People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- Alfred Nestler
- He was a well-known artist from Mesa County, Colorado. According to local historian David Sundal, Nestler painted in oils. He also painted houses, was an interior decorator, and refinished furniture. He had a role in starting local art organizations such as the Beaux Arts Club. He moved to Sedona, Arizona in the 1950’s, where he was part of that city’s nascent art scene. The Art Center in Grand Junction owns many of his works.
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- Alfred Thomas "Al" Look Jr.
- He was born in Colorado to Margaret Look, a homemaker, and to Daily Sentinel employee and popular local figure Al Look. He grew up in Grand Junction. As a boy, he and his father took hikes in the surrounding area, and they became interested in geology, paleontology and archaeology. It was Al Jr.’s find that helped draw interest to what became the Turner-Look dig in Utah, an important Fremont Indian site. The 1920 US Census shows him working as an advertising collector for the Daily Sentinel (where his father was the advertising manager). He attended Grand Junction High School, where he was on the staff of the Orange and Black newspaper, in the Dramatic Club, involved in the Quill and Scroll journalistic honor society, ran track and field, and was in the Ski Club and the Tennis Club. He and childhood friends Bob Johnson and Bill Ela were known as the Three Musketeers. Before leaving to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder, his father sent him to talk to three prominent Grand Junction men: Charley Rump, Pappy Dew, and Willis Hinman, so that Al Jr. might decide what he wanted to do for a career. He chose to become a chemical engineer. While at CU Boulder, he was a member of the Naval ROTC. He was also involved in Phi Epsilon, Alpha Chi Sigma, Viking Club, and Tau Beta Phi, and was the editor of the Colorado Engineer. He became a sailor in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was stationed on a PT boat in the English Channel (according to his father, oral history interviewee Al Look). On his return from the war, he sailed on the Queen Mary to the United States. He later worked for Dow Chemical. He also owned property in several states. *Photograph from 1940 Grand Junction High School yearbook.
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- Alfred W. Bigum
- He was born in Deepwater, Missouri. He worked as a bookkeeper for a cemetery in Kansas City, and then for the Mt. Washington Lumber Company, where he eventually became yard foreman. He next ran his own lumberyard in Oklahoma. He came to Montrose, Colorado in 1922, when a Mr. Kurtz hired him to manage a lumberyard there. Mr. Bigum had taken a night course in architecture, and worked on the side drawing building plans. He came to Grand Junction to finish an apartment building, and Kurtz hired him to run the Independent Lumber Company.
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- Alfreida (Elkins) Stevenson
- Her father was a contractor who built buildings and homes. The family moved to Denver and then to Durango for his work. Her mother was scared of the American Indians that lived in the Durango area, and so the family moved up to Grand Junction, Colorado in 1900. Alfreida lived in Grand Junction until 1919, when she moved to Seattle, Washington with her husband.
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- Alice "Widge" Ferguson
- Alice Elizabeth Willgoos Ferguson was born on 23 April 1925 in Montclair, New Jersey to Grace Service and Andrew Van Dean Willgoos. She grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut and a close friend christened her “Widge” at a young age. Widge learned to ski at age six from the legendary Hannes Schneider in North Conway, New Hampshire. Her father, a celebrated aeronautical engineer, hand-crafted metal edges for her wooden skis and cable (aka bear-trap) bindings. Widge and Howard Head had many discussions about this creative implementation and her father may have performed this innovation prior to Head. In 1946, Widge earned a degree in Economics from Connecticut College. While in college, Widge met and married John Lord Ferguson of Loveland, Colorado. Ferguson was a student at Yale University and a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity. In 1947, the Fergusons moved back to John’s home state of Colorado. Two daughters were born to this union: Sandy Ferguson Fuller and Susie Ferguson Fuller. In the 1960s, John Ferguson was introduced to Pepi Gramshammer by Endicott Peabody Davison. Davison and Ferguson were friends and DKE fraternity brothers from Yale University. Hence, Ferguson became Gramshammer’s attorney. In turn, Gramshammer regularly coached the Ferguson family in skiing. This business relationship set the stage for a lifelong friendship between the Ferguson and Gramshammer families. Alice “Widge” Ferguson became a ski legend due to her seemingly uncanny ability to make it snow. Bob Parker, a Vail pioneer and the first public relations director for Vail ski area, named Widge’s Ridge in Sun Down Bowl in honor of the “Good Widge of the West” and her rare talent.
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- Alice (Craig) Devine
- She was born in Gateway, Colorado.
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- Alice (Glasco) Johnson
- She was born in Elk County, Kansas to William T. Glasco, a Civil War veteran, and Mary Jane (Messick) Johnson. She married James Pearley Johnson in Grand Junction in 1910, and together they lived in Gilman, Colorado for two years while James worked in a mine. They then moved to Mesa County and lived on a farm on River Road, partway between Grand Junction and Fruita. There, they raised tomatoes in greenhouses and sold them directly to customers and grocers, and sold plants to other growers. After her husband's heart attack, she took over much of the physical labor in the business until they were able to get hired help. They moved for a time to Grand Junction, where James worked as a bank teller, then moved to Pomona and again farmed. She worked as a bookkeeper in a lumberyard, an abstract office, a country treasurer's office, and was a volunteer at St. Mary's Hospital and the Salvation Army.