When Gunsmoke’s Marshal, Matt Dillon, advised problem citizens they should “Get out of Dodge,” this advice carried the implicit warning that a failure to comply could result in a quick trip to the Boot Hill cemetery. After nearly three years without a vacation and only a few visits to Colorado’s ski runs, it seemed a good time to “Get out of Denver” last week. My bride, her sons, their wives and I traveled south to Trinidad to keep our promise to spread my father-in-law’s ashes into the breeze from Simpson’s Rest. Tom Allen was born in town but raised in the Valdez coal camp, moving back to Trinidad for high school and several years playing bass in a local swing band following World War II with his brother “C.O.”

Their Dad, also Tom Allen, born in 1890, launched the United Mine Workers local in Trinidad where, according to family lore, the founders signed the petition to join the UMW at the Allen’s kitchen table. His parents had sheltered families rendered homeless in the wake of the Ludlow Massacre. We visited the Masonic cemetery where I am always amused by the headstone announcing, “Here lies a good old socialist.” Tom Jr., eventually migrated to Denver to attend classes at the University of Colorado and Denver University, eventually earning his business degree. Tom traveled far from his labor movement roots in Trinidad to emerge a rock-ribbed Republican.

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A car salesman during his college years, Tom worked his contacts to form the Allen Machinery Company which thrived for 30 years until the collapse of Exxon’s Parachute oil shale project, which left him holding millions of dollars in equipment ordered for the project. Strangely enough, I met my future father-in-law 20 years earlier than I met his daughter. He was testifying before the Colorado House Transportation Committee in support of reform legislation updating liability and bonding provisions for building contractors.

He still recalled I’d voted in favor, while I had long forgotten the hearing, so he was willing to forgive me for being a Democrat when I reappeared at his home with Cindy. Last Sunday, on Father’s Day, the first five letters of the lighted “Trinidad” sign atop Simpson’s Rest were burned out – the remaining letters spelled DAD. Cindy noticed this serendipitous message as we returned from dinner. We sort of hope the lights won’t get fixed for a while. It was just the kind of wink of the eye Tom would be sending our way.

Whenever I travel across Colorado, I usually stumble on an interesting story that never made news along the Front Range. The Huerfano World Journal, published in Walsenburg, but distributed as well in Las Animas County and Colfax County (Raton), New Mexico, reports the La Veta Fire Protection District has shipped its retired ambulance 6,000 miles to Vinnitsa, Ukraine. Not Denver, not Aurora, not Boulder but tiny La Veta and its few hundred residents tackled the heavy lifting to perform an “…act of compassion and generosity so profound and so prevalent that it is hard to imagine competing impulses can coexist,” according to Journal reporter Mark Craddock.

It required nearly two years to navigate bureaucratic red tape, here and there, with stops in Colorado Springs and Fountain, for refitting, then Galveston, Bremerhaven and a rail journey across Europe before arriving recently at the Vinnitsa Regional Clinical Hospital for War Veterans. Local civic leader Ray Fisher explains the roots of the La Veta connection with Ukraine trace back to a Colorado State University agricultural assistance program following the failure of the Soviet Union. Fisher heads what started out as the Colorado/Russia Agricultural Group. Russians, however, showed little interest during the 1990s, but Ukrainian farmers were far more receptive. CSU operates an agricultural station outside La Veta where former students and faculty who have visited Ukraine remain. In 2020 they changed the name of their mission to the Colorado/Ukraine Agricultural Group. Bravo to all involved.

After a quick visit to my father’s grave at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe and shopping in the Rio Grande Valley north through Espanola to Taos, we were on the road home again. During the first 25 years I traveled through the San Luis Valley I probably turned east off U. S. 285 to Manassa twenty times hoping to visit the Jack Dempsey Museum. Not once in all those years did I ever find it open or a living soul around. I long since abandoned hope of making another trip until a few months ago when I read that the Dempsey home had been refurbished and regular visitor hours established. Sure enough, the tiny house which must have been bursting at the seams with nine children now offers a docent who will tell you more about Colorado’s only world heavyweight champion than you ever imagined.

Dempsey’s trek from coal field roughneck to mining camp boxer earned him the moniker, “The Manassa Mauler.” Ironically, he would spend most of his adult life as the owner/operator of one of Manhattan’s most popular and expensive restaurants – where the city’s elite went to see and be seen – and a long, long way from Manassa. Although the purpose of our trip had been largely somber, spreading ashes and visiting war memorials, our last stop came at a renovated sanctuary. We enjoyed an excellent lunch at the James Beard Award winning Friar’s Fork in Alamosa, savoring fine food and celebrating lives well-lived. Get out of town this summer!

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.