Search results

Judith Williams (then Judith Estey) was a kindergarten student at Whittier Elementary School in Boulder in 1944. She later returned to the school as a first-grade teacher. In this interview with members of the Whittier History Club she tells about her kindergarten year, including anecdotes about the school personnel, friends, learning to read, music, recess, other school activities, and clothes worn at that time. She also tells a story about finding her kindergarten teacher's desk many years later, when she returned as a teacher.

This KBOL sound recording covers the National Bureau of Standards building dedication in 1954.

William Cohen, born in New York City in 1940, is a retired attorney, law professor, and one of the founders of a non-profit agency, Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry (BASJ). In this interview, recorded in 1992, Cohen describes his experience growing up in a Jewish family; study;ing and practicing law in the eastern United States; his teaching experience in the University of Colorado's Law School at Boulder; how he met his wife Sara-Jane and co-founded a law firm with her in Boulder. Cohen also talks about how his long-time interest in Human Rights Advocacy led him to establish BASJ in response to Boulder becoming a Sister City with Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in 1986. He expresses pessimism about anti-Semitic sentiments in the former Soviet Union, and shares his appreciation of living as a Jew in a tolerant community like Boulder.

Charles Lippencott is a third-generation resident of his farm, located at 8130 North 73rd Street in Boulder, Colorado. His mother's family were the Beasleys, who were among the original pioneer land holders in Boulder County, having arrived around 1861; his father's family arrived around 1870. Both families were farmers and ranchers. He describes farming with horses and the switch to using tractors, and details the use of farm equipment such as buck rakes that were made from old cars. He also describes the installation of electricity in the area around 1941 thanks to the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) and the various social activities that centered around the Altona Grange. The interview winds up with his reflections about the rise and fall of farming in Boulder County, how many of the early farmers in the area took up farming when they realized that gold mining would not make them rich, and how farming had declined in Boulder County after the 1960s, starting with the appearance of IBM and the influx of non-farmers that it brought to the area.

Ronald Sutherland's great-grandfather and grandfather came to the area in 1872. During Mr. Sutherland's childhood in the 1930s and 1940s, he worked as a "stacker boy" for his grandfather, using a "sweep" or a buck rake to stack hay. He details the operations of windrowers or side delivery rakes, pickup bailers, dump rakes, binders, and threshers. He describes butchering pigs, rendering the lard, and deep-frying its skin for "cracklings"; raising and selling turkeys and chickens with his father; and small-scale dairy farming. He tells about recreational activities during his childhood, such as listening to Amos & Andy and Bob Hope on the radio, during a time when electricity was produced on the farm by a "wind charger". He also reflects on the changes in demographics and regulations in Boulder County, beginning in the 1950s, that have led to a shift away from agriculture.

This recording is of a celebration marking the conclusion of the Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry (BASJ), which was created in 1987 to provide advocacy and resettlement support for Jews who were facing increasing anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. The ceremony honors the founder, Bill Cohen, as well as the other critical participants in BASJ - the administrators, members of the board, and the volunteers. Moderator and BASJ pioneer, Roxanne Bailin, describes the accomplishments of the project, while Bill Cohen elaborates on its history and mission. He remarks that BASJ was one of the most successful resettlement efforts in the United States. Other speakers and honorees include the mayor of Boulder, the Allied Jewish Federation and local rabbis, as well as members of the New American community (resettled Soviet Jewish immigrants). After the recognition ceremony, two choruses sing and present skits about the process of emigrating and then integrating into the new community. The event concludes with a description of a successor group founded by the Russian Jewish community, the New American Organization.

This interview with Colorado's preeminent botanist, Dr. William A. Weber, includes eight interviews conducted over the span of nearly a year. Dr. Weber discusses his childhood, education, and early mentors; the development of his career as a botanist; botanical work, including teaching at the University of Colorado, his study of lichens and mosses, his development of a series of books about Colorado flora, and his development of the University of Colorado Herbarium; his extensive travel for botanical purposes, and his family life. The series of interviews ends with a display of Dr. Weber's African art collection and a tour of the CU Herbarium.

This interview was conducted in January of 2002, less than three months before Ricky Weiser's death on April 4. The interviewers were two Japanese visitors, one of whom was a Japanese lawyer who was in Boulder to study natural resources law at the CU Law School. The conversation covered a range of topics relevant to the students' interests, including treatment of archeological artifacts on Ms. Weiser's land, wildlfe found there and her interactions with the animals, and her conservation easement agreement with the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks Department for ownership of her land. In addition, she spoke of acting with the Boulder Shakespeare Festival, her love of theater in general and Shakespeare in particular, and gave her thoughts on aging and independence.