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Jessica Blanchard talks about growing up in Broomfield, Colorado, and being a teenager there in the first half of the first decade of the 2000s. She discusses going to Nativity School through eighth grade, attending Broomfield High School, the role of religion in her life; the strong support she gets from her family; things that she and her friends do for recreation, school work, politics, and plans for her future. She talks briefly about whether smoking, alcohol and drug usage is a problem among Broomfield teenagers. Other subjects touched on include travel, memories of the 9-11 attacks, how students treat each other, babysitting as a job, and her plans and hopes for the future.

Eleanor Kalejs talks about working from 1999 to 2014 as the tutor/student coordinator for the BoulderReads literacy program. She discusses training tutors in literacy education methods, matching tutors and students, what motivated students to want to improve their literacy skills, how BoulderReads met their needs, and the transition to working extensively with second language learners. Other topics include reading, writing, and ESL proficiency assessments; specific programs that BoulderReads implemented, and her reflections about the importance of the program and the ways in which working for it was satisfying for her.

Carole Jones relates her family’s history, reaching back as far as the 1700s, and including those who were “free coloreds” in Baltimore and Freedmen of Oklahoma. She describes her upbringing in Washington, DC, her college education at Oberlin, and becoming a social worker in her post-graduate years. After marrying George Jones in 1959, they moved to Colorado and eventually to Boulder. She explains where they have lived over the years in Boulder, including where they live now. A large portion of the interview details the work that she and her husband did in the Boulder/Denver area and then for 25 years in various African countries (alongside her husband) mainly through USAID, ranging from social work to developing post-apartheid policies for equitable salary levels among all workers, to developing programs for victims of torture and trauma. She also reflects on the challenges of blending work with child-rearing and coordinating her career with that of her husband. Other topics include the Black community in Boulder, the shortcoming of education for children of color in Boulder during the 1960s, and her current volunteer work in Boulder.

This interview is part of a series about the Hairy Bacon Bowl, football games played at the University of Colorado’s Folsom Field in the 1970s. The teams were comprised of counterculture students, on the one hand, and police officers, on the other hand, as a way to address tensions between the two groups. Geoff Sparks’ father Eugene Sparks, a Boulder police officer, played in some of these games. Geoff attended two of the games in early adolescence. He describes his father’s unconventional approach to policing, which featured a lot of empathy for and direct, positive interaction with the hippie population in Boulder. His approach to policing grew out of his exploration of New Age spiritual practices of the 1960s. In contrast, Eugene Sparks also was head of the police riot squad; Geoff talks about the riots that happened in Boulder during the 1960s and ‘70s, his father’s role as a police officer at that time, and some of the challenges of police work. He also describes the first of the Hairy Bacon Bowl games in terms of interactions between the two teams and his experience of the game as a spectator. He also reflects on the changes in Boulder’s culture from the 1960s/1970s compared to 2015.

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.

Willie Knierim talks about being a teacher in the Boulder Valley School District beginning in the 1960s. He taught at Centennial Junior High School, Lafayette High School, Centaurus High School, Nevin Platt Junior High School, and Fairview High School. Willie discusses the consolidation of small school districts into the Boulder Valley School District; his term as president of the Boulder Valley Education Association (BVEA); controversies in education administration that involved the BVEA, the school board, various superintendents, and parents; and changes he has seen in Boulder County over the years. Topics covered in addition to those centered on schools and education include the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall, the Pow Wow Rodeo, IBM coming to Boulder, race relations, and conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War.

Mark Welker is a mechanical engineer who began working for International Business Machines (IBM) at the IBM Space Guidance Center in Owego, New York, in 1963. He transferred to IBM's new site in Boulder in 1966, worked in the tape drive and printer divisions, and held various positions in engineering, product management, business services, and market intelligence over the course of his 43-year career at IBM. He discusses changes at IBM over four decades, including women in engineering and alcohol policies in the workplace; mentions other high-tech companies in Boulder and Denver; and talks about the impact of IBM on the community. He briefly describes social life and family life in Boulder, plus the elements that make Boulder a desirable place to live, from the 1960s-1990s.

Janice Zelazo is retired and lives in the prestigious Newlands Neighborhood in Boulder. She owns her home, bought for only $65,000 in 1979, and in order to help with the need for affordable housing in Boulder, she started the Legacy Housing Program, which allows people to donate their houses at the time of their deaths to the city’s affordable housing program. Her house has become the first one in the Legacy Housing Program. She moved to Boulder in 1973, and she discusses why she chose Boulder, why she likes living in Boulder, and some of the changes she has experienced in the Newlands Neighborhood that make it increasingly unaffordable. She discusses the need for economic diversity in Boulder. She also talks about the simplicity of her chosen lifestyle and how it has helped with her own economic independence.

Marcia Lattanzi-Licht describes her involvement in the hospice movement as it began in Boulder County in the 1970s. She describes hospice principles and the history of hospice. She then details the various programs, resources, and education designed for the dying, the bereaved, and for other community members who might come into contact with the bereaved individuals, such as law enforcement officials and chaplains. She details the necessary skills of patience, care, compassion for individuals at end-of-life as well as for their caregivers, which provide support and meaning for all involved with hospice. She explains that there are not-for-profit and for-profit hospice organizations in Boulder County and discusses how they differ from each other. She also discusses the difference between hospice care and palliative care services and how each approach is used for different situations.

Peter Dawson reminisces about his 27-year career as a pediatrician at the Boulder People’s Clinic, a clinic that arose in Boulder in the early 1970s to serve the newly-arrived hippie community that didn’t have money for medical care or even places to take showers. Later, its offshoot, the San Juan del Centro Clinic, served immigrant communities, which included many people of Mexican and Hmong backgrounds. Both clinics initially operated out of apartments and relied on donations and fundraisers to pay their staff until more reliable sources of income were found. More recently, People’s Clinic merged with Clinica Family Health, which has several locations in Colorado, while retaining the People’s Clinic name. Dawson offers up anecdotes about some of the cultural differences and language barriers that he and his fellow doctors and nurses encountered during their work; he speaks fondly of several volunteer trips he took to Mexico to help medical professionals there learn more about ADHD and how to treat it; and he describes special projects with which he was involved, such as addressing pediatric undernutrition and helping to implement the Community Infant Program to address mental health issues involving families of young children. He talks about fostering collaboration with other doctors and specialists, and promoting holistic treatment for his patients, including talking to parents about the benefits of reading to their children, and focusing on the mental health of both his patients and their parents. His recollections serve to illustrate the changes in the Boulder medical community, from the days of running the clinic by collecting money in a jar and operating a pharmacy out of an apartment bathroom, to the advent of the Electronic Medical Record.

Jeanne Nauenberg, who has lived in Boulder since 1969, grew up in New York City, the child of Jewish immigrant parents. She describes her parents’ former lives in Eastern Europe, their immigration to the United States in the early twentieth century, and her childhood in New York City. She discusses her long career in education, first as an elementary teacher in New York, then working at a junior high in Jefferson County, and finally as a guidance counselor for many years at Fairview High School in Boulder. She talks about students during the hippie era, changes in parenting style over the years, the Teen Parenting Program, an internship career education program she spearheaded, instituting a middle school to high school transition program, and the architecture of Fairview High School.

This interview is part of a series about football games, collectively known as the Hairy Bacon Bowl, that were played during the first half of the 1970s at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The teams were made up of university students, many of whom identified with hippie culture and/or anti-war beliefs, on one team, and campus and City of Boulder police officers on the other team. The goal was to ameliorate tensions between the two groups. Fred Neitzel was a police officer with the Boulder Police Department for more than 20 years, beginning in 1970. He reminisces about playing in the Hairy Bacon Bowl for the police department. Much of the interview, however, concerns his time as a patrolman and a detective, especially a homicide detective. He discusses the political and cultural unrest of the 1960s-1970s in Boulder from the point of view of a policeman, including dealing with the STP Family, the anti-war riots, and the large population of hippies that took up residence in Boulder then. He also discusses some of the homicide investigations in which he took part, such as the murder of Michael Manning, and some of the emotional stress involved in police work. He comments on instances of police misconduct but also on his perception of a lack of city support and support in general for police, which he believes has grown broader in recent years.

This is interview is one of a series about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on life during 2020. Nicole Christensen and her husband are the owners of a Crossfit gym and the parents of two young daughters, who were 6 and 4 at the time of this interview. The interview was conducted in May 2020, seven weeks after the pandemic initially caused the shutdown of many businesses and schools. Ms. Christensen reflects on her first experiences after learning about the pandemic (in February of 2020) and discusses ways that she and her employees pivoted their business (beginning in March of 2020) to virtual platforms and the impacts of the pandemic on their family life—both the challenges and the silver linings. She also discusses the impact of the pandemic on the community at large.