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Show Vena Wilson, 'Retiring' at 72, Has Enjoyed Eventful Life in West It was the year of the great Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia - 1875. General Grant was in the White House. On a rented farm near the now historic city of Ogdenshurg, on the St. Lawrence river in upper Xew York state, George and Mary Hawley made their home. Here, on September 7th, Lavena Maud was born, the fifth child in a family that eventually boast-.;. ed of ten children. It will be as- , . .. turned that she was not overly mv?d to thf. n?w sta,t,e of Iowa: spoiled by too much indulgence, fnd her euarllest recollections of Five years later the family l,er "ew home was a Uvelve by 1 fourteen trappers shack that Pioneer r . I MRS. VENA WILSON, who has been a "fixture" at the Telluride Power Co. offices in Milford for almost a quarter of a century. squatted on the banks of a big slough a paradise for smelly muskrats with miles and miles of waving upland prairie grass stretching away on all sides. She recalls how shocked hor father was at the news of the assassination of President Garfield. Gar-field. It was her first big event in American history. With the other children, she dropped potatoes in the spring herded cattle in the sunw . napped corn in the fall a'ld vent to school in the wintc-. While she was still a mere rVM if 16, wearing her hair in long braids down hei' bark sh lured her first teacher's ret if-ate if-ate and tought her first term of school in a one-room country ;rhoolhouse for $25 a month. For 16 years she was in the i profession, in the count'-v r" town schools, and for two years was head of the Normal department depart-ment at Old Central Collc-o ;,; Pella, Iowa, an old Holland Dutch town built around a central cen-tral square, with the older inhabitants in-habitants still wearing wooden shoes. During these years she was graduated from the Slate Teachers College of Iowa, and was a summer student at the University' or Iowa, arid at the University of Chicago. One year she spent with a brother in a quicksilver mine in the Big Bend country of Texas, down by the Rio Grande. It was a strictly desert section of the state, and she had to become accustomed to canned milk, her pet aversion, as well as scor pions, centipedes, rattle snakes and tarantulas. The last three months she spent in camp she was the only white woman there. Wouldn't that make you lonesome? In the fall of 1907 she and a younger sister went to the Pacific Pa-cific Northwest. While her sister sis-ter was studying music in Seattle, Se-attle, Vena was teaching near the navy yard at Bremerton, and at Wenatchee on the plateau of the great Columbia river. Pooling Pool-ing their interests, they went to Snoqualmie Falls, a lovely spot about 90 miles east of Seattle in the Cascade Mountains. Here was located a municipal power plant, with the generators 150 feet below the surface of the river in a large cavity blasted out of the solid rock. This was an interesting life, and especially especi-ally thrilling the night the big transformers burned up. The power plant looked like a picture pic-ture from Dante's Inferno with the lurid blue flashes dfirti ,:: back and forth across tbo build ing, and the dreadful Hissing of the arcing current made Hi.-chills Hi.-chills go up and down your spine. Everyone was pretty shaken, but the only casualty was a tremendous blister on elbow of the operator on duty, and he had also lost a fing'-r (Continued on Page Four) HERE'S MORE ABOUT s MRS. WILSON ! Continued from Page One i has taught the Adult Bible Class for many years. At 72, she says she is going to retire, but we still see her occasionally at her old desk in the Telluride office, where she has served her friends and neighbors for so many years. She says, "There is nothing exceptional ex-ceptional in what I've done. Everyone knows about me. My private life has been lived on Main Street for the last 30 years." ut and she had to give up her chool work. By chance, a book-;eeper book-;eeper in a small cooperative iutter and egg store had ab-;conded ab-;conded wltn the loose cash, and ihe was persuaded to take over he job. She found to her surprise sur-prise that the business world leld a great attraction for her. jater she clerked in a variety store owned by a Spanish-speaking, home-grown California woman, wo-man, who catered to the Mexican Mex-ican trade, and life was full of Eun and gay adventure. She tried working in a fashionable dress shop, and tho she didn't know an imported model from its American cousin, she did know her customers, and that did the trick. During these snappy years she was dreaming of being a homesteader home-steader in some romantic spot in the wild, free West. So, when the opportunity presented itself, she gathered some ats, a few tools, some second-hand clothes, and a few precious books and landed at Beryl, Utah, in the early spring of 1915. She and a Mrs. Harritt of Santa Barbara filed on the same section of land, and their place was known thru-out thru-out the settlement as the Double H ranch. They were successful in proving up with one house, as it was built on the dividing line, so that each of the women slept on her claim five months of each of the three years required residence. resi-dence. Here she fell in love with the desert. From her back door step she often watched the sun gc down and the glorious Cedai Breaks turning from gold to lav ender, and purple and midnite blue, as the shadows deepened ir the long twilight hours. The dis tant beauty of the opalescen hills intrigued her, and the lon reaches of the pale green sage relieved by the bright flashes o: the wild hollyhock and the bril liant crowns of the cactus, wai an entrancing panorama to one who had been a child on the flat prairies of Iowa. She also fell in love with a neighboring homesteader, and so, in the accepted style of Western West-ern romances, they were married. mar-ried. They were even married in Milford, at the Methodist parsonage, par-sonage, when it was located up on the hill by the water tank. She was now Mrs. W. J. Wilson. One more year and she would be S(he also fell in love with a and proving up papers were prepared pre-pared by the late Herbert Nichols, Nich-ols, who had his office in the building now owned by the Baxter Bax-ter Brothers, next door to the Telluride Power Company office. of-fice. The first woman she met in Milford was Mrs. Annie J. Atkin, the former hostess of the Atkin Hotel, now called the Horn Silver. In the fall of 1917, when the boys were going abroad for the first World War, the Wilsons moved to Milford, Mr. Wilson being be-ing employed in the railroad shops, and Mrs. Wilson clerking at the old C. C. Sloan Dry Goods store. They lived in the same house now occupied by Mrs. Wilson on Eighth avenue. After the death of Mr. Wilson, which occurred in 1922, she continued con-tinued her work as a clerk in Jefferson's store, the old Golden" Rule store run by Al Cline, the News Stand at the depot, and finally going into the Telluride Power Co. office 21 years ago. Her interests have necessarily ' been outside her home. Having 1 no family, she has devoted her ' leisure time to church and fraternal fra-ternal activities. She is entitled to wear the 25 years veteran pin in Victory Rebekah Lodge No. ' 43, and has long been a Past ; Noble Grand of that Order. She ' is a Past Worthy Matron of Ruth ' Chapter No. 6, and is now serv-: serv-: ing her fourteenth year as sec-' sec-' retary of that organization. The ; Methodist church numbers her among its members, where she nail. But he was so frightened ' he did not know anything had J happened to him personally un- til he was off shift and came out of the cavity. Did you ever hear of the cat j that came back? Well, an old j cat that used to snoop around ; the boarding house was thrown over the falls by an angry em- , ploye. The falls were 268 feet high, and, believe it or not, about three weeks later she came back. The next two years the sisters sis-ters lived in Preston, a shingle weavers town down the river ; from the falls. They were the only ones of English descent in the town, the others being Scandinavians, Scan-dinavians, Danes, or Finns. The church services were all conducted con-ducted in Swedish. It was a very kindly and hospitable little lit-tle place, and life was very pleasant pleas-ant there. In the late summer a terrible forest fire threatened Preston. The sky was like brass from the thick smoke and the glare of the flames. One couldn't see the sun. And it was HOT! Great -burning embers em-bers from the conflagration fell all day long among the homes, and the women and children were busy putting out the countless count-less small fires. Every able-bodied able-bodied man had gone over the mountain to fight the raging flames. The Southern Pacific Railroad kept an engine and passenger coaches on the siding for two days, ready to take everyone out at a moment's notice. no-tice. It was a tearful, prayerful little town. Luickly, a slight change in the wind came on the second afternoon, and the danger dan-ger was past. It was a -tough experience, ex-perience, and one not easily forgotten. for-gotten. The lure of California called Vena to the Southland and she 1 spent a winter in Los Angeles, 1 later going to Santa Barbara. By this time her nerves were worn |