Kathy Jordan approached life and history with wonderment and zeal

Kathy Jordan never lost her childlike sense of wonderment about Mesa County and its inhabitants. Kathy died Tuesday morning at Denver’s Swedish Hospital after almost three weeks fighting a losing battle with a brain aneurysm. Kathy was not a reporter, although she had worked many years in The Daily Sentinel newsroom as a secretary and general factotum. But, near the end of her Sentinel career and under the aegis of the Museum of Western Colorado, she branched out to write a book ...

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Cell phone would have solved problems of the ferryboat caper

Had my pen name been O. Henry, I couldn’t have dreamed up a more convoluted plot than the ferryboat caper. And, had I been looking for an advertising gimmick on the value of cell phones, I might have won the Clio award by telling the true story about the whole mixed-up affair. This mishmash happened recently when I went to renew a friendship with a former Grand Junction resident whom I hadn’t seen in 40 or so years. Carol Dart Seuferer of Berkeley, the daughter of former ...

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Reporters run risks believing politicians will stick to the script

As I listened in late January to television’s talking heads announce with complete confidence what President Barack Obama would say in his State of the Union message several hours later, I had to suppress a smile remembering some pre-speech releases that didn’t go as planned. Reporters forecasting Obama’s speech knew they were on solid ground, with advance copies of his address in hand, and the assurance that — barring an unexpected announcement that World War III ...

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Reporters run risks believing politicians will stick to the script

As I listened in late January to television’s talking heads announce with complete confidence what President Barack Obama would say in his State of the Union message several hours later, I had to suppress a smile remembering some pre-speech releases that didn’t go as planned. Reporters forecasting Obama’s speech knew they were on solid ground, with advance copies of his address in hand, and the assurance that — barring an unexpected announcement that World War III ...

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Wubben and Rait led first expansion of what was then Mesa Junior College

Horace Wubben and Mary Rait would have been proud and probably a bit awed if they were to visit the Colorado Mesa University campus today. Dr.Wubben, a one-time high school teacher, was the president of the university’s forerunner, Mesa Junior College, from 1937 to 1963, when he retired. Rait was one of three women teachers “on loan” from Grand Junction High School when the college opened. She stayed on to become the full-time teacher of modern European history, dean of ...

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Being dead can create headaches for someone still among the living

Mark Twain was right on target when he wrote in June 1897, “The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.” That comment mirrors my feelings when one day, a couple of weeks ago, I received a thick envelope in the mail addressed to “Beneficiaries of Mary Louis (sic) Henderson” from the Topeka, Kan., headquarters of the insurance company in which I have held an annuity for more than 10 years. Inside, there was this message: “We have been notified of the ...

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Houston Hall was Mesa Junior College back in 1940

Many ghosts from the early 1940s still roam the corridors of Mesa State College’s Houston Hall, now in its 71st year of existence. It wasn’t Houston Hall in spring 1940 but simply Mesa Junior College. It didn’t need a special name because it was the only building on what was then the college campus along North Avenue, from 11th to 12th Street and north a block or two. It was a time when the thought of American participation in World War II was only an evil nightmare. ...

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Americans weren’t the only ones impressed by JFK’s Berlin speech

In this 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s first year as president of the United States, historians still consider his June 1963 Berlin speech a notable moment in the Cold War with Russia. At the time, newspapers, television and radio had emphasized the impact the speech had on West Berlin residents living in an enclave surrounded by Russian territory. Like many others, I had questioned whether the publicized reaction to the speech was mere hyperbole, but I had a rare opportunity ...

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Press access was easier during Truman’s ‘48 ‘Whistle Stop’ tour

Had presidential security been as tight in September 1948 as it is today, I would never have made it aboard the Harry Truman “Whistle Stop” campaign train between Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs. When Truman, the vice president who had stepped into Franklin Roosevelt’s shoes after the president’s death in 1944, began campaigning for re-election, he resorted to the train trip to carry his message to the public. The train traveled 21,928 miles, crisscrossing the ...

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Steely first lady became vulnerable in discussing assassination attempt

An increasingly fragile, almost 90-year-old Nancy Reagan has been frequently in the news this year. First came the February observance marking the 100th birthday of her late husband, President Ronald Reagan. Then, on March 30 came the 30th anniversary of the 1981 assassination attempt on the president’s life. Seeing today’s news photos of Mrs. Reagan, propped on a cane and appearing will-o’-the-wisp tiny, brought to mind her two trips to Grand Junction. In 1980, she ...

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Rubber chicken missed its moment with Spiro Agnew

Former Vice President Spiro Agnew obviously never knew about the rubber chicken plot when he addressed the Colorado General Assembly in the early 1970s. Had he known, the 39th vice president would probably have come up with one of his famous put-downs for the capitol press corps, which had designed the whole plot. Agnew had achieved a certain reputation during his term in office for his thundering denunciations of political opponents and journalists, calling them “pusillanimous ...

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A Christmas memoir: Recollections of a special present

There were numerous dolls, small cedar chests, a red wagon, books and games delivered to my home by Santa Claus when I was a child in Grand Junction, but the Christmas Eve I will never forget was the night he left the miniature furniture. About six weeks before Christmas, my mother and father began making nightly trips to the basement, while my bachelor Uncle Teddy, who lived with us, babysat. I don’t remember exactly how old we were, but my sister, Marguerite, was probably eight, so ...

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Evolving technology made life easier for Capitol reporters

Changing from being Telephone Tillie to being a computer wonk didn’t happen in one easy lesson. The move, which occurred over my 15 years covering the Colorado Legislature, was often frustrating and maddening. But it covered a span of years in which long-distance news coverage was revolutionized. Four pounds? I am told that’s the weight of the Mac computer Daily Sentinel reporters currently carry on their out-of-office assignments. Remembering the behemoths I used to lug ...

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Female reporters were often excluded in good ol’ boy days of politics

In the days when women complained about discrimination but nobody did much about it, a female competing in a “man’s world” quite often got reminded that she was a second-class citizen. I have never forgotten three occasions during the 1970s and 1980s when I was forcibly informed that there were certain places where women didn’t belong. The first one came at the end of the Colorado legislative session. Some of the lobbyists hosted the working press at the Bert Hanna ...

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Big money defines the California governor’s race

MARIN COUNTY,  Calif. — California voters are poised to learn in the November election about the power of the dollar bill. Or, to be more exact, the power of more than 100 million dollar bills, since Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has already spent that much in her quest to take over the California Statehouse and is promising to spend more. Whitman was a relative unknown, except in some business circles, when she began her campaign to become California’s ...

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Tillie Bishop was quiet, effective and respected in the state Legislature

Mesa County residents are fortunate that Tilman (Tillie) Bishop isn’t a quitter. Otherwise they would have been deprived of his years of exemplary public service in the Colorado House and Senate, as a Mesa County commissioner and as a University of Colorad regent. Tillie’s first foray into state politics wasn’t all that successful, and it left him questioning himself whether he wanted to try again. In 1968, some Republican leaders convinced Tillie that he should seek the ...

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Asking Adlai about agriculture meant a harvest of silence

Adlai Stevenson, twice unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president of the United States and distinguished United Nations ambassador, once — probably unintentionally — managed to make a Grand Junction press conference fall apart. Stevenson was renowned for his biting wit and stylish bon mots, but he could also be sarcastic when he thought somebody had asked a question he deemed beneath his dignity. Stevenson’s specialty, of which he was extremely proud, was his ...

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When ‘boy king’ stopped in Grand Junction, Iraq’s future looked much different

Although he was just 17 years old, he wasn’t your typical 1950s teenager. His olive complexion and liquid brown eyes, along with his facial features, betrayed his Middle Eastern ancestry. He was Faisal II, the “boy king” of Iraq, and he was traveling from East Coast to West Coast by rail on his first visit to the United States. His tour took him through Grand Junction. As the Iraq war has droned on, I have occasionally speculated what might have happened to that ...

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Congressman Wayne Aspinall survived his own ‘Red’ scare

President Obama’ s friendly visit to China a couple of months ago brought back memories of the era when being labeled a “Com-Symp” could be disastrous politically. So, it happened that, once upon a time, when communist China was the biggest bogeyman among all the other bogeymen in the mid-1960s, opponents of Democratic Congressman Wayne N. Aspinall of Palisade thought they had caught him red-handed, so to speak. That was the era when the issue of recognizing Red China ...

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How bills really become law

Mesa State College’s bid to change from a community college into a four-year institution could have been derailed in the early 1970s, had it not been for the astuteness of a couple of Grand Junction businessmen. It was late in the session, and the college bill was in the Joint Budget Committee, a six-member group representing both houses of the Legislature. It had gone to the JBC because of its monetary impact on the state budget. Sen. Harry Locke, R-Salida, as JBC chairman, held ...

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Sentinel reporter recalls dinner with Teddy

The “Lion of the Senate” was a mere cub in November, 1959, when I was his dinner partner in Grand Junction. Edward Kennedy (whom everybody then called “Teddy”) was in Grand Junction with his brother, John, and the rest of the “Kennedy Irish Mafia” gunning for the presidential nomination. Teddy, who was then 28 years old,  was undeniably handsome — almost a “pretty boy” — slim and boyish with a toothy Kennedy smile. I had ...

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LS: History Here and Now October 31, 2008

Betty Pellet in 1941 was first woman to crack the ‘good ol’ boys’ Legislature. She was beautiful. She had wit, intelligence and moxie. She acted on Broadway and appeared in silent movies. After she came to Rico in 1926 with her husband, Bob, she refused to sit still and let the world evolve without her help. Instead, she ran in the early 1940s for the Colorado Legislature in an era when that body was made up of “good ol’ boys.” Elizabeth ...

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LS: History Here an Now Column October 24, 2008

Few events are more exciting than watching Air Force One, with a sitting president aboard, arrive at your hometown airport. However, that was a common sight from mid-1974 through 1976, when Grand Junction frequently welcomed President Gerald Ford, en route to or from his vacation home at Beaver Creek. Ford liked to ski and golf at Vail, and what was then Walker Field provided the closest and safest landing for Air Force One. Of course there were hundreds of inches of type, radio and ...

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