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Phantom Trains and Ghostly Stagecoach Riders

By admin | March 24, 2009

This was published in the Ridgway Sun of southwest Colorado, the week of Halloween, 2003. My beat was the arts, which allowed some fun.

* * * * *

By Sonia Koetting

Ridgway is a town steeped in railroad history as compelling as its mountains, though the tracks in the town have lain silent for decades.

MaryJoy Martin of Montrose brings up the idea of phantom trains of the West in her book “Twilight Dwellers.” She alleges that these ghost trains hover near the places they loved, long after thousands of miles of track in Colorado were abandoned.

One such train with a notorious reputation for incidents and accidents responsible for many fatalities was dubbed by engineers as the “Dread 107.” Dread 107 finally buried itself in a snowslide in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, killing many. Denver and Rio Grande railroads scrapped Engine 107 in 1909, but the whistle continues to be heard on foreboding nights near Crystal Creek and the Gunnison River.

Stage routes, too, have had their share of spirits still in transit, alleges Martin’s book. Between 1901 and 1903, circle route driver Clint Buskirk stopped for a little girl who hailed his coach in Ironton Park. The passengers wondered why they were stopping, but Buskirk jumped down to speak with the girl. “She needs to be taken to her father in Ouray. She says he is sick,” he told them. But when he turned back, no girl was there. This happened subsequent times at the same place in the route, and though he quit stopping, it always upset him to see her wave sadly with big tears in her eyes.

In his book “Lies, Legends and Lore of the San Juans (and a Few True Tales),” Ouray County local Roger Henn tells the tale of the Cemetery Ghost Cat. Henn reports that former caretakers of the cemetery have seen the big white cat, owned by an old couple who lived on the banks of Dallas Creek long before Highway 550 was built. Legend says that when a strange traveler knocked on the couple’s door, the usually friendly cat hissed unheeded warnings to its owners. It was found the next morning with its smashed head, in front of the home with its two murdered occupants. Allegedly, its spirit remains a faithful sentinel to its owners, who are buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Another of MaryJoy Martin’s books, “Something in the Wind — Spirits, Spooks and Sprites of the San Juans,” tells of the many mines in the area where the dead have come back to warn the living. She also tells us of the term “fetch” — an apparition of one’s self seen in the throes of death. The tale of Bill Ripley, part owner of the then Ouray Times in the late 1800s, is one such story. He worked mines up Burro Creek, six miles southeast of Colona. Ripley reported to a friend that for several days straight he had seen an apparition of himself as if in the moment of a cave-in. The friend was Frank Balkin, who discovered Ripley’s body buried under timbers at the mine on Feb. 27, 1885.

Mediums arrived often in Ouray County as prospectors eagerly sought their advice, despite the obvious prejudice of the local press against clairvoyants, according to MaryJoy Martin’s book. Clairvoyants like Madam Gustaf tapped into nature spirits, or “Women of the Wind,” for their knowledge, which allegedly led some men to their wealth from elusive veins of ore. Some believe that one of these Women of the Wind, the Angel of the San Juans, is a being of wisdom and truth who resides in the vertical green meadows above the timberline of Mt. Sneffels. Those who have seen the luminous countenance, hazel eyes and flowing, long hair of this blithe spirit, or who have heard her laughter, say they feel blessed or freed by her joyful presence.

Are ghost stories true? In their book “True Ghost Stories,” authors Paul Dowsell and Tony Allan explain that many cases are particularly compelling because well-respected witnesses and educated individuals opened themselves up to professional ridicule by insisting they had witnessed supernatural events. They continue: “Of course, it is always possible that the witnesses did not have all the facts, or simply mistook a natural phenomenon for a supernatural one. There’s no such thing as a guaranteed ghost. And, oddly enough, the very uncertainty surrounding their reports may be what gives tales of hauntings their lasting appeal.”

Visit the Ridgway library or local bookstores for more genuine, if not true, ghost stories of the San Juans.

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Tales of Ghosts Add Richness to Ouray

By admin | March 24, 2009

While on staff at Ouray County Newspapers, often I had to write two stories — one for the town of Ouray and one for Ridgway. The townfolk did not appreciate being served the same news, and in fact had an historic rivalry that even made its way into the newspapers’ founding documents. The publisher of those papers is forbidden to ever combine them to one, though the communities are 15 miles apart and share a county government. To sum, Ridgway was founded by ranchers, and Ouray by miners — life perspectives at least as oppositional as cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers. For Halloween of 2003, I found more than enough ghost stories to draw a few from each town.

By Sonia Koetting

Ouray County is steeped deep in history of the Old West. That authentic western feel is one of the appealing aspects that draw peoople to the area. With this in mind, ’tis the season for us to stir the thick brew of genuine, if not true, local ghost stories.

Ouray’s past cannot deny its reputation for a citizenry of vigilantes. Once upon a time, Ouray had a record for meting out speedy and unwritten justice, as evidenced in old newspapers across the state. This was the case for Lee Quang, a Chinese immigrant in the laundry business in Ouray since the 1880s.

In her book “Something in the Wind: Spirits, Spooks and Sprites of the San Juan” MaryJoy Martin describes that in 1891 Lee was accused of molesting an eight-year-old girl. He was suspected of other evil deeds, though proof was lacking and there was a strong undercurrent of hatred for the Chinese at the time. He was beaten and murdered, and his ghost, “a terrifying, bloody entity, more like a corpse than a spirit,” remains at the scene on Second Street, according to reports in Martin’s book. “In the dark of night, men and sometimes women and youngsters, stumbled into it, over it, or were grabbed by its cold, lifeless fingers, a hideous graoning rattling its throat.”

There are landmarks that people expect — or hope — to be haunted. The list includes Ouray’s venerable old hotels, and indeed each has a tale. Most famous of the stories belongs to the beautiful-again Beaumont.

The murder of 19-year-old waitress Ellar Day in September of 1887 is well documented, as is the demise of Joe Dixon, the black pastry cook also employed at the hotel, who shot her in one of the girls’ sleeping apartments. Dixon, drunk, used a .38 Smith & Wesson and shot four times. Ellar did not die immediately. Her murderer was the first to die when vigilantes set the jail on fire, suffocating Dixon.

Martin’s book claims that guests to the old Beaumont have reported hearing screams, gun shots, and seeing blood spatters appear on walls in the room where Day was shot. In 1896 a hotel clerk had to calm a Kansas City man who ran after “a girl soaked in blood.”

Martin’s book continues, “A theory among some paranormal researchers suggests this ‘psychic or emotional energy’ infused into the surrounding material during a highly charged event, ‘may actually increase’ when a building is closed to human habitation.”

The Beaumont was closed for decades before Dan and Mary King began to renovate it. Along with the murder of Ellar Day, fortunes were conspired and lost at the Beaumont; Chief Ouray’s wife Chipeta and her entourage stood on the steps. It would make sense if the building were psychically charged. Current administration for the hotel would not comment.

Perhaps less well known is the tale of the haunting of the Western Hotel. Early in the 20th Century, “visitations” were frequent, according to Martin’s book. Guests saw a male apparition that seemed like he wanted something from them. These tales take place on Dec. 27, anniversary of the night of John Hopkin’s suicide. He was a 32-year-old union miner, down on his luck and unemployed. He spent Christmas in Ouray, then on the 26th he wrote a suicide note to his sweetheart, explaining that he promised his dying wife he would never remarry. He also wrote letters to his mother and to his landlady in Silverton before he swallowed the poison laudanum which he had purchased the day before in Montrose.

Local historian and author Doris Gregory said that St. Elmo Hotel also has a mystery. Apparently, two women who once stayed at the hotel saw a smiling woman sitting on the edge of their bed. Perhaps it was Kittie Heit, who came to Ouray in 1886 and built the hotel in 1898, though many folks attest that Kittie was a sober woman, not apt to smile. Kittie had two sons, one of whom was adopted. Her natural son, Freddy Porter, a notorious gambler and womanizer, inherited the hotel, then later committed suicide. Current proprietor DeAnn McDaniel said there’s no ghost that she’s aware of, though when things turn up missing, staff often blames it on Freddy.

Another likely haunt is the Ouray County Courthouse. Looking at the historic structure can conjure visions of pivotal moment’s in Ouray’s history. Gregory said she heard of two workers, in recent history, who came up from Montrose to repair the courthouse’s electrical system after hours. They saw a lady in the hallway and tried to speak to her, but she disappeared. One of the workers refused to return. Two other people who worked in the courthouse gave Doris first-hand accounts of seeing the woman, and neither knew of the other’s tale.

The atmosphere of Ouray County Museum, once the area hospital, is thick with history. Ouray County local P. David Smith, whose mission it was to renovate the basement into a mining display, was spending some after-hours time there when he clearly heard footsteps. They stopped at the top of the stairs, as if waiting for him, but no one was there.

Local Roger Henn wrote of his museum experience in his book “Lies, Legends and Lore of the San Juans (and a few True Tales).” It was three years after Smith’s encounter. Henn had to enter the museum at night in the middle of winter to tend the furnace. Again, footsteps down the hall, to the top of the stairs, and then stopping as if waiting for Henn to emerge from the basement. To this day Henn refuses to enter the place alone at night.

Phil Martinez, proprietor of Bombie’s restaurant in Ouray, talks of the “Ladies of Oak Street.” Martinez, who was born in the old hospital/now museum, grew up in Ouray. He claims many people have seen the three female apparitions near the intersection of Oak and Queen Streets, a premiere address when the town first began.

All of the stories recounted here are fleshed out in more detail in the books mentioned, which are all available at Buckskin Booksellers in Ouray. The Ouray Library is also an excellent source for digging deep on local lore.

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Cell Phones: Communication Marvel or Health Menace?

By admin | February 28, 2009

Healing Path magazine assigned me this piece, coincidentally at a time when I was seeking anything that could help reverse a rash of poor health my family was experiencing. Our health did improve, possibly in part by the awareness and lifestyle adjustments brought by my research. It is published in the Jan-Feb ‘09 issue.

* * * * *

By Sonia Koetting

It’s easy to agree that cell phones are exceptionally useful devices, and most of us use them at least occasionally. The American Cancer Society and the FDA continue to tell us that no evidence has been found linking the electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) of phones and other electronic devices to cancer. In 2004, a spokeswoman for the Mobile Operators Association said, “…the weight of scientific evidence to date suggests that exposure to radio waves from mobile phone handsets and base stations… do not cause adverse health effects.”

Then why have Germany, France, Sweden, Ontario and Israel issued warnings to their citizens about exposure to EMFs?

On September 25, 2008, a domestic policy subcommittee of our own government hosted a panel of interested parties to consider the veracity and urgency of this public health threat. At that meeting, Dr. David Carpenter, Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Albany, said that the expansion of wireless technology is enormous in its implications. He believes the FCC (in charge of regulating this technology) is unduly conservative in the favor of the industries they represent, and fails to protect public health. Chief of the FCC’s office of Technology, Julius Knapp, was also present at the meeting. Knapp admitted that the FCC is comprised of engineers, not biologists, and that he knows of no studies being done by the FCC with collaboration of the FDA. Committee Chair Rep. Dennis Kucinich vowed that the committee will not let this issue of public safety rest.

While Dr. Carpenter and others claim EMFs are implicated in numerous health effects like fatigue, headaches and learning disabilities — diverse symptoms for which the causes are difficult to ferret out — the data most strongly points to a link between mobile device radiation and 3 types of rare tumors:

• Glioma (Senator Ted Kennedy was recently diagnosed with this)

• cancer of the parotid (a salivary gland near the ear) and

• acoustic neuroma (a non-cancerous growth where the ear meets the brain, sometimes called a “schwannoma”).

The risk of these cancers seemed to double after 10 years of heavy use. The FDA admits that the average length of previous studies was only 3 years, and cumulative effects over such long periods have not been exhaustively researched.

With more than 3 billion cell phone users worldwide and growing, a steady increase of wireless technologies, and length of exposure growing with each passing year, even a miniscule risk is a significant public health issue.

That risk is the worst menace to children. A study in July 2008 by Devia Davis at the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh points to the fact that children absorb more radiation from their phones because their skulls are thinner, and the protective myelin sheath of a brain isn’t fully developed until age 20. Images from the study show how cell phone radiation reaches a small portion of an adult brain, but penetrates nearly the entire head of a child.

In 2006, The New York Times reported that the mobile industry had begun super-sizing marketing efforts toward tweens, and was introducing darling phone products to be cuddled by the 5-year-old age group. Parents perceive a safety benefit of their kids carrying cell phones, while perhaps overlooking the potential threat to the health of their child. Children of the world are now raging toward cell phones in numbers that shame Tickle Me Elmo and Cabbage Patch dolls. What is the outlook for a child who may well face 70 years of cell phone usage?

Because cell phone technology is one of the most lucrative and powerful businesses on the planet, some consumer advocates are labeling this a communication conspiracy: “Big Tobacco 2.0”. The consequences may dim statistics associated with public health disasters like asbestos and cigarettes.

In June 2008, the New York Times reported that an association with cancer does exist. The report cites a highly respected research effort of 13 European countries, the Interphone Study, which showed that radio waves do affect body cells and damage DNA. Definitive research to discover at what point this damage renders a serious health defect will take another 4 to 5 years, according to the German leaders of the research.

Perhaps we shouldn’t wait for industry advocates to agree a risk exists.

It takes too long to get answers from science, according to Ronald B. Herberman, Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. He is one who calls for action now, especially in protecting children.

When two new cell phone towers were recently erected in Northern Colorado, it didn’t escape the notice of Longmont resident Debbie Kankiewicz, whose experience with natural alternatives to health led her to multi-national company BioPro. She cites over 350 cell phone antenna and 61 towers in a 4-mile radius centered over Fort Collins alone (check AntennaSearch.com for your address). Technology can’t reverse, but products are marketed with the intent of protecting humans from the increasing effects of EMF exposure.

BioPro representatives like Kankiewicz believe even our smallest electrical appliances negatively affect us, though many scientists will point out a difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. It also is fair to say that some people are much more sensitive than average to the effects of electropollution, and this condition may change in a lifetime. The variables are so great that — like many potential health issues — people tend to cut the chase to the dire question of cancer.

But before cancer becomes an end result, Kankiewicz and others claim that consistent exposure to EMFs at any level affects the adrenal glands, and can manifest into disease such as fibromyalgia, chronic headaches, anxiety and even autism. Changing the bio-fields around her, she said, “totally affected my being, like a blanket of calm settled in front of me.” Her home is liberally sprinkled with BioPro “chips” on appliances and a “whole-house harmonizer”.

On the other hand, Powerwatch.org, a website produced in the U.K., warns against relying on “gizmos” to give protection. Afterall, your doctor and dentist trust only distance and lead aprons to keep bodies safe from ionizing x-rays.

As long as humans have been on earth, they’ve been exposed to naturally occuring sources of ionizing radiation from the soil, space and atmosphere. Technology escalates that environmental negative, though science has yet to agree on what degree. Meanwhile, on the heels of the rage toward a wireless world, comes businesses like BioPro, whose dealers sell stick-on devices to protect us from EMFs; and EMFields.org, which sell metal mesh and carbon paint as physical barriers to get relief from the constant bombardment.

While the U.S. government wrestles with the issue of illness related to cell phones, we each must decide for ourselves and our children — with consideration of individual factors like proximity to multiple sources of EMFs, overall health and integrity of immune systems — what we will do to minimize the risk of the increasing invisible pollution that’s part of the electronic modern world.

Actions to Mitigate the Potential Health Hazards of Radiation from Cell Phones

• Use your cell phone only when necessary, and don’t chat long. If you’re not expecting a call, turn the phone off. Otherwise, your phone checks contact with the nearest tower regularly, and that contact draws full power.

• Though Bluetooth headpieces have 100 times less radiation than the phone itself, it is advisable to remove it from your head when not talking.

• If possible, strategize to use your phone in areas with the best signal. Powerwatch.org claims this may reduce emissions by up to 500 times. Also, when indoors use your phone near a window, with it between your body and the window.

• Talking in a car or train should be avoided. Not only is it a distraction that could lead to accident, but the vehicle’s metal frame may trap the radiation, magnifying it.

• Every millimeter away from the body counts. Devia Davis said, “You’re just roasting your bone marrow” if you carry your phone in your pocket. Evidence suggests a man may adversely influence his fertility and libido by carrying a phone in his pocket. Clip the phone to a backpack, set it on the dashboard, or any other place than next to your body. Your winter coat pocket, or even back pocket of your pants, is preferable to your front pants pocket. Keep the antenna to the outer side. Eyes, breasts, testicles, kidneys and liver may be particularly vulnerable.

• Texting keeps the phone from your head. If your phone has one, use the speakerphone option for the same reason.

• Use a hollow-tube hands-free earpiece. The sound can travel the last length of the cord without having a wire run all the way to the ear.

• Discourage children from non-essential time on the phone, such as chattering for comfort (use a wired phone), or shopping for ring tones and wallpaper.

• Reduce your cumulative exposure to sources of EMFs. Don’t sit for hours next to the router in your home office, for instance, and move the cordless phone base station and clock radio away from the head of your bed. Avoid being in a WiFi setting if it isn’t necessary.

How Hot is Your Cell Phone?

One bit of regulation that exists in the U.S. to protect us is the FCC’s rule that cell phones may have a Standard Absorption Rate (SAR) of no more than 1.6 watts per KG. Here’s the low-down on which phones are closer to max or min:

HIGHEST

Motorola models V195S, ZN5, VU204, W385, Deluxe ic902, i335 — ranging from 1.6 to 1.53

RIM Blackberry Curve models 8330 Sprint, U Cellular and Verizon Wireless — 1.54 to 1.53

T-Mobile Shadow (HTC) — 1.53

LOWEST

Samsung models SGH-G800, Soul, Innov8, SGH-T229, SGH-i450, Rugby SGH-A837, SLM SGH-A747, Access SGH-A827 — 0.23 to 0.486

Motorola RazrZv8 — 0.383

Nokia 6263 — 0.43

This guide is available at CNET.com. Powerwatch.org also recommends choosing a phone with low SAR, but with the awareness that some high SAR phones normally work at low power, while low SAR phones may be inefficient and must work at high power. Powerwatch states that in general, smaller phones have higher SARs. Also, the phones with external antenna keep radiation further from your head.

At Our House

Writing this article prompted me to assess my own family’s home, and a rash of illness we have had this fall. I’m a mom who likes to be thorough… and while I don’t avoid our allopathic doctors, I may just as easily call an alternative healer, massage therapist, counselor or psychically sensitive person. Often, the answer lies between the various specialities.

With the education this article has afforded me, I can add EMFs as a potential villain when an apparent immune system conspiracy hits my family. This is a significant challenge, as our home office rivals the control deck of the Starship Enterprise (except way messier) and we do love to be mobile. Koetting Media Limited is captain of our house, and we are ever grateful for the income it provides. However, we are nothing without our health and I like to promote that we are too smart to be slaves to convenience. And so this family has decided to compromise a few things.

We will unplug the amazing home WiFi. While it is uniquely entertaining to do virtual tours of homes in Tasmania from our bed, the number of times we would like to access the internet away from our office may not be worth the constant pulses the system must make. This will be most challenging for my husband, who loves nothing more than to whip out his laptop and consult Wikipedia to lay to rest questions at the dinner table or parties.

Next comes my rough challenge: Life with as little use of the microwave oven as possible. Ours is a high-power brushed steel model, which I got to choose on move-in. Now I’m to consider it as an attractive ornament that fits the space over the range. This means we’ll reheat coffee with a plug-in coil, warm soup in a pot we have to wash, and steam vegetables the “old-fashioned” way. I am putting a ribbon on the handle of the microwave oven to remind us to at least think before deciding to use it. And when I see that ribbon, I’ll remember the noise — way on the other side of the room — that 1,700 watts made on an electropollution measuring device.

I moved our bedside phone to the floor, just far enough away from the bed to be able to reach it if a call comes in the night. Previously, it was about a foot away from my husband’s sleeping head. I also am moving the phone in my office away from head level.

Moving the phones is a mean-time measure while I search for corded phones to replace our corded system. EMFields.org offers a “safer” cordless phone, but I’m not inclined to purchase something I can’t easily return to a box store when it malfunctions (as ours always do). Trying to find the old-fashioned phones is like trying to find rap music on vinyl. And when I do make us a tethered home again, there goes my ritual of catching up with a girlfriend while I mop the kitchen floor.

Perhaps in time, after a long stretch of vitality for everyone in our house, if we still haven’t become thoroughly adjusted to the lifestyle changes, I may consider reintroducing these conveniences, one at a time.

Topics: Uncategorized, health | 1 Comment »

Grinch Spirit Has Place in Christmas

By admin | December 15, 2008

The arts columnist for the weekly paper was getting a little punchy in December of 2003.

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By Sonia Koetting

It doesn’t take an artist’s gumption to decorate for Christmas. Some of us — I think I can say “women” here — even decorate the bathrooms! My enthusiasm for holiday decorating has more limited parameters.

After reading Jan Ruby’s article on Holiday Blues, I would have to say that this ritual is the one holiday “must do” that makes me less healthy. Hear me heave sighs as we put it all up, untangle the lights and cross our fingers in hopes that they come on without too many duds (or come on at all); meanwhile thinking of the dull day we will tear it all down. I am getting in touch with my inner Scrooge.

Our tree is a funky, family tree — shall we say “sentimental.” Both my mother and my mother-in-law handed down all the old family ornaments to us. My in-laws travel for Christmas, and so no longer put up a tree. My mom gave up boxes of old stuff in favor of a fancy designer tree with frosted spider webs all over it, gold ribbons and birds’ nests. Maybe she should drop the heat and get a snow machine, too?

We always chuckle as we come across each of the little family “heirlooms.” My two kids marvel at each crusty ornament as if they were uncovering the treasures from a pharoah’s grave. One of them unwraps a plaster of Paris ornament painted in garish pink and turquoise by their daddy when he was in fifth grade. “Isn’t that special,” I say. “Put it on the back of the tree.”

Another “heirloom” is a red angel priced at 69 cents from Macy’s department store, circa 1940 — something from Nanny’s childhood, when her parents used to go on Chicago spending sprees that nearly bankrupted them.

When the kids were fetching eggnog in the kitchen, I came up with a great name for a band. There’s a small brass ornament of a cherub-like little drummer boy, engraved with a dedication to my husband, “Tom, 1977.” I had to ask, “Weren’t you already sneaking off to drink beer in the woods by that time?” Hence, the band name: Little Drummer Boy Gone Bad.

Our tree itself is a false one my sister handed down to me when she moved after a divorce. Someone misplaced the stand and every year we fight to screw it down tight and keep it straight. (Don’t ever lose your artificial tree stand. They’re tough to find separately, we discovered, after a tiring search of Montrose Home Depot and Wal-Mart).

Next, we have these crazy lights I bought on special at Family Dollar when the kids were babies. It has buttons to choose whether you want them to flash, spin, race, or do all at once! It’s a real disco effect and I thought it would entertain the babies. It did. They knocked the tree over twice the first year we put up those lights.

The disco special didn’t work out of the box this year, but Tom won’t give up hunting a fuse to resurrect it. He is determined and frugal, like his father. I tell him I saw a really nice fake tree for sale, a skinny, space-saver kind, with a stand and lights already in it. Wouldn’t that be swell? He grumbles about the cost and asks, “Then what will we do when the lights go out?! We’ll have to throw out the whole tree!” It’s clear I’m not getting a new, easy tree.

Speaking of shopping fake trees, I half-like the ones that are half trees you hang on a wall. But the kids would probably claim that only half a Santa would come… which of course means half as many presents (never mind what happened to Santa).

By the end of our decorating day, I was an uptight wreck. In an effort at redemption, before we go to town to see the Christmas Parade and play Christmas Bingo, I rip open the box with the gift I know mom gave me (from our shopping trip together at Saks Fifth Avenue), and put on my way-too-much-money-for-a-hat hat. I sauntered Main Street, bestowing a taste of big city on our little country town, so many light years away from any big-guns shopping.

I think it cheered me up, though we didn’t win at bingo, and a new fuse didn’t fix our disco lights.

I always have my joyous personal joyous holiday moment on the day I deliver all the out-of-town relatives’ boxes to the post office — Chosen, purchased, wrapped, packed and mailed. Whoopee! That’s me dancing outside the post office.

To celebrate, I stop in at The Drifters shop to take in enough miniature porcelain Christmas town scenes to melt Grinch’s heart. I chat with proprietor Carol Brower about just how deep a true collector of this stuff can go, then I buy some ridiculous fake pine-scented snow.

I do love school Christmas plays, shopping holiday craft fairs and making holiday stuff with children. And to both moms: Truly I’m charmed that you bequeathed me the family ornaments.

Just remember everyone, when we open our boxes of holiday memories, the Grinch can pop out, too!

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Uninsured Find Healthcare Where They May

By admin | October 26, 2008

Though it sounds current, this piece dates to December 2002, when Ouray County was beginning to feel the squeeze. As producer of the monthly health section in the weekly paper, I spoke regularly with the County Nurse, County Medical Officer, and others making decisions and enacting them for the health of the townspeople.

* * * * *

By Sonia Koetting

If you are one of the many people who have been going through life with crossed fingers in lieu of health insurance, you are part of a growing problem in Colorado.

Charity care and bad debt combined add up to about 7.5% of Montrose Memorial Hospital’s gross annual revenue, according to Leann Tobin, marketing director for the hospital.

Larry Wall, president of the Colorado Health and Hospital Association, said, “The amount of charity care and bad debt hosptials provide statewide has increased substantially.” Reasons for this, he explained, are that insurance continues to get more expensive while the economy remains in a slump; a lot of employers have decided they can’t afford to maintain their health plans; and employees don’t have the fiancial security to pick up the cost.

According to Wall, in 1998 the amount of charity care and bad debt for hospitals across the state was $468 million. In 2001, the most recent data collected, that figure had grown to $736 million. Because the state legislature has not found a panacea, it’s likely that the figures for 2002 will have climbed at least another $100 million, Wall said.

To plug the growing financial leak represented by patients who don’t pay their full bill, clinics and hospitals shift the cost back to the business side that does pay. Translation: higher premiums for those who are paying for insurance. This, in turn, puts coverage further out of reach for people trying to make ends meet in a struggling economy.

Ouray County Nurse Cheryl Roberts reported, “It’s a real problem. More residents are coming to public health, but health departments no longer do direct service. Our budgets have been decreased.” Ouray County Health remains involved in providing immunizations, women infant and children services, and homemakers services (to serve elderly and shut-ins). Roberts also tracks disabled kids and provides basic services at low cost for county children in general.

“We now work on initiatives to find gaps and get other agencies to take them on,” explained Roberts. When people come with needs to the clinic on Second Street in Ouray, “We put them in touch with any free services, modified services or services based on a sliding fee,” said Roberts.

She recommends that uninsured families with young children stop in the office to apply for CHIP (Colorado Health Insurance Protection) Plus, a plan for children brokered out by Rocky Mountain HMO. Families qualify based on income compared to number in family, assets and debts.

“A lot of folks in this area could qualify and don’t know it,” Roberts said.

Roberts said she believes tourism is a big reason why our state is in such a healthcare crisis. Jobs based on tourism often are not long-term and stable, like those that provide good benefits, she said. “I sat in a meeting and heard Kay Alexander talk about how we have to fix the roads to ensure tourism. But if tourism is a foundation for the state, they have to realize that inviting people creates health and human service needs,” she said.

Montrose Hospital tries to wrap up all accounts within 18 months, Tobin explained. “The business office will sit with people (who can’t pay) and help fill out papers,” she said. Many people are referred to Medicaid or the Colorado Indigent Care Program.

Colorado Indigent Care Program (CICP) is funded by the state via taxpayer dollars, as described by a representative in the business office of St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction. It is only available to documented Colorado residents. After reviewing a patient’s income, asets, number of people in the family and medical debts, CICP may reduce a patient’s hospital bills, but it won’t pay for ambulances or prescriptions. Few doctors take payment from CICP and the plan should not be considered as insurance, the source said.

Janet Jones, office manager for Mountain Medical Clinic in Ridgway, said the clinic doesn’t work with CICP so far, but offers a sliding fee schedule if a patient produces income documentation. Jones can also access some pharmaceutical companes that will donate prescriptions to people in need.

For those who don’t qualify for assistance, “We can accept monthly payments,” she said, “but we are a business… just like when you go to a grocery, you have to pay for the groceries.”

Preventative care often falls by the wayside for struggling families, but low-cost options do exist. For women, Jones reocmmends the Colorado Cancer Control Initiative, known as the Butterfly Program. It is accessed through the Montrose County Nurse’s Office. That program provides free breast and Pap exams for women in need.

Anyone can attain an inexpensive physical by attending the annual Health Fair sponsored by Montrose Hospital. Usually in February, the fair comes to Ridgway School. A person can have blood drawn and all routine lab work done for about $75, said Jones. That’s about half of what it would cost to have done at a clinic. Then, that person can bring the lab reports to Mountain Medcial Clinic during Women’s Month or Men’s Month, when physicals cost half or less of the normal price. Anyone is eligible for this, regardless of income. Mountain Miedical schedules those reduced-price events each spring.

St. Mary’s Hosptial in grand Junction is known as a charity hosptial and also has programs that may apply for those with trouble paying. “We never turn anyone away,” said Karen Gosser of the hospital’s administration.

In nearby Mesa County, the Marillac Clinic, on the same site as the hospital, offers a full medical office, pharmacy and hospital labs on a sliding scale fee, said Gosser. That service is a product of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kan. So far, no similar charity has stepped forward to help the people of Ouray County.

Topics: health, small town life | No Comments »

KURA Gets Strong Start with $20K Federal Grant

By admin | September 28, 2008

I was on staff at The Ouray Plaindealer in 2002 when this story happened. It was a big deal for a county of 800 year-round residents with only 1 traffic light. The station continues to broadcast, with Tom’s stylings still on it — a ghost of the years of our life in a really small town.

* * * * *

By Sonia Koetting

Last Friday the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) approved a grant of over $20,000 for KURA radio. The low-powered radio station, broadcast from Ouray School, has been on the air at 98.9 FM since last August. It is the first public station to serve the roughly 1,000 residents of Ouray County.

The PTFP is part of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the United States Department of Commerce. It supports public facilities that deliver educational and cultural programs by providing matching grants. KURA applied last February and was notified of the award last week by the office of Colorado Senator Wayne Allard. Ouray School Media Specialist Nancy Nixon, who helped write the grant proposal, said that these funds were part of $6 million given to radio stations across the nation and in Puerto Rico. KURA received the only radio grant in Colorado.

“We had to raise 25 percent of the money ourselves,” explained Nixon. Students raised money and people in the community made donations. This was pooled with a cash gift the high school received last year for being recognized as one of the top five academically achieving high schools in the state.

“This grant is for a very specific shopping list,” said Tom Koetting, a radio professional who lives in Idlewild and volunteers to spearhead the station. The grant is specifically for hard goods to create a studio that closely resembles a professional radio station, including an elaborate phone system for doing phone-in talk shows, explained Koetting. The grant specifies that the equipment purchased must have a 10-year life.

“We had to have a local lawyer certify that we will be at this location for 10 years,” said Nixon, remembering the grant application process.

Koetting points out to community members that “the money is fantastic, but it doesn’t mean we’re ‘flush.’ We’re in the midst of an underwriting campaign to help us with on-going monthly expenses.” On-going expenses include phone bills, ASCAP/BMI music licensing and office supplies.

The student staff at KURA currently produces a community bulletin board listing events of interest to the people of Ouray. It broadcasts at the bottom of every hour. Nixon intends that the purchase of new equipment will enable such plans as student-produced radio plays, live interviews, and live broadcasts of highschool sports events and local government meetings. The quality of the signal will also improve with the purchase of a better processor.

Currently, 15 Ouray High School students participate with the radio station. Community members with an interest in radio broadcasting are also encouraged to participate. The station can be reached at 352-7289.

Topics: small town life | No Comments »

The Legend of Captain Jepp

By admin | July 11, 2008

I wrote this article in 1993, as editor of International Aviator, a glossy “coffee table” quarterly that survived for a year before the French publisher’s shoddy business practice’s sent him on the run. It was the last formal interview of Jepp before he died with Parkinson’s Disease in 1996. The company he began, known as Jeppesen Sanderson in 1993, gave reprints of this in their media kits, as it was the most comprehensive story available on the man whose name now graces the main terminal at Denver International Airport. Tom K. took the last professional portraits of Jepp, too.

Tom and I were married that same year.

I probably should have pulled the story of the business and the story of the man into separate articles. Each is a uniquely American story of inspiration, even for non-aviation buffs.

* * * * *

By Sonia Best

What do the crews of all U.S. airlines, most foreign carriers and instrument-rated pilots have in common? Dig through any flight bag, any cockpit and you’ll find Jeppesen Airway Manuals. Sit in any ground school class and see that everyone is being taught to read Jeppesen Airway Manuals. Ask instrument pilots who are dancing their way through clouds, night skies and storms what is critical to them, and no doubt they’ll clutch their Jepp charts. All pilots, planes and passengers in the world owe their safety and success in the sky to this invaluable data.

There was a time, however, before instrument flight was possible, before complex protocol and regulation, when any pilot’s guess about how to maneuver terrain and reach destinations was as good as another’s. Of course, some pilots were smarter than others.

One of the smartest was aviator Elrey Jeppesen. He took care to document physical details of his flights in a little black book. In 1934 those notes were the beginning of a company that capitalized on Captain Jeppesen’s aerial adventures, making possible many of the adventures of pilots today. The 10-cent notebook was the precursor to the air navigation business that the L.A. Times-Mirror Company bought in 1961, which now grosses multi-millions annually.

Jeppesen was one of few surviving pilots who had first-hand recollection of the mythical days of mail pilots and barnstormers — when Jack Knight flew the first night airmail trip that convinced the U.S. government to forge ahead with delivery of mail by air, before the Boeing 247 challenged pilots to start flying instruments. With his triumphs behind him, this pioneer airline pilot and barnstorming hero lived to tell about them. Indeed, you haven’t known the best of armchair flying unless you’ve sat with Captain Jepp.

“I helped make it safer to fly, but it also took a lot of fun out of it,” he once told a Denver Post reporter. “Shoot, not knowing exactly where you were going made you appreciate getting there a lot more.”

Portions of the legend of Captain Jepp are sprinkled from newspaper clips dated in the 1920s, to a full-color feature published in Flying magazine in 1991. The terminal at Denver International Airport is named for Jeppesen. His first pilot’s certificate, issued in Oregon in 1929, has the signature of Orville Wright.

Young Elrey Jeppesen grew up in the Northwestern U.S., idolizing the perseverance of heroes like Thomas Edison and John Paul Jones. It was here that he took his first barnstormer ride and was inspired to learn to fly.

THE FLYING CIRCUS

Young Jeppesen’s early flying experience was as Chief Aerobatic Pilot in Tex Rankin’s fabled air circus. A pilot who worked in Tex’s circus, Basil Russell, taught Jepp to fly, and Jeppesen taught others. (One of his students, Dorothy Hester Hofer, became the first woman to fly an outside loop, and in 1933 she set a world record by flying 76 consecutive outside loops over Omaha.) Jeppesen’s job with the circus included wing walking, but he downplayed this, explaining, “The guy who usually did it got thrown in jail in Baker, Oregon. We had to keep the crowds, so I crawled out there like I’d seen the other guys do. That was my first time.”

The list of awards bestowed on him outnumber the aircraft he has flown. Skimming the top: He was fifth to receive the Meritorious Service award from The National Business Aircraft Association (the first four were Col. Charles Lindbergh, Gen. James Doolittle, Donald Douglas Sr. and Igor Sikorsky). He has been formally recognized for his contribution to the development of scheduled airline service. Senator John Glenn, former astronaut, inducted him into the Aviation Hall of Fame. Glenn said, “I might not be here if it wasn’t for Jepp.”

One old news clip from the Yakima Herald-Republic in his home state of Oregon announced that he was the first to land on the strip that is now the Yakima Air Terminal. Charlie McAllister, owner/operator of McCallister’s Flying Service, was intending to do the honors. McAllister flew to the 80-acre site purchased a few days prior by Yakima County, where townspeople had carved the landing strip from sagebrush, but, McAllister explained to the local paper, “When I landed, there was this 19-year-old kid leaning on the wing of an Eagle Rock. He asked me where I’d been and how come I took so long getting up.” McAllister had risen at 5 a.m.

Modestly, Jeppesen claimed that snatching the honors was not a premeditated part of his barnstorming adventures for that day. In fact, he didn’t realize he had, until someone sent him the clip from the local paper. Years later he was invited to be a guest of honor at the airport’s anniversary celebration.

AERIAL SURVEYS

Looking back on 1928 when he performed aerial surveys of Mexico’s east coast for Sherman Fairchild’s company, he remembered the blue puffs of smoke coming out of the woods as natives shot at planes sent to help the search for oil. He remembered the Chinese cook who was too afraid of attack to go into the jungle to work for the survey pilots at their airfield. And he remembered the “army” sent by the Mexican government to protect the airfield. They arrived barefoot with families and livestock, and he couldn’t convince them to quit building fires to cook chickens in the hangar next to his airplane.

But he didn’t recall that he took the first aerial photos ever of Mexico. “I just remember that we had to send one copy to Fairchild and another to the Mexican government.”

Being in charge of Fairchild’s foreign mapping division was a fluke for the young pilot: Jeppesen had substituted for a pilot who was supposed to fly a photographer from Dallas to New Orleans, but that pilot never showed up. Reluctantly, the photographer agreed to fly with the young pilot, then only 21 years old. “He taught me how to fly a strip pattern for photography. We sent the films to Dallas and they came out great. Right there and then I was a big photographic pilot.”

MAKING NOTES

It was in this same spirit that his company began. “I wasn’t trying to start a business,” he explained. “I just wanted to continue flying.”

In 1930 Jeppesen was flying mail for Boeing Air Tansport between Salt Lake City, Utah; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Oakland, California. There were 18 pilots flying between Oakland and Cheyenne. That winter he attended funerals for four of them. The route was the most dangerous and highest paying: $50 a week and 7 cents per mile, or 14 cents per mile at night.

It once took Jeppesen 13 hours to fly the mail from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City. “You’d have to sit there all by yourself, and you had to keep the engine running at 1500 rpm or it would die on you,” he said.

He remembered waiting for the weather at an airfield in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. “Not a soul around… dark… no lights… wind blowing… You had to put the blocks under the plane and you had to drag the gas cans from the shed. Trying to pour gas in a plane in the dark with the wind blowing 40 miles an hour is an experience in itself!” he recounts, making certain that no one understate the inherent misery of those venerable days of aviation.

He began to record field lengths, slopes, drainage patterns, lights and obstacles. He illustrated the terrain and airport layouts and noted phone numbers of local farmers who could provide weather reports. He was the first to climb and measure Blythe Mountain outside of Salt Lake City.

“I climbed it with three altimeters strapped to my back, and I took the temperature when I went up. I took the readings to the physics department at the University of Utah and had them figure the elevation. Then I added 500 feet to it, to be safe.” Later, when the altitude of that mountain was officially documented, Jepp discovered, “I was off by 200 feet, so with the 500 feet added, at best I was 300 feet in the clear,” he smiled.

“At first I considered taking the information to the government and getting them to do the charting, but they weren’t very interested and they moved so slowly.”

Because they asked, Jeppesen would sell copies of his data to other pilots for $10 each. When World War II broke, Captain Jepp’s compilation of information for pilots was vital to U.S. defense. The American government didn’t have such a file.

Flight bags were an anomaly until pilots began carrying Jepp charts. Jepp recalled, “Once Jack Knight came into the hangar and Ray Gore, chief dispatcher in 1934, asked Jack why he had a bag. Jack said, ‘Don’t all modern pilots carry a flight bag?’ Ray looked inside and found a box of kitchen matches, a candle and a pair of pliers.”

When the business boomed it became difficult to balance his United Airlines flying career while the aerial map business burgeoned from the basement of his home in Salt Lake City. In 1939 he offered to sell United his publishing operation for $5,000. The company declined. It already furnished pilots with mimeographed sheets of mountain ranges and descent procedures for each airport. But many of the pilots preferred Jepp’s notebook. Another pilot working for United in 1942, G.C. Kehmeier, later wrote: “I bought a copy of his Airway Manual even though I was making only $240 per month.”

By the end of World War II, United intiated an agreement with Jeppesen so that all UAL pilots would have Jeppesen Manuals at UAL’s expense. TWA was the last of the airlines to contract for charts from Jeppesen’s company. Today, racks on the walls of flight operations offices in major airports across the world are stacked with flight bags bulging with Jepp Charts, a standard provision for the ranks of thousands of airline pilots. Commercial pilots now dread the required task of inserting hundreds of loose-leaf page revisions in their notebooks every week. More than 2,000 charts are updated every month.

In 1993, United Airlines alone spent roughly $5 million on Jepp charts for its pilots. One can only guess at the savings and profit for the airline if it had accepted Jepp’s early offer of a mere $5,000 for his company.

NADINE

“United’s refusal was the second best thing that ever happened to me — the first being that Nadine (his wife of nearly 58 years) became Mrs. Jeppesen,” Jepp claimed. Nadine Liscomb, a registered nurse, made her first flight in 1935 in a Boeing 247 as a pioneer stewardess. When flight attendants were hired in the early years of airlines, they were requred to be nurses. Those days are particularly fond memories for Captain Jepp. “I had a good deal… pressed the call button and got Nadine!”

He also looks fondly on the days of raising a map business and a young family in Salt Lake City, where he and Nadine settled after marrying in 1936. Nadine became the company’s secretary, treasurer, personnel manager, layout editor and mother of two sons. Jepp was flying United’s DC-3s to San Francisco, a task he considered relaxing compared to his map business, which he regularly devoted 12 hours per day.

UNDER SUSPICION

After Jepp would draw the charts himself, the Jeppesens would hire student engineers from the University of Utah to conpose final drafts. The helpers worked on drafting tables in the Jeppesen basement at all hours.

Their coming and going was a terrific source of entertainment for an old neighbor who watched from her sewing room. She called the FBI.

Investigators sanctioned the work, but the students had also found a terrific source of entertainment… “They got a few guns and put them in a rickety box in their car, waited till grandma was looking out the window, then carried the box very carefully up the lawn and dropped it. Out spilled the guns… I got to know the FBI fellah pretty well,” Jeppesen remembered with a smile.

Captain Jepp has been under suspicion on other occasions as well. On Dec. 13, 1932, he was flying a single-engine Boeing full of mail through light snow when the engine quit one mile east of Omaha. It was 3 a.m. He plunked the plane in a pasture and it rolled into a ravine. The landing knocked him unconscious. After gaining consciousness, he was stumbling around in a daze while the plane burned and a woman near the scene yelled “Get his gun!” Back then, the U.S. Post Office issued Colt revolvers to their pilots and instructed them to shoot anyone who tried to rob the mail.

Meanwhile, officials were worried about something else: No one had told Captain Jepp that his mail load had a shipment of diamonds. “They dug up all the ground around the crash and sifted the dirt, but they only found one diamond… They watched me pretty closely over the next several months, but what could I do?” Jeppesen seemed to remember a claim for $6 million made against the diamonds, but couldn’t recall if the owner was ever paid.

However, he did remember that post office officials scooped up the dirt and saved it. For 10 years after the wreck they would ritually sift that dirt through a screen in hopes of recovering a few more of the lost gems. They never did.

LEAVING UNITED

A monumental success for aviation safety came in 1947, six years ater the Jeppesen family had moved to Denver and Nadine had insisted that the business be moved from their basement to a legitimate office. The U.S. government cooperated with the Jeppesen Company to introduce the first Standardized Instrument Approach Procedures. Before this, there were nearly as many approach procedures as individual operators. Next, Jeppesen published the first VOR approach chart in 1949, followed by the first High Altitude enroute chart in 1959. Jepp was instrumental in establishing the FAA’s National Flight Data Center.

Jeppesen was 47 years old in 1954 when his doctor told him he risked a heart attack if he didn’t give up either the airline or his navigation business. Leaving the airline was so difficult for Captain Jepp that for years he would drive out of his way not to see the old entrance sign to the airline on Stapleton Field.

The DC-6 was the last airplane he flew with United. He had begun on the Boeing 40B, then the tri-motor Boeing, then the 247. He had logged about 10,000 hours on the DC-3 before ending with the DC-6.

“We had no retirement plan. We were just out trying to build a transportation system,” he recounted. Three years after leaving United, the Jeppeson Co. Established a plant in Frankfurt, Germany to publish maps for Europe, Africa and Asia.

Joe Hutchinson, Captain Jepp’s co-pilot during the early days of United Airlines, also holds memories of making history.

“I learned to fly in the Army Corps, before there was an Air Force,” Hutchinson relates. “Then they let half the Air Corps go — All of us were 2nd lieutenants or higher — but it was pretty easy to find a job because United had just bought a fleet of brand new Boeing 247s.” These were the first fast, all-metal airliners. He and Jepp were piloting a 247 when they spied a burning barn in the pre-dawn hours, Hutchinson recalled.

“We had left Chicago at 1 a.m. for Omaha. It was a clear, bitter cold night during the winter of 1935-36. To the north, some distance away, we saw a pretty big fire, obviously a house or barn… In those days we flew planes low to avoid westerly winds at higher altitudes. When we flew east we could fly higher, but this night we were only about 500 feet.” With passengers aboard, they flew to the fire and circled around the homestead until a big man in his old-fashioned night shirt came out of the house and waved in grateful acknowledgement, Hutchinson claimed.

Later, Walter Winchell, network radio broadcaster and columnist for the Chicago American, made the flight famous when he presented an orchid to Jepp. The flower was awarded annually as a symbol of heroism. Jepp gave it to his love Nadine.

Hutchinson knew Nadine through their work and remembered meeting Nadine’s family. They routinely greeted her at the Omaha airport after the pioneer stewardess returned from Boeing 247 flights.

“She came from the finest kind of farm family in western Iowa,” Hutchinson said.

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

In 1961, when the company was doing about $5 million of business per year, Jepp sold the company to the L.A. Times-Mirror. He stayed on as Chairman of the Board, and his ideas continued to flourish. The first RNAV approach charts appeared in 1971. Then in 1976 the U.S. government worked with Jeppesen’s company to create Profile Descent Charts to combat airline fuel costs that were sky-rocketing as jetliners spent much time in holding patterns.

In an article titled “How to Read Approach Charts,” published in Flying magazine in 1992, J. Mac McClellan wrote: “The first thing you should look for on an approach plate is the name Jeppesen. I know that the FAA uses government charts as examples in the IFR written test, but forget about those ink-splotched crude plates as soon as you’re done with the written. The whole civilian aviation world uses Jepp charts.”

1961 was also the year that the government threatened to take away Jeppesen & Company’s monopoly on aerial charts. They figured they could acquire the maps from the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey at half the Jeppesen prices.

Byron Rogers, a Colorado congressman at that time, defended the company on the floor of the House of Representatives, explaining that many of the government maps were copied from Jeppesen charts.

Jeppesen was quoted in the news: “We are not afraid of competition and will welcome any challenge predicated on quality of product and fairness of price. But we cannot contend with subsidized practices of fractional pricing legislated by the government.

Admiral H. Arnold Karo, Director of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, admitted to the subcommittee of the House that the government is required to charge only for the cost of paper and printing, but not for other spending to obtain the information. He also said that Jeppesen’s charts had more complete coverage and offered a worldwide service that the government did not. The army agreed to stick with Jeppesen for another year, and the issue has not arisen since.

In 1964 Times-Mirror merged the company with Weems System of Navigation, Inc., a reputable manufacturer and publisher of marine navigation aids in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1968 the company merged with Sanderson Films, Inc., featuring Paul Sanderson’s widely respected multi-media training system and pilot supplies (Sanderson courses are standard for Air Force ROTC college programs). Jeppesen OpsData has been established, offering computerized computation of maximum allowable takeoff and landing weights required by the world’s airlines. Lockheed DataPlan and its London sibsidiary, Memrykord, have also recently been acquired to provide optimized flight planning, advanced weather services and personalized international flight services, The company has outgrown Denver offices four times. In the 1990s, Jeppesen Sanderson employed more than 800 people around the world. Most of these employees worked at the Denver facility, updating thousands of charts each month and producing millions.

Jeppesen explained that he sold the company “because I thought the insurance was going to knock us over. Nadine and I couldn’t get any liability insurance, even though we’d never had any suits filed against us.”

After Jepp sold the company, Pan American World Airlines sued Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc. in response to the crash of a cargo plane and death of its four crew members. Mt. Kamunay, a 3,100-foot mountain 20 miles east-northeast of Manilla in the Phillipnes, wasn’t shown on a chart made by Jeppesen Sanderson. The airline won $5.79 million. (Wayne Rosenkrans, president of Jeppesen Sanderson at that time, explained in court that the point was only one along a range and that pilots are supposed to be guided by the prescribed minimum flight altitude, which cleared this obstacle by 1,000 feet. According to Rosenkrans, after the crash the Phillipine government decided the prescribed clearance over Mt. Kamunay was adequate, regardless of the unmarked mountain, and didn’t change it. But the judge ruled in favor of Pan American.)

What regrets did Captain Jepp have of his legendary life? He said he never would have sold his first plane, his beloved Jenny, if he had known the stunt pilot who bought it would intentionally fly it into a barn and smash it for the sake of drawing a crowd to a show.

What’s the best flying Jepp ever performed? He told a tale of when a spring in a Burlington magneto on an OX-5 engine in an early Beechcraft, made the engine fail. The only available landing spot was a baseball diamond in Hood River, Oregon. A game was being played. “Everyone cleared out except the pitcher. He didn’t move. But I managed to miss him. I had a passenger, too — the fellow who owned the airplane, as a matter fo fact,” he recalled. “I only had about 100 hours (pilot experience), but that’s the best job of flying I ever did.” They made a phone call to get the new part, “but they said they wouldn’t bring it — no place to land,” Jepp said, disappointed in the trepidation of the pilot for the parts company.

What was his favorite plane to fly? “The Tri-motor Boeing 80-A,” he said without hesitation. “It was a big airplane, rattled all over, shook and felt like you were doing something!”

Another favorite memory for Captain Jepp was sliding over the hills into San Franciso, flaps down. “Sinking into that beautiful bay with all the lights… God that was great! It’s difficult to find the words.”

At age 86, he sat in his spacious home among model airplanes, awards, scrapbooks and vintage photographs. He pointed to a picture of pilots under the wing of an old circus plane. He is in the group, next to Tex Rankin.

“I’d bet there wasn’t more than $25 in all of our pockets combined when this was taken,” he smiled.

“My grandson is 18 years old. People ask me what he should do… The only answer I have is ‘Find something you like to do; don’t go for the money — it’ll come.’”

When Jeppesen was a young man flying mail and living in Chicago, he typed a letter to his parents, who were anxious about his education and future:

Dear Folks:

I am studying hard and long most of the time and I intend to do that as long as I can, but under no circumstances am I ever going to stop flying. I like it too well and when the time comes when I can no longer fly, I might just as well start looking for the next world.

So far as I can see, the most important thing in this world is to learn the art of living and that is what I have been trying to do for some time… I will not get very much out of life if I can not fly…”

Not only did he get a lot, he created a legend.

Topics: aviation | No Comments »

The Most Complex Ecosystem in the Universe: Your Child’s Brain

By admin | July 9, 2008

This article is in the August 2008 edition of The Healing Path, based in Northern Colorado. My son was diagnosed with mild ADHD when he was 10 years old, which has sent me searching for information to support his development. I’m impressed by the local network of practitioners tackling this insidious and increasingly diagnosed impairment.

* * * * *

By Sonia Koetting

Child Psychiatrist Dr. Scott Shannon spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Fort Collins Lincoln Center in January, offering his perspective on trends in diagnosis of children’s psychological symptoms. The event was a presentation of Learning Disorders Solutions Network of Northern Colorado.

A storm of factors has precipitated rampant diagnosis of behavioral disorders in American youth, according to Shannon. Statistics indicate American children have the most psychiatric problems, are prescribed the most psychoactive medicines, and exhibit the most symptoms of severe stress.

Shannon maintains that a prevalent thought among those working with children’s behavior issues today is that there’s a biochemical problem in every brain, and a biochemical solution for every brain. “It’s just not the case,” he said, as he cautioned against the error of arrogance. “Brain biochemistry and pathology get too much emphasis,” he said.

“1.6 million kids are on 2 or more psychoactive medicines with no evidence that it is safe or effective,” Shannon put forth. He spoke with reverence about the complexity of a child’s brain, and suggested that the medical community’s understanding of it remains infinitely small. “A child’s brain is the most complex ecosystem in the universe,” he said.

He asserted that environmental influence on a child’s brain is more important than inherited genetics — brain development is reliant on early relationships. Of mental disorders, autism and schizophrenia have the most genetic influence, yet that influence is only 50%, he said. Even these serious disorders could remain asymptomatic if all relationship and environmental elements of a child’s life were favorable, he suggested.

Adderall treats symptoms of ADHD the way aspirin treats a headache, with cause and prevention being ignored, Shannon said. “Fifty percent of ADHD kids have a learning disability that won’t be solved by a prescription… We have to sort it out by examining the ecological system.”

Shannon listed some “ecological disasters” for kids:

Poor nutrition, obesity, poor fit of education to the child’s learning style, too much “screen time,” lack of sleep or relaxation, lack of time spent in nature, divorce, and depression in the mother.

Nutrition issues may include heavy metal toxicity, food additives, lack of magnesium or Omega 3 oils, and vitamin D deficiency due to lack of outside play. Pollution and electromagnetic forces can also negatively impact a child’s brain chemistry.

Depression in mothers has been revealed as a significant catlyst for potentially life-long problems in their children. Shannon said there have been numerous cases when once a mother’s depression was treated, the child’s adverse symptoms disappeared with no other intervention. Being connected to emotionally sound and available adults has huge implications for a child’s mental health.

Other positive factors discussed incude more time in nature and sunshine, uncovering and working through traumatic events, counseling to support personality conflicts between parents and their kids, nurturing a child’s talents, and developing spirituality on a personal level.

Shannon donated proceeds from the sale of copies of his book at the lecture to the Healthier Communities Coalition of Larimer County. The book is also available at Pirate’s Cove bookstore on Harmony Ave. in Fort Collins. Children’s Speech & Reading Center, Mothers’ Center of Fort Collins and Fort Collins NOW also provided support for the event.

Topics: fort collins, health, parenting | No Comments »

Northern Skies (Airports of Northern Colorado)

By admin | April 11, 2008

This article was an assignment from Gannett’s lifestyle magazine 25 North. Editor Kathy Strickland (who since has joined the ranks of folks who abandoned the Gannett ship in Fort Collins) thought I was a good candidate for writing this because I have my private pilot’s certificate. Sadly, the downtown Fort Collins airport closed within a year of me interviewing the pilots who cherished it. It was just the sort of place my father, Capt. Duane Best, would’ve loved… for mostly low, slow fliers.

* * * * *

By Sonia Koetting

Resting in a hangar at the Fort Collins Downtown Airport, being painstakingly restored, is a glorious piece of aviation history: a World War II British Hawker Hurricane. In another hangar just steps away sits a Japanese Zero. Projects of this magnitude can take a decade to complete. Vintage Aircraft and QG Aviation, businesses based at the airport, have earned national reputations for their work.

The Smithsonian Institute and other aeronautical museums call on such restorers to bring these prizes back to life for the sake of American aviation history. Surrounding the history tucked away in the hangars at the little Downtown Fort Collins Airport is the story of aviation in Northern Colorado and its continued role in the modern world.

University paves the way

Fort Collins’ first airport was a dirt landing strip on what is now Circle Drive, near the intersection of Prospect Road and Whedbee Street. As Colorado A & M — now Colorado State University — grew, university administrators decided to invest in a paved strip. In 1929 a plane left for Denver with a sack of airmail to advertise the availability of the new Christman Field, named for Lt. Col. Bert Christman, who was born in Fort Collins to a railroad family, had a short career as a comic-strip illustrator and died as one of the legendary Flying Tigers, helping China battle invasion by Japan early in WWII.

Christman Field served many flights to A & M’s research stations across the state and was critical for many missions led by the Air National Guard and the Department of Wildlife. It was also used for recreational flights such as those Steve Vessey remembers taking with his father, influential Northern Colorado pilot Don Vessey, in a Cessna 182.

“Sundays after dinner my dad would fly us from Christman Field to Denver (Stapleton Airfield) for strawberry pie,” Steve Vessey recalls from his childhood.

Early one morning in 1944, residents crowded Christman Field to cheer the inauguration of Scenic Airline Service, with two five-passenger planes providing service to Denver. Enthusiasm for aviation in Northern Colorado had taken root.

By 1964, officials were in agreement that a more significant airfield was needed. Loveland and Fort Collins city governments together attained a grant from what was then the Federal Aviation Agency for more than $400,000 to begin construction of the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport.

Regional aviation spreads its wings

When completed in 1965, the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport had the runway length and facility to support multi-engine aircraft and jets. Today individuals and corporations in Northern Colorado that can afford the freedom to travel swiftly rely on KFNL (as aviators know the airport from its radio frequency) as base for their jets. The Jet Center there sees heiress/philanthropist Pat Stryker come and go in her Beechcraft King Air. Budweiser of Fort Collins and Swift Company of Greeley also keep King Airs at Fort Collins-Loveland, as does Windsor developer Martin Lind. Lind recently purchased land to the north of KFNL, making him well-poised for future growth of the airport and surrounding businesses.

Soon after the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport opened in the mid-1960s, a significant number of aviators began to grumble about the distance of the airport from their homes and from Fort Collins’ business hub.

Don Vessey and Fort Collins local J.D. Forney — whose fortune and passion spawned Denver’s Forney Transportation Museum — were two key players who gathered resources to designate a rough piece of land off Mulberry Avenue as a smaller, more centrally located airport. Though both those men have passed, their grown sons live on in Larimer County. Steve Vessey is a frequent user of The Fort Collins Downtown Airport — a place that remains particularly friendly to general aviation pilots — where the fellas gather for coffee in the mornings to swap stories and prepare for another day of aviation adventure.

In a commemorative speech in October of 1966, Forney decreed the airport “a free gift intended for the people of Fort Collins, for their use and benefit.” From this locale, Forney conceived and built his modification of the Ercoupe, a revolutionary plane of its day, known for tails with twin rudders and no foot controls. Test flights for the improved Ercoupe, renamed Forney’s Aircoupe, took place regularly from the little airport. Collectors and Ercoupe club members continue to fly their “Forneys” today.

Don Vessey ran the first fixed-base operation (FBO) business on the field, known as Valley Air Park. Steve Vessey was the first civilian student to land at the airport. In 1974 he and another of the four Vessey brothers, Chuck, were chief pilots for a transport service to Denver with single-engine airplanes. Seven flights a day took area residents and cargo to Stapleton Airfield. When the service, then known as Airlink, shut down in 1983 (for reasons not related to its success), it was flying well over 1,000 passengers each month, Vessey remembers. This was the airports heyday.

Pilots like Kelly Rizley, who owns an advertising agency and has an office based at the airport, likes to note the economic impact that the Downtown airport has for the city. According to the Colorado Dept. of Transportation, he said, the airport is the source of 260 jobs, a $4.4 million payroll annually, and has a $10.4 million annual economic impact to Fort Collins. “And they (the city) don’t pay a penny for it,” Rizley said.

Though it remains a small airport, with about one-fifth the traffic of KFNL, Fort Collins Downtown Aiport is significant for Flight to Life planes, which use the airport because of its proximity to Poudre Valley Hospital. Firefighting and maintenance of national parks also are served from this location.

Future flight

The future of Fort Collins Downtown Airport is uncertain. Government and law will determine if the land has greater potential recast into a developer’s vision.

There is also much debate surrounding growth at the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport.

“The more commercial traffic they get, the more free money they get from the federal government,” says Dave Larson, an instrument-rated pilot who flies out of KFNL. “There’s been talk of (building) a tower for 10 years.”

Larson is hopeful it will remain just talk. With a tower comes increased commercial traffic.

“I get more for my money here (than at a tower-controlled airport),” he says, explaining that pilots sometimes have to wait longer to take off and land when permission from a tower is required.

Don Griffith, chief pilot for Front Range Helicopters, based in the Jet Center at the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport, says students would benefit from a tower because learning to communicate on the radio while managing multiple other tasks diminishes the fear many new pilots have when flying to larger airports.

As closed hangars and museums hold the secrets of aviation lore, the future of flight in Northern Colorado is now being written. Flying is a privileged convenience as well as a time-honored adventure; whether a commercial captain or a weekend student, most pilots have a deep appreciation for both. Whether circumstances will allow both aspects of aviation a rich future is the question written across Colorado’s northern skies.

Aircraft Schools

“I tell my friends I always have a corner office with a view,” jokes Sue Bodoh, whose love for aviation led her to quit her office job with a corporation in Northern Colorado to become a full-time instructor with Colorado Contrails Aviation Inc., a flight school based at the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport. Bodoh is certified to train fliers all the way through their Multi-Engine Air Transport Pilot license.

Jim Crisma, owner of Poudre Aviation Inc., an airplane rental and flight-training business at Fort Collins Downtown Airport, found his passion for aviation as a young man, crop dusting in South Dakota. His father owned the FBO at the Wagner, S.D. airport. Along with five single-engine planes he has for lease, Crisma manages three flight instructors. One of them, Jerslash Eberhard, specializes in teaching pilots the skills necessary for flying safely in the mountains.

Through various mountain passes, Eberhard takes students to touch down at Vail, Aspen, Telluride and Leadville, the highest-altitude general aviation airport in North America. The round trip takes six or seven hours.

Don Griffith of Front Range Helicopters, based in the Jet Center at the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport, teaches people to fly helicopters. He can fly planes, but said he is drawn to the challenge of helicopter flight. According to Griffith, the skills used in hovercraft are so different that students who are already pilots of fixed-wing planes only have a slight advantage over those who have never piloted.

Front Range Helicopters also offers tours for anyone simply looking for a thrill ride. For about $270 a few friends can buy enough time to see the city and get to Horsetooth Mountain Park. More than once, an aspiring groom has hired Griffith to take him and his special someone to a mountain lake or other pretty site to propose.

Flight schools in Loveland and Fort Collins:

Colorado Contrails Aviation’s The Flying School

4824 Earhart Road, Loveland

(970) 203-9980 or 215-2889

Front Range Helicopters

404 N. Link Lane, Fort Collins

(970) 472-0123

Poudre Aviation Inc.

2200 Airway Ave., Fort Collins

(970) 416-8518 or 530-0503

The Pilot Center

200 Racquette Drive, Fort Collins

(970) 493-3210

Topics: aviation, colorado state university, fort collins | No Comments »

Pilots of Northern Colorado

By admin | April 2, 2008

This appeared in the second issue of 25 North lifestyle magazine, a Gannett publication serving communities in Northern Colorado. Tom made more money from the story than I did by taking the photos, including the cover shot. The next post is a related piece outlining the history of airports in the region. It also appeared in that issue.

* * * * *

By Sonia Koetting

When he rolls his bright orange Beechcraft Staggerwing out of its hangar at KFNL for a spin, Lt. Col. Jack Miller gets noticed. After the six years and 20,000 hours he and his brother Jerald spent restoring the antique biplane, his is an enjoyment well-earned.

“It was a barnyard basket case,” Miller, A Fort Collins resident for more than seven decades, says. For many years Miller flew professors from Colorado State University — then Colorado A & M — to the university’s 11 research centers across the state. He noticed what remained of the old plane on the ground while flying over the Western Slope.

Miller says when he contacted the rancher to ask if he’d consider selling the sorely neglected antique, he was told, “Now that you know where it is, keep your hands off it because I’m going to rebuild it.” About two years later the owner died in an ultralight plane accident. Miller and his brother made their move, spending $30,000 on “a piece of junk,” he remembers. Miller estimates that the plane is now worth $300,000, but he’s not selling.

The plane, built in 1942 as executive transport for “the brass,” is now a regular visitor to Miller’s favorite airshow, the annual National Biplane Association Expo and airshow in Bartlesville, Okla.

Miller also received an award for landing the first biplane (not the Staggerwing, but an open-cockpit antique he also had restored) at Denver International Airport, soon after it opened in the 1990s.

While antique beauties and old warbirds are the dream of many an aviator, the flip side is pilots like Dan Hardesty of Loveland, a self-employed insurance salesman whose face is familiar from his ad on the back cover of the 2005/06 Yellow Book phone directory. He keeps his experimental light sport aircraft, a Rutan VariEze, hangared at the Fort Collins-Loveland airport. Lettering on the plane’s side declares it “Sky Captain.”

“I named it two years before the movie came out,” Hardesty laughs. The agile plane, built for speed and efficiency, is readily identifiable at airshows for its tiny fuselage and unusual canard wings. It’s the object of desire for many modern aviation enthusiasts, including the late celebrity John Denver, who died in his.

“It’s the fastest-flying experimental (plane) per engine size,” Hardesty boasts. “It will go 200 knots (about 230 mph) on 100 horsepower.” At 4 gallons an hour, and fuel cost of $3.50 to $5 per gallon, Hardesty can have a lot of fun testing the winds over the mountains of Northern Colorado — when he’s not selling insurance to fuel his passion.

A similar craft, the Berkut, inspires pilot Jerold Jorritsma, a Wellington farmer. Jorritsma spent his boyhood building model airplanes.

“I built ’em all and crashed ’em all,” he laughs.

When a pilot builds his own craft from a kit, like the Berkut that Jorritsma keeps at the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport, they build at least 51 percent themselves. This qualifies the pilot (per the Federal Aviation Administration) to serve as his or her own mechanic. In 1976 aviation pioneer Burt Rutan (known for SpaceShipOne and Voyager) designed the VariEze kit, which spawned the Berkut. With their sleek design of carbon fiber without rivets, Rutan’s kit planes were faster, safer and easier to build. Since the mid-1970s, registration of “composite home built” sport planes has outpaced that of factory-built general aviation planes, making them vital to modern aviation, according to Popular Science magazine.

Jorritsma spent six years completing his dream plane. His is unique in that he has fitted it with a 1,350-horsepower jet engine and avionics that make it fully instrument-rated, meaning it can fly in zero-visibility conditions.

Jorritsma’s Berkut will be able to reach an altitude of 30,000 feet once the plane receives its “blessing” from the FAA. When FAA examiners inspect the plane, they will scrutinize every bolt — a process that could take three days — for an aircraft the size of a go-kart with wings.

While Jorritsma is in pursuit of jet power, Fred Herr of Fort Collins has earned distinction from the Smithsonian Institute’s Aeronautical Museum for flight in a glider, a plane with no power.

“Locally I’m known as the ‘Glider Guy,’ ” Herr says. His skill in manipulating these graceful, engineless aircraft to altitude and distance by simply using the loft of thermal energy and wind has earned him a place in the esteemed museum as one of the first hundred “Diamond C” pilots in the United States.

“Diamond C” is a distinction that began in Europe. Herr learned to fly in Germany. Germany is where soaring began, Herr explains. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles prevented Germany from building or flying airplanes, but clever German aviators found a way around this with gliders that gained flight with the use of winches.

Herr was not yet 17 in 1944 when he flew a German Messerschmitt in World War II combat. “They didn’t have any more people,” he says, reflecting on his youth in Germany. The nation insisted on plucking soldiers from childhood to continue the fight. Herr is one of few who survived.

Herr made his record glider flights after immigrating to Colorado in 1957. He has flown as high as 27,000 feet with no engine power and once soared from Boulder to Hastings, Neb., in a glider less efficient than those built today. A straight line between the two points is about 360 nautical miles, but Herr, looking for loft where he could find it, says he flew closer to 500 miles that day.

Herr has taught nearly 1,000 students to solo in gliders. He was president of the Boulder Soaring Society in1969 when John Maddingly, founder of Water Pic, asked Herr to teach him to soar. Maddingly offered land near Wellington for Herr to establish the area’s first landing strip specifically for gliders. The Colorado Soaring Association continues to offer instruction from the landing strip off County Road 7 on the west side of Interstate 25, a location that Herr had established as a glider port after Maddingly’s death saw the end of the original site.

Another lesser-known airstrip, Yankee, is on Douglas Road, a quarter-mile east of I-25. This is where ultralight enthusiasts gather on perfect-weather weekends for the adventure of their dreams.

People driving by don’t notice these hidden places, but from above the marks that aviators of all types have left on Northern Colorado are plain to see.

Topics: aviation, fort collins | No Comments »

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