1125 Pine Street
Boulder, CO 80302
303-441-3110
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Call Number OH3072Date 2021Contents Single recording; 20 minutes, 51 secondsDescription This oral history was organized and recorded as part of the “Affordable Housing Residents of Boulder Project,” carried out by Cynthia Torres. Seemanta Seemanta describes how she came to be in Boulder and living at her space in the Mapleton Mobile Home Park after having lived in a number of places in pursuit of affordable housing. Seemanta describes what she likes about Boulder—the outdoor activities, being able to get around easily—and what she enjoys about her home, which is comfortable, provides a good quality of life, and has a diverse, friendly community. She also appreciated her job driving a school bus.
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Call Number OH3073Date 2021Contents Single recording; 29 minutes, 48 secondsDescription Angela Maria Ortiz Roa talks about living in the Mapleton Mobile Home Park, where Isabel Sanchez, who works with the non-profit organization The GrowHaus, has established permaculture gardens. She details the difficulties involved in qualifying for a mobile home unit, the high interest rates charged for mobile home loans, and other challenges for those who are seeking affordable housing, such as maintenance and energy costs. She also talks about her work with FLOWS (Foundations for Leaders Organizing for Water and Sustainability), and Boulder Food Rescue, and how that work has dovetailed with accessing resources for the mobile home park’s gardens. She talks about being an immigrant and the importance of building community. She talks about the misconceptions people have about low-income communities and the need for those who design programs for affordable and low-income housing to involve members of the targeted communities in the planning.
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Call Number OH3074Date 2021Contents Single recording; 68 minutes, 48 secondsDescription Laura Roettiger had been a volunteer tutor with BoulderReads, an adult literacy program, for three years at the time of this interview. With a background in teaching and previous training as a reading specialist, she brought many relevant skills to her work with BoulderReads. She discusses the differences between teaching reading to children (which she had done previously) versus adults. She illustrates different approaches to teaching literacy through discussion of her work with her current student, who started at a second-grade reading level and now is working on obtaining his GED. She talks about some of the nuts and bolts of how the BoulderReads program works. She also talks about teaching writing skills (in addition to reading), about using accommodations for students with learning disabilities, and she offers tips for other tutors who want to help students succeed. She is a picture-book author and a strong proponent of using picture books in adult literacy programs. She describes a training she provided for BoulderReads about how to use picture books as a tool for teaching adult readers.
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Call Number OH3075Date 2021Contents Single recording; 29 minutes, 29 secondsDescription Anne Vickery grew up in Colorado where she developed a love for the wilderness, including hiking and camping. She worked with the Colorado Mountain Club; co-founded the Indian Peaks Working Group, later renamed the Indian Peaks Wilderness Alliance; and worked with the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. She reflects on these involvements, and her daughter Helen adds details about her mother’s work and achievements, including describing some of her mother’s environmental advocacy work through the Colorado Mountain Club, such as opposition to the Two Forks Dam and support of the Clean Air Act.
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Call Number OH3076Date 2022Contents Single recording; 49 minutes, 46 secondsDescription After working in human capital management for various corporations for 35 years, Carey Mason moved to Boulder four years prior to this interview, worked as a business coach, and this year (2022) became CEO of the Boulder business DEI4BIZ, which helps businesses work on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. He talks about how he helps businesses move beyond training seminars to incorporate a comprehensive DEI strategy that also strengthens their business objectives as a whole. Other topics include the attitudes of millennial-generation workers, the current labor shortage, the role of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce in encouraging diverse workforces, taking advantage of opportunities to continue to grow in awareness of biases, reasons for employing a professional consultant when undertaking DEI work, and his own motivations for working in this field.
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Call Number OH3077Date 2022Contents Single recording; 1 hour, 21 minutes, 55 secondsDescription Finn began a career in amateur pool competition as a CU student representing the university and continued to compete regionally after college. She describes the culture of the competitive pool community. She went on to work for the University of Colorado in a variety of administrative roles, starting with the Alumni Association, then working in the Registrar’s Office, and finally for the Athletic Department. She details her work in the Athletic Department business office, which centered around arranging transportation and lodging for the football team’s away games. Other topics include discussion of people who were football coaches and athletic directors over the years, descriptions of student-dominated residential areas in Boulder, and the business and cultural life of Boulder in the late 1970s and 1980s.
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Call Number OH3078Date 2022Contents Single recording; 30 minutes, 10 secondsDescription This interview was recorded on the occasion of a unique fruit tree being planted in front of the Carnegie Library for Local History. [Note: The tree later was moved to the lawn of George Reynolds Branch Library.] Artist Sam Van Aken uses grafting to create an individual tree that is an amalgam of different fruit varietals linked to a single rootstock; the product is a visually arresting, layered, composite that grows as a living work of art. In this interview, Van Aken talks about his personal background and his trajectory as an artist, drawing connections between his family history, education, inspirations, evolving ideas, and projects. He explains what brought him to Boulder for an exhibition titled “Hearing the Call,” scheduled for spring of 2023, in collaboration with the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Longmont Museum, and the Boulder Apple Tree Project. He explains in detail the mechanics of his process, utilizing heirloom and indigenous apple species to plant trees with multiple fruits, including the one in front of Carnegie Library. Van Aken shares some of his impressions of Boulder County, what he anticipates for his next visits, and touches on the future of his artistic endeavors.
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Call Number OH3079Date 2022Contents Single recording; 59 minutes, 00 secondsDescription This interview with Kayann Short focuses on the BoulderReads Reading Buddies program that she and Diana Sherry developed and that Dr. Short subsequently ran for 16 years. The program paired Dr. Short’s University of Colorado undergraduate students with preschool-aged- through middle-school-aged students. The pairs of students met regularly and read to each other, an activity that strengthened the younger students’ reading skills, cultivated their interest in reading, and forged supportive relationships between the “little buddies” and the “big buddies.” In addition to delving into many aspects of the Reading Buddies program, the interview also explores other projects in which Dr. Short has been involved, including teaching writing and women’s studies at CU; digital storytelling workshops, which included teaching through Denver’s StoryCenter and developing the Writing Beyond Limits program that she taught to BoulderReads adult participants; writing and publishing her book A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography; a book she currently is researching about the Bluebird Club women’s community in Boulder County dating back to 1911; the Friedman Feminist Press Collection, which she established at CSU; her farm, Stonebridge Farm, which was the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm in Boulder County; and heading up a writing group and writing workshops at the Lyons Library.
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Call Number OH3080Date 2022Contents Single recording; 56 minutes, 13 secondsDescription Frank Morse has worked as a volunteer tutor with the BoulderReads program since 2008. He discusses learning to be a reading, GED, and ESL tutor for BoulderReads. He describes the process, challenges, and satisfactions of tutoring by describing his work with various students. He praises the BoulderReads program and reflects on the similarities of teaching reading to children and to adults. He also talks about his career working in the golf course construction industry and the volunteering work he continues to do with the Woodlands Headstart Program.
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Call Number OH3081Date 2022Contents Single recording; 41 minutes, 05 secondsDescription Inez Davis Buggs was born in Texas and grew up in various locations there, both rural and in Dallas. She describes racial segregation in Texas during the time that she grew up. After high school, she moved with her mother to Boulder in the mid-1950s. She talks about her adjustment to living in a place in which Black and white people were less segregated. She describes her education as a nurse and nurse practitioner and her work with Clinica Family Health in Lafayette from 1977 to 2007. Other topics include the Second Baptist Church community, religious faith, testing for racial discrimination in housing in Boulder, the nature of racial discrimination in Boulder, her philosophy of respect and compassion for others, and her approach to parenting.
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Call Number OH3082Date 2022Contents Single recording; 24 minutes, 31 secondsDescription Wilford Buggs grew up in Texas but has lived in Boulder since 1956. He discusses serving as one of the first African American police officers in Boulder; his career with NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration); community service activities; civil rights efforts; and his church community, Second Baptist Church, which has been a focal point for the Black community in Boulder. Other topics include the importance of Charles and Mildred Nilon as mentors, and raising children in Boulder.
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Call Number OH3083Date 2022Contents Single recording; 60 minutes, 16 secondsDescription May Snowden describes her childhood in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she grew up in a diverse community of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans. She talks about her parents and about her education, first in an all-Black school, then in an integrated school. She describes many childhood successes and positive experiences, but also some formative experiences of racial discrimination, of being denigrated and excluded due to her race. She also discusses career limitations for women at the time she went to college. She details her career with Mountain Bell (later US West), where she started in the operator services department, moved through many jobs with ever-increasing amounts of responsibility in HR and public policy, ending with leading US West’s efforts in the area of diversity and inclusion. She explains how her goal always was to make sure people felt understood and included at work. She also talks about Chuck Snowden, her husband of 52 years, and reflects on his many accomplishments. Other topics include the importance of their church community at Second Baptist Church and the importance of making a philosophy of inclusion in Boulder a reality for the people who live here.