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Dean Fogerty talks about his nearly fifty-year career in the tech industry in Boulder, first for IBM and then for Ricoh after it bought out a division of IBM. Fogerty discusses the changing company culture and work environment throughout the years, major projects and advances, and the company’s place within Boulder and the tech world as a whole. He especially focuses on his work with printers, his international travels working for trade shows, and the communications innovations that he and his team made during his tenure.

Reginald Lingham grew up in Boulder, then lived in California as an adult. He describes his family history and the lives of various members of his family. He recalls his childhood years in Boulder as mainly pleasant and full of family activities, although he does detail one experience of discrimination against him as a Black child involving being turned away by a particular Boy Scout troop leader. After high school, he joined the Navy and served in California and Japan. Settling in California after his military service was complete, he worked for the Post Office for most of his career, mainly working on electronic equipment. Throughout his military service and Post Office career, he continued to receive technical training in electronics. He describes his life in California—in Berkeley and Sacramento—and he talks about his daughter’s life there.

Jack Bowes, a retired third-generation farmer in the Louisville area, talks about his family’s long history with coal mining, farming, and ranching after they arrived in the area from England in the 1880s. Initially coming to the area to mine coal, they quickly transitioned to a homestead at 9182 Dillon Road, where they raised hay, grains, and livestock. He describes his childhood on the farm, both his early days and how, after his father died when Jack was 13, he had to help his mother with the farming. Jack discusses ways in which farming has changed since his childhood, from the days of horse-drawn farming. Much of the water for their homestead came from the South Boulder & Coal Creek Irrigation Ditch, and in the 1990s Jack became president of the ditch company, as his father and grandfather had been before him. He describes the changes in the job responsibilities since his father’s time, and also changes in how the ditch was operated. He talks about his grandparents’ and father’s memberships in local fraternal organizations, his aunt telling stories of seeing Native Americans camping on Coal Creek in the 1890s, family picnics and parties in the apple orchard, the sale of part of his family’s property to Boulder County Parks and Open Space and Louisville Open Space, and the death of many of the apple trees. He closes with a story his father told him about being 13 years old in 1914 and watching the Colorado militia get off the train to deal with conflicts between mining companies and striking miners in Louisville.

Marc Sobel and his wife moved to Boulder in 1998, some years after they had retired from careers at IBM. He describes volunteer work he did after moving to Boulder. He and his wife moved into the Frasier Retirement Community at the beginning of 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Boulder. He describes the pandemic lockdown at Frasier, the protocols that were followed, the relative success of these protocols at keeping people healthy, and his role in developing a Zoom-meeting program to help counteract isolation among residents. He reflects on the ways things changed as more became known about the disease and how different people handled the challenges of the pandemic in different ways. Other topics include social aspects of living at Frasier, Resident Council committees, the national response to managing the pandemic, and the way residents used the Touchtown social media program within Frasier to keep in touch and keep informed.

Jamestown, Colorado, resident Martine Amadé speaks about her experience during the September 2013 flood. She talks about her family’s evacuation to the Jamestown School, being airlifted out by helicopter, and her stay in Boulder while her husband repaired their house. She describes the damage to Jamestown, reconstruction of houses and the town, and the many ways townspeople helped each other and pulled together. She expresses hope that boundaries that previously existed between town residents and, for example, bicyclists and different groups within the town, may remain broken down in the future.

After winning gold in the 1972 Munich Olympic marathon, Frank Shorter went on to inspire the development of the sport of running in America and co-founded the Bolder Boulder 10K race. In this interview he discusses the effects on runners of training at altitude, training for the Olympic marathon at the University of Colorado, characteristics of the Boulder running community, founding of the Bolder Boulder, and the rise of exercise science. He talks about his various career involvements, including his ten-year running career; the running stores he owned; his work in broadcast journalism, covering the Olympics and other running events; forming and chairing the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency; and his current work with the Healthy Learning Paths curriculum for children.

Cary Wolfson, former host of the blues radio show Blues from the Red Rooster Lounge, talks about his three-decade-plus career in local and syndicated radio. Wolfson speaks about adventures in San Francisco in 1970; coming to Boulder from Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1970s; the start of KGNU Independent Community Radio; how The Red Rooster Lounge came to be; the beginning and end of Blues Access Magazine; the battle to keep radio station KGNU alive on a shoestring budget; early KGNU pledge drives; and the 1970s and 1980s processes of syndicating a radio show. Additionally, Wolfson touches on KGNU’s Grateful Dead Marathons; KJAC, The Colorado Sound; Radio Free Amsterdam; and how his involvement in photography has impacted his later life.

Crista de la Garza is a 42-year-old massage therapist and yoga instructor who lives in Lafayette, CO. This interview focuses on her new home—which includes her 13-year-old son, a dog, a cat, a conure, and a canary—and changes that have come from the COVID-19 pandemic: changes to her work/profession, changes of pace, and other adaptations. Crista talks about the comfort she feels now, compared to her prior living situation in Boulder, in affordable housing, where she observed increasingly volatile behavior from individuals camping, sleeping, and moving about in areas around her building. From her experience as a board member of Thistle (though not representing Thistle) and her own research, Crista reflects on the issue of homelessness and the complexity of addressing the underlying causes. While still feeling shut out of home ownership in the Boulder area, Crista ultimately is extremely grateful for what she has and the level of stability she and her son enjoy together.

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.

John Thompson was the principal at Baseline Junior High for 19 years, from 1964 to 1983. In this interview, he talks about his childhood in Iowa, his family’s genealogy, and his career in middle school administration. He discusses changes over time for the Boulder Valley School District, including its creation, when 33 small school districts in Boulder County were consolidated into two (the Boulder Valley School District and the St. Vrain School District), and the expansion of the school district that took place when IBM located a branch in Boulder. He also talks about cultural issues that came up for schools during his tenure, such as tension about religion in school programs, disciplining students for alcohol and drug use, and anti-Vietnam-War protests that involved students. He describes some of the successful programs at Baseline, including an honors program, the BLAST program, the yearbook, and an award-winning art program.

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.

Kathy Kaiser, editor, journalist and writer, talks about the culture in Boulder during the late 1960s and middle 1970s through the eyes of a journalist. As a long-time resident of Boulder, describes the progressive movements that began in Boulder during the late 1960s, details some of the issues of the time, and reflects on how the culture of the‘70s evolved into the current culture of Boulder. She talks about ways in which print media has changed over the years, using changes at the Daily Camera as illustrative of those changes. She gives her first-hand recollections of the beginnings of the Boulder Weekly. She also tells personal stories of what life in Boulder was like for a resident in the 1960s and 1970s.

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.”