plant. There was a county road we'd go on that curve and it turns off to the west. We'd hit 550 to go to Durango and Farmington and that's how we would get to Farmington. I wished I knew that county road number. It might be five, I don't want to guess, it was just past off Highway 172 going past the Williams Field Road and you go by three or four houses �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 where there's the animal hospital on the right side, Kindness Animal Hospital. Just past that, you take a left and head down that County Road and it would connect with 550 and that's how we get to Farmington. The other roads did not exist. Wheelock: (laughs)What type of vehicle did you have at that time? Aiken: We always had a station wagon because as my mom and my dad had four kids. So we always had a station wagon. It wouldn't have seat belts. We usually had two of us get in the very back end and we had just a carpeted and flat place where we would sit. Those were fun times when we were growing up. My dad always got two weeks off for vacation. We would always go somewhere. We never went east. We always went west. We’d do all the states north and south and west of us: Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona. We’d go as far east as Oklahoma and Kansas. We had a little camp trailer and we would either stay in one of the national forests or the national parks and sometimes the KOA, if we got one, so we could take a shower. But those were always fun times growing up with my two brothers and my parents. During free time, family time, we all got with my older brothers, they got to be 15 and 16, they'd be bucking bales of hay for the farmers or my brother Archie used to work for Butch when he was 16 or 17, before he went to college. And then my brother went into the Navy. Those trips just started to be with my mom and dad and my sister and myself but we still had good times. Wheelock: Did you ever have the occasion; did you ever have vacations at Navajo? What can you remember about those? Or did you? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Aiken: Now you know, my grandfather actually owned a boat which he had on the camp when we were growing up but, I only remember, I don't think that was Navajo. We went to Vallecito Lake but we weren't really traveling people. We were boating people. We did more camping than boating. When we took boat trips, I would say, I was 10 and 14 maybe? We would go to Vallecito. We never went anywhere down in New Mexico. I don't think Lake Powell was in existence. Vallecito is probably the only place to go, Vallecito or Lemon, I doubted you could take a powerboat on Lemon because it was so small. Wheelock: Do you remember much about Vallecito or Lemon Reservoir? Aiken: Lemon no, because we very rarely went to Lemon. Vallecito, there were very few cabins. There were very few, who would be in the campgrounds. We’d go to the North campgrounds and we’d have so much fun and have picnics with my grandma and my grandpa. We would make it three or four times a year but basically the campgrounds, there were few restaurants and places to stay but we just got together for the day and stayed all day and then we go back to Ignacio or to my grandparents in Farmington. But there weren't all the cabins that are there now. I think there was Wits End, which is a guest ranch. I think it was there the latter part, when we used to go up there or when we first went up? I don't remember that. Wheelock: Do you remember about this flood that was supposed to have occurred in Bayfield? Aiken: Oh that there, was probably... you're talking about when that happened 15 or 20 years ago? Yeah, I do �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 remember that. I remember how they had to change out the roads and bring in the big rocks because it really destroyed a lot of the roads. They were up there on the main road going to Vallecito and you could see a lot of changes. I can see them; someone who hasn't lived this long probably wouldn't notice them. A Lot of big rocks and a lot of the culverts were put in. We had the Missionary Ridge Fire and that totally destroyed so many parts of Vallecito. My grandmother used to love the big Aspen trees that were up at the end of Vallecito. We had that fire, it took out all of those aspens and now there are spots of evergreens and pine trees, Ponderosa and whatever's there. I remember explicitly in fact, they told people in the latter end, the northernmost end of Vallecito, in the fire free zone, that they had to get out so quickly. So they took their motorhomes and things. They could take that with them and put them down there by the lake. And the fires create their own tornadoes and such that they destroyed a lot of motorhomes and in things that were left down there. They were supposedly to be safe but the fire, because the fires create their own weather, it totally created whirlwinds and tornadoes that went down and destroyed things that were left there. Yes, I remember that. I can tell you when it was 10 or 15 years ago, maybe possibly 20 years ago, I guess? I can’t say. Wheelock: When the El Paso Gas came did you know a whole lot about that? Did the drillers and the townspeople intermingle? You said they ran houses up there and do you have any stories concerning that? Aiken: Now my dad came up, worked out in the fields so the drillers had already come and gone, because Chris, he would do the charts, so I believe by the time we got up there in ‘58, the real drilling already had been done. They �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 might've been doing it outside of Ignacio but I don't know, my dad was never involved in that. When we got here, the wells were already in existence. Since other people they brought, they were the ones that managed pumpers and actually were in charge of all the maintenance of the existing wells. So I don't know what the interaction was but so far as we all came and we occupied the work. It is now El Paso Heights, all those people work for the oil fields and worked for El Paso Natural Gas. It became later Ammonium Field Services but we all interacted with everybody in the town. We had people in the town who were ranchers, oil field workers and people who owned shops, had kids you know, the townspeople and then the kids that lived down in farms and ranches, they were bussed into the schools. There was only one school. They all intermingled and that Navajo students were brought in. They lived in the dorms and we intermingled with everybody else. (laughs) Wheelock: Was there time he wanted to leave? All of you wanted to leave Ignacio? Aiken: No, I had graduated from here. I raised my family here. My kids have gone off to college and they came back here. My kids and my grandkids, my great grandkids, my mom and dad, still live here. My brothers which are older than myself, one lives in Farmington, one lives in Flora Vista, and as far as wanting to go anywhere now, Ignacio is my home, it is a great place to raise my family. It was a great place for my kids to raise their family. Wheelock: It sounds wonderful! You had a wonderful life here. What lesson do you think you learned? From what lessons has your work life taught you? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Aiken: I think my work, about what my parents taught me: good work ethics, learning to be on time at work and follow through on the job, that you have loyalty with my staff and the people in the community! Good work ethics and moral ethics, they were taught by my work as well, but I think they were instilled in me by my parents. You try to instill that in your children and your grandchildren. I think the town of Ignacio, so to say is the best well-kept secret of a community. It is because I know a lot of surrounding communities, I can say like Durango and Bayfield really look down their noses at us. I don't know what the reasons are, I'm not sure. I just think Ignacio is a great place to live and I like the camaraderie. I used to have this lady who used to work at the bank when I became manager, she used to always say, “I'm going to always support the local businesses in Ignacio because, as I know they support me.” I feel the same way, if I had to depend on our neighbor or community, I don't like to depend on people usually but we all rally around. There's something that happens in the community, if there's a fire or someone comes down with the terminal illness, they rally around them and support them. The community, if you generally live in a bigger town, you never speak to your neighbors or friends. I don't know as many people now as when I worked in the bank. There are a lot of new people coming in but there are the old-timers. I remember the names. I can put names to faces and now that I'm out of banking. I don't know as many people because my kids are not in school anymore, so I don't run into them there. I do see a lot of people as a volunteer to the community library and elderly people I usually knew. There were bank customers and some of my kids’ friends or something, but I think that would be the spark a little town has to offer. It is a tight, close-knit community and has a lot of perks because we pull together as a community. The Tribe inter mingles well �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 with the town of Ignacio and I think that everybody just gets along and pulls together as a team. Wheelock: When push comes to shove? Aiken: When push comes to shove there are some things that didn't happen in the community, but I think we learn from mistakes, and you go forward. And you don't repeat that mistake. Now when push comes to shove, we pulled together. Wheelock: What are some of things you remember that you wished hadn't occurred? Aiken: This didn't have an effect on me, but the student scene, the students that came from out of their community up here, I feel very deeply for, the Navajos who were brought from their home communities up into the dorms. They're just more friends that I had, but I do realize that they were uprooted from their home or culture, from the language and in this didn't happen in my time, but I did read about it later in books. They somehow were brought up and they were put in white people's clothing, and they can’t speak their language and that, really to me, I wish never happened. I don't know how many people in this community knew their language anymore. My children are Southern Ute and what they got from their Ute grandparents it was never spoken, the Ute side in our home. So that was lost, and I wish they knew about, at least the spoken language or understood the language. They understood the culture, the bathing and those types of things. Things that the youth culture offered. I wish they knew more of the youth side of their culture. I don't know why I can't think of a lot of things that happened in the Ignacio that were bad things. I'm sure �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 there were, but most were ironed out by the time I got to be older. The older community members, like myself, especially when I got into school, you remembered the good times. When you're old you remember when you're 5 and 15 and the way life was. You were pulled around in sleds, sliding down the big hill and to me that was a big hill, or ice-skating. I remember when the elementary school was put in. There was the pond behind the school. I remember that when it was wintertime, it froze over. We went down there and took our brooms or ice skates or snow shovels, shoveled it off, and we played hockey or we skated. I tried to do figure skating but I wasn’t good on skates, as far as doing leaps and stuff like that, now I can skate backwards but I couldn't do any of the twirls or stuff. Those are the things that bring me back and gave me the most pleasure of my back life. I don't think there were bad things going on in the community. I was either protected from, or more sheltered from that, or just didn't pay any attention to them. I have pretty much nothing but fun memories about Ignacio. Wheelock: You mentioned something about fireflies. I don't remember ever seeing fireflies? That amazes me! Aiken: Probably they were in front of you. Especially if you lived in house number three. From about house number 4 to 1 there used to be a big meadow across the street from us. As you go off the hill and there were big meadows and they were full of fireflies. We’d take our little mason jars and go pluck fireflies. We played hide and seek in those meadows during the wintertime when there was snow. Slide down the meadow in inner tubes, down the hill, but yeah the fireflies are one of my fond memories. And I can remember how we used to go to the post office, a the short distance off El Paso Hill and where you �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 live, the main road goes up there, there was such a big hill took forever to walk up and down at night. I didn’t mind walking down. Seems such a big hill! I hated walking up and I look at it as an adult and it isn’t as much. I would look off the other side going off, downward, that was a really big hill and to get to the pigeon houses that were at the bottom. 4-H kept their horses and kept their steers there. But I remember, I got a look over that hill and see if it looked is as big as it did when I was little, oh my goodness! I thought when I walked down the hill home I would never would be getting back. Looking at on it, it was fun times. It was good time screwing up in Ignacio! Wheelock: That's pretty nice. I am impressed! Is there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to? Aiken: I just don't know. I'm sorry I dominated. I'm trying to remember every kind of business that used to be down in the Ignacio. I talked about George Seibel's having the beauty shop where El Amigo was now, and Copes had the Quonset huts that were there, and he did repair work. He worked on cars and on engines, lived up above and there were other businesses. I forgot to mention there was once Lunsford Furniture Store back on Browning, behind the bank and down one house. There was a beauty shop there, and in fact, the two businesses. She used to have Custom Cuts by Clara. She purchased that from her. When she went out of business Clara's been using it ever since. Wheelock: So that's just a neat little piece of history! Aiken: I think there is a large shoe repairer off Browning. It went further south and there is a house there and he was �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 incredible, and he was a boot maker and made beautiful custom boots and saddles and belts, Larry Smith. Wheelock: I don't know if I seen that. I am missing them for some time. Is he still there? He was there quite awhile? Aiken: I thought he might've passed away. He was actually up on Goddard not too far from the bank and he would go over to his residence and have a shop there. Wheelock: There’s been lots of changes in Ignacio. What do you think about the changes that we had? Good and Bad? Aiken: I think there's been really good changes in Ignacio going from dirt streets to paved streets. We really got a fantastic library. We have a fantastic grocery store. We have a nice bank. We have a nice post office and all the businesses; they've expanded and improved. We have the casino, which employs a lot of people in this town. I think we are, between the tribe and the casino, the number one employer in La Plata County. Our schools are growing. We got new, nice new schools. I wish one thing I can say, I wish there were more emphasis put on academics. I think this is all over the country. I'm just not saying the Ignacio schools, I think there needs to be more emphasis on having a good education, where like I say, it's not just here but nationally... that I just don't think system wise, there is not much put on education as there should be. It's really scary to think that the kids today, that are to be our future, don't have a better education than we had. And I think that the Chinese and Japanese and the other nations are far exceeding where we should be at. I think we still have good students and I think we have a lot of good students that are from Ignacio, who will become doctors and lawyers and bankers and professional people. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Wheelock: They came from here? Aiken: Exactly, there's nothing wrong with the people graduating from Ignacio High School who take over their families ranches and farms. We have to have ranchers and farmers in this world because we always need a rancher or farmer, because we need to know where our food is coming from. We want our food coming from the United States and we need to support the ranchers and farmers, but I wish more emphasis was placed on education. I do know that it's not entirely the educational system. It's also part of the students, because you can take five different students and they're going to have the same class. You have your doctor and a lawyer and someone working for NASA and then you have someone there that never makes it out of their grade. It takes us all, not just the students, it takes all of this is to work, the parents and schools all working together. I just think the United States as a whole should take more emphasis based on education for today's students but it takes all of us. They said it takes a village to raise to a child. I think that's true in this case I guess. It comes down from parents and from them to the students, to the administration and many teachers. So I guess that's what I wish would happen with better education in America. Wheelock: Well thank you! Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about which we did not talk about? Aiken: I don't believe so. I'd like to say that I'm very proud of this library and I'm so happy to be part of this community. There are a lot of great businesses in here but this library has offered me a lot. When I retired I became a hermit but through the library and taking art classes, volunteering �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 one day a week, the library offers such incredible opportunities for different diverse activities. Someone wants to knit or crochet, someone wants to belong to a book club or someone once wants to learn how to cook or sew, they are so diverse they offer so much for so many. I wish that more people were committed to it (library). I hate to admit it, but I'd left work for a couple years and I never put or set foot in this library or came in the library. But I would just like to say, that I wish more people were involved. I guess we should get out there and say we are great library with many classes, stop by and check out all the opportunities. But I for one, am very grateful for the library and what it offers, for the staff and this community and what it has offered. There is nothing derogatory to say about the library. There's nothing derogatory about the library at all. Wheelock: I agree with you wholeheartedly and on that note, thank you so much! Aiken: Thank you, I hope I helped a little bit and thank you! Transcribed by: Burt Baldwin, April 21, 2016 [Track 1 ends; track 2 begins] My name is Liz Wheelock and I conducting an interview for the Ignacio Community Library’s Oral History Project entitled: “Voices of Ignacio” at the Ignacio Community Library on Tuesday, February 23, 2016. This is a continuation of Rosemary Aiken's earlier transcript data of Wednesday January 27, 2016. Today, Rosemary is going to give us an account of the Ignacio Bank robbery. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Wheelock: So, Rose would you please tell us about the bank robbery? Aiken: This story is true and based on the facts as I remember them. It was high noon on a hot, summer day, Monday July 3, 1989. The bank lobby was crowded with customers at the Norwest Bank in Ignacio, Colorado. There was quite a buzz of conversation and you could hear a baby crying. I was a loan officer at that time and had left my desk on the south side of the bank and went behind the teller line to our documentation vault. As I was leaving the vault, I noticed the teller to the left of the vault motioning me to stay inside. I backed into the vault and a minute later a teller walked past the door. A masked man had her by the arm and was holding a pistol to her back! She was carrying a sack and I saw her empty the cash from the teller drawer into that sack. The robber was wearing a floppy, brown hat and a bandana covered his face. They walked back past the vault and I lost sight of them. The thoughts that went through my mind were swift. My first thought was to become invisible so he couldn’t see and shoot me. Then I thought, “No, it’s a joke. It’s not really happening.” Then I thought, “I wonder if I could sneak up behind him and hit him over the head with our check protector or one of the metal boxes containing our money orders and cashier's checks. That thought left as quickly as it appeared. I remained in the vault for a few more minutes and I noticed the deadly quiet that had overcome the bank. The baby had even stopped crying. The robber again passed in from of the vault door, but this time he had a different teller. I later found out he had asked the first teller if she had a car and she wisely �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 said, “No.” That was not so lucky for the second teller who he grabbed. He told her to get her keys. The only male employee, also a loan officer, got up from his desk and walked across the lobby and started talking to the robber. The robber kept shouting at him to shut up and go sit down. He finally told the employee, “If you don’t want blood all over the bank, you’ll sit down and shut up.” As stated before, I finally saw the bank robber and the teller pass in front of the vault door. They headed out the side entrance of the bank. When they were out on the sidewalk the robber asked the teller where her car was. At that point the teller realized she had grabbed her teller window keys and not her car keys. They could not re-enter through the side door because it locks when it is closed. The front door was also locked by a bank employee as soon as they left the bank. There was an old Dodge pickup idling outside where the robber and teller had exited and he forced the older couple out and forced the teller into the truck. Morbid curiosity had made a couple of us look out the side door and we saw them race away and head south on highway 172. We later realized how stupid we were to look. He could have decided to start shooting at us! The Ignacio Police Department is just a half block north of the bank. We later learned that one of a police officer had started running down the street to the bank, pistol in hand, tripped and fell and the loaded pistol went flying down the sidewalk. Much later we laughed at how that was something Barney Fife would have done on the Andy Griffith Show. Before the bank was locked a male customer had left the bank and got into his truck. When �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 the robber sped past heading south, he followed, a safe distance behind. When the robber got to the top of the hill by the Ignacio Cemetery, he slowed down and ordered the teller out. She later told me she was shaking so hard she couldn’t find the door handle. The robber then reached across her, opened the door and pushed her out. The bank customer, who was following them, picked her up and took her back to the bank. The first responder, after the robbery went out over the radio, was a Southern Ute Tribal Wildlife officer. He came upon the abandoned truck just a mile or so past where the robber had dumped the teller. The robber was running across an open field to the east of Highway 172. The officer took aim, but because another vehicle was heading towards Ignacio, and was in the line of fire, chose not to fire his gun and put others in jeopardy. Several minutes later there was an exchange of gunfire and another officer said all he could remember was bullets whizzing past his head. The robber was not captured that day, but was apprehended sometime later in Abiquiu, New Mexico. He was brought back to La Plata County, stood trial and was sentenced and placed in the Colorado State Penitentiary. The male loan officer kept telling me after the robbery and before the robber was captured, that he recognized the voice, but just couldn’t place it. I guess it was kind of like watching an animated movie and not being able to place the voice until after the final credits are being rolled. We also found out that customers had recognized �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 the hat the robber was wearing as it belonged to his wife and she always wore it around town. About nine years later, the teller that was abducted in the robbery was contacted by the FBI and was told the robber was being released. I am now the manager of the bank, so I called my FBI contact and he confirmed that the robber was getting out of prison. He also told me the robber could not come into the bank or contact any bank employees. I have been told he still lives in the Ignacio area. Another bank robbery occurred several years later. But, that story will have to be told at another time, by another employee who was actually there, because I was retired by then. And I’d like to tell you a few fun facts or two fun facts about the bank… When I first started working at the bank our shipment of cash from the Federal Reserve Bank in Denver was mailed from them to our post office. The postmaster would call us to let us know now it was there. Two bank officers would walk across the post office, while a third employee would watch from the inside of the bank. Now an armored vehicle with armed guards delivers the cash from the Federal Reserve. I guess, since it is a federal offense to rob the post office, that’s why it was originally shipped by mail. They figured it was the safest way to get to the bank. Also, after the robbery, the entire lobby area was remodeled. The teller line was moved to the south side of the bank, next to the cash vault and totally enclosed in walls and locked doors. If you would like to pursue this robbery story, I’m sure the Durango Herald has archived all of what happened during the robbery, what happened during the trial and what happened after he was released. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Transcribed by: Liz Wheelock, February 2016 Aiken: Finally, after the robbery occurred the entire Bank was remodeled. Wheelock: I like the way you were talking about the house. You recognized the house and it belonged to his wife? Aiken: His wife used to come into our bank and into the grocery store and other places around town. Wheelock: How did she get the house, the person who robbed the bank? Aiken: The person who robbed the bank, his wife owned the house. She was not around when the bank robbery occurred but obviously he had borrowed the house from her and were still married. I was also told that when he was sent to prison his wife contacted content the tellers and apologized for the robbery and what had happened during the bank robbery. Wheelock: Well, she didn't know anything about it? Aiken: We are unaware of any of the facts. She was never invited or never went to trial for anything. He acted alone. Wheelock: Now do they have kids? Aiken: They had a son, which was a stepson to the bank robber. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Wheelock: Did they go to school here? Did anybody know them. Aiken: Everybody knew they had lived here for years. The bank that is Wells Fargo, it was Norwest Bank at in those days, they too banked there! They had done their jobs around town, odds and ends. They were seen at the grocery, the post office, and a actually built a bay window for my parents about six months or year before the robbery took place. It was nicely done! We were personally satisfied with it even after thirty years!(laughs) Wheelock: Well thank you so much for giving us the story and it was quite entertaining. I enjoyed listening. Aiken: Well you're welcome, and I like to say the facts as I remember them. I have contacted a few employees who are still at the bank or worked at the bank. They pretty much also agreed with my recollection of the robbery as I remembered it. Wheelock: We were talking earlier about our feelings, how you felt during what was happening, you were have feelings about the robbery, and we were talking about one of the employees, and how it would affect you. What are some of the feelings you have about this? Aiken: I know one of the tellers was probably around 27 years old who had to go from window to window to collect the money with a gun in her back. She has recovered completely from it, but for years another teller who has since passed away, never really recovered from it. She was in around her 50s at the time. I told you how I felt, first I thought, “Oh my goodness seems like they’re playing a joke or trick on us. I'm going to hide here since I can be as invisible as I can.” But then I’m thinking, I'm hiding to get �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 away from them this can’t be a joke, how can I go out of here and help. Can I sneak up on behind them and drop something on his head? And that was all ridiculous. I could not do any of those things but stay in this vault. I was motioned by the other tellers to stay there. Actually it was July 3rd and I was getting married on the 15th of July, so I was wondering if I would ever live to see my wedding day. My husband worked for an oil field company and he'd come in later in the afternoon and the bank was surrounded by yellow tape and it really concerned him. He couldn't get through to anybody in the bank staff, because we weren't answering the phones by that time all. The officers were in there. We had some of the officers from the bank coming in from Durango as the manager at that time was off on vacation. He always took the Fourth of July off and he wasn't even there. Wheelock: Were you the acting manager? Aiken: Well now, I was just a loan officer there. I was in charge only with the advisory stuff in the bank, just all the advisory aspects. I don't think anybody was really in charge, that's why we called the officers from Durango, and they came out right after the robber. They separated all the employees and told them not to talk to each other because they wanted an actual account of what we heard, what we saw, because everybody has their concepts. They are different and they didn’t want us to talk amongst ourselves. All that's exactly what I remembered but you might not remember it all. They separated all the employees, all the customers that had statements, they called in; each one, so they could start piecing together what happened. They saw everybody who was in the bank at the time of the robbery. �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Wheelock: That would be pretty horrendous. Right now, you can be laughing about it but when you are there under the circumstances it was horrendous! Aiken: It was very scary! So many these thoughts go through your mind when you see your life passing before you, I could see these images. I can't say my life passed before me, but I did see all of these images, from going to hide, or I'm going to be the hero, or might drop something on his head, or I'm going to capture him. But different people react differently to different things. I don't know how I would've reacted. I don't know how I would react if I was the teller who had the gun in my back or the teller who got taken out of town. I'm just glad I wasn't in that situation. I'm glad I don't know how it felt, because I know what it was like to be hiding in the vault, you know! Wheelock: Did you talk to her and how she felt, the one that was captured? Aiken: I just know that she was traumatized and she was shaking so hard she couldn’t even get the door open. She couldn't even find the door and open it when he told her to get out. She said, “When he came across the bench seat to open the truck door and push me out, I was just so horrified. I didn't know what he was going to do to me at that point!” And then afterwards, I know she still had some bitter feelings about the bank and the bank robbery. I don't know how I would feel if I was under the circumstances. She passed away two years later, not from the robbery but from other things. I still remember the day she passed away, she still had hard feelings about that bank robbery. Wheelock: In what ways do you think she felt this? �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Aiken: Well, I think she blamed the bank because of the robbery. She blamed the other teller because of the robbery. It was not one's fault, wasn’t the bank's fault, wasn't the employees’ fault. The one teller who said she didn't have a car, she could’ve been taken, or would've been probably the one taken. You know, like I said, I think things happen the way they are supposed to happen. Wheelock: You said that she was older? Aiken: I think she was older, the original teller. The one that was around 27 was taking the money from the teller windows. She was about in her 50s I would say. I was at the time 32 or 34 at time, but I didn't have the gun in my back or was going in the stolen truck with the bank robber. I don't know how they felt! I wasn't in that position. Wheelock: I'm sure he was driving recklessly, causing problems? Aiken: I think his main objective, I'm not the fugitive, I'm not the one to say, he was getting out of town. And he didn't want her with him and that's why he let her off. Maybe you think, I'm not the fugitive, I'm trying to think things he was probably thinking. I think she might've just been an easier way for him to get away, and once he got out of town, he let her out. Someone at the bank at the time followed him and he brought her back to the bank. They dismissed both tellers and told them to go home. And they both had counseling. Anyone who felt that they needed counseling got it. I think the two tellers had at least two weeks of counseling. Wheelock: So you need something like that! �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Aiken: Yes, you need to talk it out! It was not, in any way shape or form funny, I know I put some “ha ha” moments in at the times. They were not “ha ha” moments in retrospect. Something seems funny now but while it was happening it was tragic! It was horrific! And nothing like that ever happened since that occurred. Another bank robbing, as I understand was an individual that robbed the bank but he didn't have any type of weapon. He only robbed one teller and was in and out very quickly. I just hope nothing like that ever happens again, not in this little town, like this issue you here or read in the paper, in the big cities, but in town like Ignacio, it just is not something you think whatever happen. Wheelock: That story is like the cowboy times when riding horses, maybe even during the “Roaring 20s” sort of? Aiken: He had the brown floppy hat. He had a pistol and the date was near the Fourth of July. Someone must be playing a joke on us. It turned out not to be a joke at all, but something that we all live through, thank goodness, and it all made us more wary about our surroundings and to watch more closely when you're working at the bank, in the morning and evenings and even when you’ve entered the bank in the morning. Wheelock: And I would think it would give you more awareness to look at the person and to look at their facial expression and what they would be wearing, if you ever had to point out someone and you had to do something like this again, it would be in your mind. Aiken: I would think you'd hope that the people who still were at the bank learned to be more thoughtful when looking at �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 someone and pick up on something, may recognize something, because you never know when you went to the bank early in the morning, or to work, you never knew if he was a customer of the bank. He's been in and out of our bank many times but even the loan officer had talked to him. “The bank robber shouted to sit down. I keep recognizing that voice.” He later told me after the bank robbery, after the bank robber was picked up and at the trial, he said, “I still cannot remember when he walked into the bank.” I remember he said, “He was looking over at me because he walked in the foyer and is across the loan officer’s desk but I had seen him so many times.” I don't remember if I looked up. I actually saw him, and if he had a mask in place or did I see him, because you'd been there so many times. Got it in his mind, he just stored what he had remembered after the fact, he recognized that voice, “I recognized that voice but it wasn’t until he was picked up and sent to the Colorado State penitentiary! I didn't remember.” We knew who he was all along. My goodness, I knew the voice in the back of my mind and could not place the voice at the time. Wheelock: Because he, (loan officer) was feeling hostility and violence in that situation and other one was when he was (the voice) just a member of the community, a member of the bank. Aiken: One was just a memory of a customer and how the customer looked from a service level instead of someone coming up and telling you to sit down and shut up! And it makes a big difference in what you recollect and how well you recollected! Wheelock: Thank you so much for your wonderful stories! �Voices of Ignacio Interviewee: Rosemary Aiken Interviewer: Liz Wheelock Date: January 27, 2016 Aiken: Thank you! [End of transcription] Transcribed by: Burt Baldwin, April 28, 2016 Audit edit by: Renee Morgan, August 3, 2016 Final edit by: Renee Morgan, � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rosemary Aiken Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2018-04-28 Subject The topic of the resource Interview; Transcript; Ignacio, Colorado; Aiken, Rosemary Description An account of the resource The transcript of an interview with Rosemary Aiken conducted by Liz Wheelock at the Ignacio Community Library on Wednesday, January 27th, 2016. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/8b687bb47d95cfb8c83f600bde322ccd.jpg e1e68a94b7f4ad7d3d76363417bfbc2e https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/d23163dd034e4ac4e9a186d082f1baa6.PDF 1595c6af92316ec2e96df3af23bc44c1 PDF Text Text �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jean McClanahan Recollections About Northern Ignacio Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Subject The topic of the resource Recollections; Ignacio; Colorado; 1930s; McClanahan, Jean, 1924-2021 Description An account of the resource A written summary of the recollections of Jean McClanahan concerning the north side of Ignacio, Colorado during her childhood in the 1930s. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/d6c2b7e37d5d4d1a26062f451dbe30b8.PDF 13f1f652c2e30da14a6be43e0565d590 PDF Text Text ����� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Voices of Ignacio Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Helen Dunn Recollections About Southern Ignacio Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Subject The topic of the resource Recollections; Ignacio; Colorado; 1930s; Dunn, Helen; History Description An account of the resource A written summary of the recollections of Helen Dunn concerning southern Ignacio, Colorado during the 1930s. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text