By Katherine Scott Sturdevant, Chair of History, PPCC
Bill Thomas, Monitor/Clerk for the Monument Branch of the Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD), took PPCC's HIS 241 History of the Pikes Peak Region this summer partly because he wanted to understand the political viewpoints that developed over time in Colorado Springs. He wondered whether and how there are dissident voices in the community. Little did Bill know that he, a retiree from U.S. Space Command, would end up conducting an oral history interview with Bill Sulzman, a local activist for Citizens for Peace in Space and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The social history of a community definitely takes all kinds.
The HIS 241 students are assisting the Colorado Springs History Project. That project was the initial brainchild of Rocky Scott, CEO of the nonprofit Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation for sixteen years. Scott thought it was time to collect and publish Colorado Springs' history for the last 40-50 years, to "update" journalist Marshall Sprague's popular book, Newport in the Rockies: The Life and Good Times of Colorado Springs. Now conducted by a core committee of leaders from local libraries, archives, businesses, city agencies, and educational and military institutions, the all-volunteer project's current mission is "to identify and interview individuals who have helped shape our city, or are representative of the inhabitants of the Pikes Peak region, and can provide insight into the Springs story. The oral histories will provide the basis for a book and will be available to future generations."
The 11 students, on the other hand, signed up for Kathy Sturdevant's HIS 241 class this summer to learn local history while gaining 3 elective credits. When they learned that their assignments would focus partially on a city oral history project, they were excited. In addition to lectures, discussion, reading, and writing about Colorado Springs history, these students are participating in some of that history themselves. Their assignments have included attending the project's oral history workshop, choosing someone to interview from the project's list of community leaders or someone suitable they propose themselves, researching and contacting the candidate, recording the interview, obtaining appropriate photographs or document copies, and then writing research papers and presenting class speeches about their interviews. Sturdevant says, "I am very proud of this class. They are as enthusiastic and responsible a group as the project could have gained from any source in the community."
Sgt. Charles Rabideau, Recruit Training Supervisor of the Colorado Springs Police Department, is one of the HIS 241 students. He proposed to interview Commander Harry Killa, CSPD Investigations Division, who has served for several decades and is the de facto archivist of the department's history. "It is great to see people doing something about preserving the history of our police department and beautiful city," Killa told Rabideau. "I've been concerned that if action is not taken, a great deal of our history could be lost." The connections established by the HIS 241 class, between the Colorado Springs History Project and the CSPD, might lead to permanent preservation of the fascinating early history of local police work. The student interviewer, Rabideau, sees the project as part of a meaningful recognition of police dedication.
In the oral history workshop that was available for all volunteer interviewers in the Colorado Springs History Project, the students and committee members learned and practiced together on a Saturday. They studied the professional methods and guidelines of the field of oral history and the best techniques to elicit the most valuable responses from interviewees. Oral historians know to ask open-ended questions, such as "what happened?" "why?" and "tell me about." The students learned to seek information and stories specific to Colorado Springs history, yet not to interfere with the telling of valuable life history, too. There will be more workshops as needed, in Pikes Peak Library District facilities, taught by Sturdevant. Tim Blevins, Special Collections Manager for the library, generously provides the facilities and equipment for the workshop and for the project committee meetings. The library also maintains "oral history totebags" that contain recorders, accessories, and blank tapes, so that the students and other interviewers can check out exactly what they need.
Several of the HIS 241 students selected names of well-known community figures from the "Hot List" provided by the Colorado Springs History Project committee. The committee maintains and frequently updates a list of the topics and subtopics they have identified as major themes in Colorado Springs history. Then, through its members and many other contacts, the committee lists individuals recognized as leaders or prime examples of people deeply involved with each topic or subtopic over historical time. The committee members, and trained volunteer interviewers, will complete the most urgent or pertinent interviews for a collection that will help inform a Colorado Springs history writing project. The PPCC HIS 241 students are among the very first to conduct interviews for this project.
Planned student interviews include former Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace, U.S. Air Force Academy Football Coach Fisher DeBerry, and County Commissioner Sallie Clark. Some of the students soon realized that a first step is to overcome their own shyness about interviewing "famous" people. Prominent figures also have busy calendars. PPCC student Janet Hise found, for example, that Mayor Makepeace was "very nice," although not available for another week. The students get to meet their interviewees in interesting places; student Debbie Smith will interview Commissioner Clark in her Holden House Bed and Breakfast Inn. Student Hansel Bjork cannot get in to see Coach DeBarry until five days before the end of the semester, but Bjork and his instructor will work around this for an important interview.
Some of the students found names of acquaintances on the "Hot List." Student Suzanne Lord will interview Mikki Krashauer of Silver Key because she knew her from work. Nick Frugé, a PPCC student whose career and family have long-time ties to Memorial Hospital, chose prominent names from the list who happen to also be hospital trustees. Student John Black wants to interview a real estate leader from the list because his parents are in real estate and know the listed candidates. Another of the students, Amos Velasquez, interviewed his wife's grandfather, Dr. Chester Meyering, as a representative in the category of Colorado Springs education. Meyering came here to teach in 1955 and was the supervisor of secondary education for D-11 from 1964 to 1985.
Student Craig Britain immediately recognized one name on the "Hot List," the minister who married Craig and his wife, Sharon, in 2002. Dean Tollefson, a community minister and long-time adjunct philosophy instructor at PPCC, was on the project list as representing social activism. Tollefson is active in the ACLU, among other organizations. Craig's interview with him was the first conducted by any of the HIS 241 students. Tollefson's reaction to the contact, "What a wonderful project to be involved with!" was encouraging to all of the students. "I hope that future generations can make Colorado Springs as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside," was Tollefson's interview remark that most stayed with his student interviewer.
The HIS 241 students' work with the Colorado Springs History Project has already opened doors for other interviews and for the preservation of historical records. Chris Nicholl has made those connections. She is another student in HIS 241 but is also the Local History and Genealogy Specialist at the Penrose Library. Thus she has been able to give research assistance to her fellow students in the class. She chose to interview someone she knew well, Dwight Haverkorn, who was also on the "Hot List." As a former police officer and investigator for the city attorney's office, Haverkorn knows well both the department's history and the other class interviewee from CSPD, Harry Killa. These police connections with the oral history project might add up to a stronger preservation project for CSPD history.
Chris Nicholl already felt additionally inspired by the class and the Colorado Springs History Project to interview a person who happened to walk into the library-a man who was an Italian immigrant coal miner in the Pikeview area of town. Others of the PPCC students have expressed their intent to do further interviews for the project or to use the skills they have learned here in their other classes, in their own careers as future history teachers, or to capture their own family histories. As Nicholl observed, "Learning of the region's history from the recalled stories of those who lived and witnessed it creates a unique, nearly simultaneous and immediate blending of the past and the present."
Oral history is imperative. Because participants and eyewitnesses know so much but it can disappear with them so quickly, oral history interviewing might be the most urgent kind of historical research and preservation to perform.
If you are interested in volunteering to interview for the Colorado Springs Oral History Project, or in taking a PPCC history class, or in other aspects of this article, feel free to contact the author/instructor, at Katherine.Sturdevant@ppcc.edu or (719) 598-7620. To contact the Colorado Springs History Project or its participants, send letters to P.O. Box 1579, Colorado Springs, CO 80901 or email their listserv at CSOHP@LISTSERV.COLORADOCOLLEGE.EDU
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