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Larry Dorsey, chair of the Superior Historical Commission, discusses how he and the town of Superior were affected by the Marshall Fire of December 2021. He gives an overview of Superior as a community, including its history and how it developed over the years. He details his experiences on the day of the Marshall Fire, including evacuation and a period of uncertainty about whether his house had burned down. He describes the extent of the destruction, including the profound destruction of Original Town. He talks about the Superior Historical Museum, what it was like before the fire, it’s destruction by the fire, and plans to rebuild. He reflects on the ways the community has worked together after the fire, house rebuilding efforts as of a year after the fire, and silver linings and lessons learned from the fire.

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. From January 1970 to December 1972, Karen Schwartz was a student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she earned a degree in music education with a vocal emphasis. She describes Boulder and being a student at the University of Colorado in the early 1970s, including discussion of the topics of hippies in Boulder, Vietnam War protests, the fallout from the Kent State killings in 1970, attitudes toward the police at that time, and usage of marijuana during that era. Although she was not aware of the Hairy Bacon Bowl games while she was living in Boulder, she paints a picture of the backdrop of the place and time during which they occurred.

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.

CU Professor Paul Levitt, born in Newark, New Jersey, and who grew up mostly in the San Fernando Valley in California, has led a life focused on literature, writing, and political action. He begins by describing his Jewish family’s origins in Eastern Europe, his relatives’ immigration to the United States and his own boyhood. He came to the University of Colorado as an undergraduate student in 1954, began teaching at CU in 1964 and was the founder of CU’s Creative Writing Program. He also lived in London and wrote plays for the BBC for two years. Levitt became a prolific writer of historical novels and scholarly nonfiction. He also has strong beliefs about the importance of university faculty teaching lower-classmen as well as pursuing their own scholarship. Professor Levitt was an outspoken opponent of university participation in the investigations and subsequent firings that grew out of McCarthyism. He sponsored a meeting that resulted in university officials’ apologies to Morris Judd for his firing in 1952 and a lawsuit that resulted in the release of a previously secret report about President Robert Stearns’ investigations into the political leanings of CU faculty, which resulted in many firings and resignations. Professor Levitt discusses a number of his critically acclaimed books, including Stalin’s Barber and Come With Me to Babylon.

This interview is part of a series about flag 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. Tim Gablehouse is a Boulder native who was a University of Colorado student from 1969 to 1973. While a student he worked for the campus police for two years, from 1971 to 1973. He talks about the difference in policing attitudes between student and non-student campus police staff, as well as the difference between the city and campus police approaches to law enforcement; the way that city, county and campus police cooperated; and the nature of student/campus police relations overall during the 1970s. He played on the police team in the second Hairy Bacon Bowl in 1971, and he describes the good-natured atmosphere of the game. He discusses the way that hippie culture took on a particularly Boulder flavor compared to hippie culture on the coasts and reflects on the laid-back nature of student life during the 1970s. He also talks about the anti-Vietnam-War protests that took place in Boulder during the early 1970s and he touches on the military draft and the way it affected students once the lottery for the draft began.

Sandra (Sandi) Banks describes her childhood in Ashland, Kentucky, including being raised by her grandparents, the role of church in her young life, and her education as an African American student in segregated schools. She details her college years at various universities, culminating in earning a masters’ degree in education. She describes some of the racist attitudes that she had to deal with, both during university study and later, as a teacher. She and her family moved frequently to accommodate her husband’s career; she discusses the various teaching jobs she had in Illinois, Kentucky, New York, and Colorado. She reflects on what it was like for her to teach in Boulder and what it was like for her children growing up in Boulder. She discusses teaching students about diversity issues. Other topics include service work done through United Black Women of Boulder County; the Boulder Freedom School, run by Mildred Nilon and Ellen Tate; the importance of religious belief; and the importance of a mix of patience and courage when encountering challenging societal ideas.

Martha Roskowski discusses her wide-ranging work in Boulder and Boulder County over many decades. She began as a staff person and volunteer at KGNU, Boulder’s non-commercial radio station, where she was an office manager, a DJ, organized fundraising events, and served on the programming committee. She discusses KGNU staff members, alternative music, cowboy poetry, tape editing techniques, fundraising for public radio, and policy decisions. Later, she worked for King Soopers, producing in-house training videos, and then as a free-lancer on various documentary films. In the 1990s, she was hired by the City of Boulder to coordinate events for Bike Week. She discusses ways in which she developed the program over four years. Since then, she has continued to advocate for improving bicycle transportation in Boulder County, throughout the state of Colorado, and on the federal level. Topics discussed include the Folsom Street right-sizing transportation project and transportation policy. Also discussed are affordable housing, mobile home communities, and City of Boulder politics.

Deborah DeBord describes her memories of the September, 2013, flood and their evacuation from Pinewood Springs, CO. One of the reasons they had to evacuate was because her defibrillator was remotely monitored and telephones were down. With the one suitcase they were allowed to carry in the Chinook helicopter, she had a few clothes and her medications but she did not have with her the adaptive technology she needed as a blind person. The interview was conducted at her home, six months since the flood. Her feelings are not as raw now and she is looking forward to a harvest, to create the recipes for the CSA farm and to replace the condiments and sauces and other foods she had to abandon at her home.

Laurie Watkins talks about her work with the BoulderReads program, where she first worked as a volunteer tutor and then as a paid administrator from 1996 until 2016. She describes her role as administrator, discusses the economic structure of the program and how it evolved, and details the many sub-programs that BoulderReads offered in addition to one-on-one tutoring, such as GED programs, tutoring in the Boulder County jail, the Reading Buddies program, the Read to the Dog program, the Picturing Writing program and others. She stresses the individualization of the program, which is oriented toward meeting student-defined goals. She talks about change in the program over time from mostly serving native-English speakers to serving many ESL students. She ends by describing the Boulder Library Home Delivery program for which she has volunteered since retiring.

Marilyn Fagerstrom moved to Boulder County in 1983. She was an early member of the fire department that became the Lefthand Fire Department. She talks about the early days of the department, before there was financial support from Boulder County. She discusses fundraising, training, certification, equipment, the role of women, and lines of command. She talks about specific fires that the department has worked on, both in and outside of the county, such as the Fourmile Fire and the Yellowstone Fire. And she talks about other roles played by the department, such as searching for lost hikers, assisting during the Pope’s visit to the Denver area, and playing a role in the space shuttle recovery mission. In her later years as a firefighter, she was a Public Information Officer.

This is a telephone interview and difficult to hear in portions, due to crossover talking as well as external noise (such as an overhead airplane). Robert Greene speaks about some of his experiences in Boulder starting in 1965. Greene came to Boulder to attend Colorado University; he describes the culture of CU at that time, including student shenanigans and protests. Most of the interview focuses on Boulder’s tumultuous time between 1965 and 1974: the counter culture, people involved, specific events, and repercussions. Greene himself was involved with SDS and the anti-war movement, opposing Vietnam. He recollects: a march against Dow Chemical; the S. I. Hayakawa speech; his expulsion from CU following a Farrand Field demonstration protesting the invasion of Cambodia (and CU trials that exonerated his case); experiences with the People’s Clinic; and, more broadly, his effort to create a leftwing political movement for peace and social justice in the United States.

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. Ben Janacek, a former Boulder police officer, talks about attending the first of the Hairy Bacon Bowl football games as a spectator. Most of his interview, however, centers on his jobs as a City of Boulder police officer and, later, detective. He worked for the Boulder police department from 1969 to 1980. He talks about what it was like to work for that department, interactions with the hippie population of the late 1960s and 1970s, policing the anti-war riots in Boulder, and describes numerous arrests and other police activities during his tenure there. He also talks about his military service in Vietnam, which preceded his time in Boulder, and his career in policing and security work after he left the Boulder police force.

Oli Duncan is a native of Longmont. Three of her grandparents were from New Mexico and one from Texas. They came to Boulder in the 1920s as sharecroppers. Her father was a coal miner, and was active in the union. She went to high school in Boulder, married, and had three children. When her husband died in 1988, she went to New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, studied English, and became an English teacher. She started a project to do interviews with Latinos in the 1980s after two unarmed Latino youths were killed by police in Longmont. She talks about discrimination that existed in Boulder County for her parents (such as “whites only” signs), ethnic identity, the importance of education, and the way people mispronounce Hispanic names. She also discusses various terms that are used for people of Hispanic origin and explains that she defines herself first and foremost as an American.