1125 Pine Street
Boulder, CO 80302
303-441-3110
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Call Number OH3097Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 11 minutes, 29 secondsDescription Sharon Amirfathi and her husband lived on seven-and-a-half acres at the base of Spanish Hills in Boulder County. The house, where she and her husband had lived for about 25 years, along with greenhouses and a barn that were part of her husband’s agricultural business, burned in the Marshall Fire in December 2021. Topics discussed include evacuation during the fire; things taken and things left behind at the time of evacuation; issues with communication between government and citizens during the fire; the immediate aftermath of the fire, including finding housing and incidents of invasion of privacy on their land; the process of rebuilding after the fire; the upside of getting to start all over; relief efforts that helped fire victims after the fire; how their lives have changed as a result of the fire; replacing passports with the assistance of Joe Neguse’s office; and the generosity of people during recovery.
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Call Number OH3099Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 37 minutes, 38 secondsDescription Jane Brautigam was Boulder’s city manager from 2008 to 2020. She describes how she grew into her career as a city manager; other places she worked, both as a city attorney and a city manager; and how she came to be hired as Boulder’s city manager. Her wide-ranging discussion of issues handled as Boulder’s city manager include guiding Boulder through the financial crisis of 2008 (the Great Recession), capital bond projects undertaken including facilities updates and expansions, zoning policy changes, attempts to municipalize the city’s electrical system, providing services for the unhoused population, policing and race, priority-based budgeting, transportation including RTD services and the Folsom bike lane experiment, prairie dog management, the city/university relationship, student alcohol use, planning for the CU conference center, the CU South land with regard to flooding and development, racial equity, and handling emergencies—such as floods, fires, and the Covid pandemic. Other topics include the variety of problems with which a city manager deals, a city manager as a facilitator of solutions to these problems, Boulder in 2008, the relationship between city manager and city council, characteristics of a good city manager, retirement, and continuing to serve on nonprofit boards and as a mentor to others. Note that further biographical information about Jane Brautigam is available at Boulder’s Carnegie Library for Local History; and Jane’s curriculum vitae is added to the bottom of the transcript.
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Call Number OH3100Date 2023Contents Single recording; One hour, 22 minutes, 23 secondsDescription Charles DeVischer is a Boulder native who owned a series of barber shops throughout the area during his long career. He begins by describing his childhood in Boulder during the 1950s and 1960s, when Old North Boulder was still partially farmland. He talks about his family, in which he was the youngest of nine living children. He describes various businesses in town at that time, and he reminisces about a wide range of subjects, from recreation to the polio epidemic, to acquiring the family’s first television. He details his barbering career, which began when he had to become independent at the age of 18 after his father’s death. He discusses expanding to providing hair services for women as well as men during the haircut-averse 1970s; the first shop he owned, in Longmont; expanding into Arvada; and barber shops he owned in Boulder, culminating with his 35-year ownership of Charlie’s Barber Shop (renamed Alpine Barber shop in 2005). He also describes the ups-and-downs of barbershop ownership, including personnel challenges, how changes in culture affected the economics of the business, and the role of a barber in a community. Other topics include: comments about life in Boulder in 2023; getting drafted during the Vietnam War; drug use in Boulder County starting in the late 1970s; comments on homelessness, policing, and real estate development in Boulder; and discussion of labor unions.
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Call Number OH3101Date 2022Contents Six audio files merged into a single recording; 54 minutes, 50 secondsDescription Carol Billingham was affected by the 2021 Marshall Fire. She and her husband evacuated their home and were not able to return for over 6 months. Carol describes the process of learning about the fire, evacuating their home, and comforting community members as they took refuge in a hotel out of harm’s way. Carol, who has a background in coaching and dealing with trauma, describes how individuals may be affected by traumatic events and stresses the value of community, therapy, and expressive writing to help process and work through such events.
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Call Number OH3102Date 2021Contents Two parts merged into single recording; 2 hour, 23 minutes, 03 secondsDescription Brian Dillman begins the interview by talking about growing up in Boulder and then serving in the Navy in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. He joined the Boulder Emergency Squad (BES), originally called the Eleven-Meter Club, when it first formed in 1963 and has worked with it ever since. BES, as he says, provides “a career-level rescue service with an all-volunteer staff.” He served as chief of BES for more than 10 years. He details the history of the squad from its inception to the present day, decade by decade. Topics include: the need for volunteer rescue services at a time when firefighters and sheriff/police officers were not equipped for such services; services BES has provided, including vehicle extrication, accident scene lighting, water/dive rescue, accident traffic control, firefighting hand crews for wildland fires, search and rescue services, drone services, and field force extrication; the changing relationship between BES and firefighting/law enforcement agencies; equipment needed and purchased; growth of BES; buildings where it has been housed; funding, including the Worthy Cause Tax; Chicano activism of the 1970s; changes in technology over time; division of services between BES and Rocky Mountain Rescue; the ebb and flow of volunteering among community members; and the future of BES. He also describes several notable rescues.
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Call Number OH3104Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 24 minutes, 13 secondsDescription Gladys Forshee grew up on a dryland wheat farm, north of what is now Denver International Airport, then lived in Commerce City after marrying Larry Forshee. In 1970, they moved to Superior. From 1970 to 1973, she had the job of town clerk. Topics related to her time as town clerk include public health improvements; obtaining firefighting services for Superior, which eventually became the Metro West Fire Department; and the “Flamettes” women’s firefighting group. She describes using excess money that had accumulated from the Superior Volunteer Fire Department to create historical markers. She talks about the creation of the Superior Historic Commission and describes her research for and the writing of local history books, including a cookbook for the Superior centennial, a book about the Box Elder farming community that was located near where Denver International Airport is today ("Where Memories Linger Silver Birds Will Someday Land: From the Quiet Farm Life of Box Elder Community, Adams County, Colorado, to Denver International Airport," published in 1994), and two other publications that were ready to go to the publisher when they were destroyed in the Marshall Fire. The last part of the interview contains a detailed account of her self-evacuation during the Marshall Fire, the difficulty of finding a place to stay during the fire, and the aftermath of the fire for her as she worked to find housing in the wake of her house having burned.
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Call Number OH3105Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 39 minutes, 24 secondsDescription Gary Jackson, who graduated from CU Law School in 1970, describes the dearth of Black lawyers in Colorado at that time (only 15 in the state) and the founding of the Sam Cary Bar Association as a specialty bar association that provided support for Black lawyers. He talks about Sam Cary, after whom the Bar Association was named, and about the seven founders of the Sam Cary Bar Association (of which he was one). He details some of the projects and other actions pursued by the association over the years, and reflects on its achievements and legacy. Other topics include the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in Denver in the 1920s and ‘30s; some of his mentors, including William Harold Flowers, Ruth Flowers, Dale Tooley; those whom he mentored and influenced; and awards he has received.
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Call Number OH3106Date 2023Contents Single recording; 39 minutes, 13 secondsDescription Alfreda Hall describes growing up in a large, loving, Christian family in Texas. She moved to Boulder when she was a young mother. Once her son was old enough to go to school, she went to cosmetology school and owned a hair salon for some years, then went back to school at CU, Boulder. She describes the struggle of being an older student in the 1970s, going to college 18 years after finishing high school. Once she graduated, she started a career as a social services caseworker, which continued for 21 years. She discusses what it was like to be one of few Black social workers (or sometimes the only one) in her department. She talks about her family, which includes grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and what she would like to pass down to them.
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Call Number OH3107Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 28 minutes, 33 secondsDescription Dr. Reiland Rabaka is a professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies, as well as the founder and director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In this interview, he details being raised by his grandmothers and his mother in Texas. He speaks of the effects of poverty and racism, but also of the positive ways his family shaped him through the social justice and feminist theology of his family and the Black church. He talks about the early and deep influence of music in his life and the impact of his early education at arts-oriented, integrated schools. He details his path through higher education and his academic career, including his approach to teaching; the field of Black studies; inspiring mentors he has had; his transition from teaching at Cal State, Long Beach, to the University of Colorado, Boulder; experiences with racism and classism in academia; enthusiasm of Boulder students for the subjects he teaches; and the founding of the Center for African and African American Studies. Other topics include the cultural and sociological importance of the African American church, the deep influence on him of W.E.B. Du Bois, Africana critical theory, the Black community in Boulder and Colorado, Black feminism, and reflections on the legacy of slavery.
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Call Number OH3108Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 16 minutes, 50 secondsDescription Carolyn Love starts by describing her childhood in Indiana, talking about the formative experiences of racism and Jim Crow policy, coupled with the positives of growing up in an all-Black neighborhood, that helped shape her. She contrasts her high school counselor telling her that she “wasn’t college material” with the Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees that she earned. She describes the work she has done that focused on providing public service; speaking out for social, economic, and racial justice; and overall being an agent of positive social change, including working in the Food Stamp Program, in corporate settings, in the banking industry, and promoting minority business development through organizations like the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Rocky Mountain Minority Supplier Development Council. She talks about her current business, Kabaya Coaching and Consulting, and her nonprofit, Black Woman Solutionaries. Other topics include her role as a Black feminist; the problem of censorship and book banning; the importance of education; HBCUs; critical race theory; negative racial stereotypes; the importance of knowing Black history; and the philosophy of “calling people in.”
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Call Number OH3115Date 2023Contents Single recording; 2 hour, 13 minutes, 32 secondsDescription Eric Harris talks about growing up in segregated Texas in the 1950s and 1960s. He discusses his school experiences both before and after integration in Galveston, Texas, including the experience for both him and his brother, William Harris, Jr., of playing high school football as Black athletes. He came to the University of Colorado, Boulder, on both athletic and academic scholarships and graduated with a degree in business. He describes experiences of racial discrimination while playing college football and ways in which his teammates did and didn’t support the Black students on the team. He also describes his brother’s experiences of racial bias while playing in the NFL in the south in his post-college years. He reflects on race, inequality, and progress in the US during his lifetime. He talks about his personal family history as an adult, including his marriages, the illness and death of his second wife, the support of his wife’s family and the Boulder community during this crisis and beyond, his approach to parenting, his children’s experiences as people of color in Boulder and their ultimate career paths, and some of his community involvements in Boulder.
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Call Number OH3116Date 2023Contents Single recording; 1hour, 13 minutes, 15 secondsDescription Wendell Pryor describes growing up on a farm in Aurora, his early education at a two-room schoolhouse, the influence of the church on his development, moving to Germany during his high school years, and his post-secondary education at Western State and CU-Boulder. He discusses the civil rights movement and how it included work for rights based on race, gender, and gender identity. He discusses the various phases of his career, much of which centered around personnel and human relations in Colorado and California; teaching at the college graduate level at the University of Colorado; providing diversity training for members of the Boulder Police Department; and serving as the State of Colorado Civil Rights Director. Other topics include racial discrimination; going to law school in order to understand his civil rights as a Black person; a civil rights settlement in Aurora that resulted in hiring of its first female police officers in the 1970s; his teaching of classes about diversity; his involvement in public sector labor relations; stories about Denver Mayor Federico Peña’s leadership style; serving on boards and commissions to pave the way for other African Americans to be able to do so; and the importance to him of community service in general.