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Frank Parker Fowler, Jr. 1926-2011 |
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Wednesday, 04 May 2011 04:51 |
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Frank Parker Fowler, Jr. ‘Parker’ passed away at his home in Longmont on February 9, 2011, after a long battle with cancer. Parker was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 21, 1926, to Frank P. Fowler, Sr. and Dorothy Hinckley Fowler.
Parker attended public schools in Evanston, Illinois. He and his twin brother, Hugh, joined the Navy in 1943 (V-12); they came to Boulder in 1944 in the NROTC. In Guam he was Officer in Charge of Yard-Craft, and Skipper of yard tug Chicomico. Retired as Lieutenant.
Parker received his BA and MA from CU (Phi Kappa Tau). He earned his PHD in Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research from California/Berkeley.
Parker first taught at the University of New Mexico where he was the department head of their first data processing department. He returned to Colorado as IT Director for the Department of Higher Education in 1967. He taught at CSU and then at CU Boulder and Denver for many years.
He moved his family to the Fowler family farm in northwest Longmont in 1968 and retired from teaching in 1996.
He and Gretchen Purdum were married in 1957. They later divorced.
On April 27, 1976, he married Charlene ‘Charly’ Faimon in Boulder.
As Parker said, he was a “prenatal” Presbyterian, and was a member of First Presbyterian Church in Boulder. He was an Elder in both Albuquerque and at Westview Presbyterian Church in Longmont.
Parker loved music and singing. He directed the Longs Peak Chorus of SPEBSQSA for ten years and led the barber shoppers to their first championship. He always sang in his church choirs and also with the Longmont Chorale over many years. Parker was a founding member of Jubilaté Sacred Singers in Boulder.
Parker was an aficionado of antique farm machinery. He and Charly owned a 1924 Minneapolis steam traction engine which made many appearances along the Front Range. He was a Director of the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. Parker was Member #46 of the Front Range Antique Power Association. As Chairman of the Longmont Bicentennial Committee in 1976 he helped save Old St. Stephens Church on Main Street in Longmont.
Parker is preceded in death by his parents and his infant son, Brian Wade Fowler. He is survived by Charly, his wife of 35 years; his son Frank P. Fowler III and wife Rachel, their children Parker and Benjamin of Longmont; his son John ‘Ames’ Fowler and wife Liz, their children A.J, Alexis, Mary, Allison and Charles of Centennial; his daughter Allison Ames Cross and husband Scott, their daughter Helen of Nederland; his identical twin brother Hugh C. Fowler and wife Shirley and brother David A. and his wife Marilyn all of Denver; and five nieces and nephews.
Memorial service was February 16, 2011, at First Presbyterian Church of Boulder at 1820 15th St. Boulder. Private inurnment at Longmont Mountain View Cemetery. Cremation Ahlberg Funeral Chapel and Crematory.
Memorial Contributions may be made to Hospice of Boulder and Broomfield Counties, c/o Ahlberg Funeral Chapel, 326 Terry Street, Longmont CO 80501. Share condolences at www.ahlbergfuneralchapel.com. |
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William M. Moedinger, 1913-2010 |
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Saturday, 01 May 2010 00:00 |
Bill Moedinger liked trains: little trains, big trains, trolleys, anything that ran on rails. He took photographs of trains from the time he was old enough to hold a camera. Bill passed away the night of Saturday, April 24, leaving a photographic and life legacy interwoven with railroading.
Bill worked for his dad in the tombstone business until 1943 when he got a job as a Pullman conductor. Being compelled to serve his country and being physically unacceptable to the military or the railroads, he applied with the Pullman Company because their physical requirements deemed it only necessary to survive the interview in order to get a job. Thus began a twelve-year career that he rated as the best job in the world. Following a short stint at the John F. Weaver Insurance Company, Bill and his wife, Marian each purchased a share of Strasburg Rail Road stock and joined a merry band of rail enthusiasts spearheaded by Henry K. Long and Donald E. L. Hallock. The rest, as they say, is history and Bill was enthusiastically involved with the Strasburg Rail Road to the end. He served as the first marketing director for about a decade, was one of the first engineers on the Plymouth and steam, and then became president for seventeen years until his retirement in 1975. Bill and Marian opened the first tourist gift shop in the county at the Rail Road in 1961. Bill also authored ‘The Road to Paradise,’ a snapshot pictorial history of the Strasburg Rail Road through many editions. After retirement he could be seen almost daily along the line taking pictures and videos until about ten years ago when Alzheimer’s disease began to take its toll. Bill was the last survivor of the 1958 Strasburg Rail Road founders.
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Richard L. Dorman, 1922-2010 |
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Written by Curt Bianchi
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Saturday, 01 May 2010 00:00 |
Richard L. Dorman, best known to railroad enthusiasts for the thirteen books that he authored about narrow gauge railroads, passed away on Saturday, April 3. He was 87 years old.
In addition to his interests in railroading, Dorman was a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II, flying 35 missions over the Pacific. He was a highly regarded architect--first in Los Angeles, and later in Santa Fe--winning many awards for achievements in architecture and design. He was once featured on the cover of Life magazine, and was named one of America’s top architects by The American Institute of Architects. He was a Deacon of The First Baptist Church of Santa Fe.
After a ride on the Silverton train in 1973, Dorman became fascinated with the narrow gauge railroads of Colorado and New Mexico. He began collecting photographs, eventually amassing the largest extant narrow gauge photograph collection in the world, consisting of some 16,000 black-and-white images and 5,000 color slides. He dated the start of his collection to that 1973 trip, when he happened upon a 20-page tourism guide that had a photograph of Rio Grande Southern locomotive no. 25 on the cover. Smitten by the image, he inquired as to where it came from. That led to the widow of Walter Virden, a former RGS locomotive engineer who started on the railroad early in the twentieth century. He and his fellow trainmen took photographs of each other at work, and Mrs. Virden allowed Dorman to make copy negatives of 300-400 of Mr. Virden’s photographs. Upon a return trip to Durango, Mrs. Virden informed Dorman that she had more, and ultimately offered to sell her entire set of prints and negatives to him. That led to other contacts, including the widow of former RGS engineer Winfred Laube, who had another 250 pictures. “That’s how I got started,” Dorman once recalled. “I was continually looking for pictures. One person led to another.”
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A Railroad Man to the Bottom of His Shoes: John C. Newell, 1942-2009 |
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Written by Doug Schmidt
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Tuesday, 01 September 2009 00:00 |
What are the odds that a kid growing up in the middle of a big city in the 1950s would wind up looking at the countryside through the windshield of a charging locomotive? The odds were real good if you were John Calvin (J.C.) Newell. successful author, railroad historian and retired Union Pacific locomotive engineer.
His friend, Bob Griswold, said, “I first knew John when we were members of the Skyline Volunteer Fire Department. This was shortly after his graduation from East High School. He lived with a fellow graduate in the Holly Hills neighborhood. We discovered that we had a mutual interest in railroads that led to our lifelong friendship. Together we painted the D-500 diesel mechanical locomotive for the San Luis Southern railroad. We both operated this unique train.”
Born June 5, 1942 and growing up in Denver, J. C. said he had a “pleasant enough” childhood. His family moved fairly often but they stayed in the same general neighborhood. After high school at Denver East, John joined the U.S. Marine Corps and was honorably discharged in 1962. He found out that there might be work with the Rock Island Railroad. By 1965, it turned out the work with the Rock was not steady and the furloughs outnumbered the work days, so he decided to move on.
Positions had opened up at the Colorado Southern, so he took employment with that railroad. He worked on the Texas Zephyr for the Colorado Southern at the end of its existence. He worked as a fireman and later moved to a yard clerk job with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (CB&Q).
The idea of being a yard clerk did not appeal to J.C. in any way. Word got around that there were openings for firemen at Union Pacific, with the possibility of becoming an engineer. That idea appealed to him greatly and he spent the next thirty years in the catbird seat for the Union Pacific.
In response to the question of what type locomotives he had been in charge of, he rattled off a large portion of their roster through out the 1970s and 80s. He piloted GP7s, 9s, 20s, 35s and 39s, SD40s and 45s, and the UP 6900 series locomotives.
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