People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- Bill Kees
- From the Telluride Daily Planet: William “Bill” Kees Dec. 22, 1941 — Nov. 9, 2021 Born on Dec. 22, 1941 to Josephine (Albers) and Herbert Kees in Los Angeles, California, Bill spent his childhood and young adult years in the San Fernando Valley. As the youngest of three, Bill enjoyed the attention of his doting siblings. His brother Greg inspired a love of adventure, and his sister Joan cultivated his commitment to family. He attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Calinfornia, and graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in geology, an apt foreshadowing of his many years spent up close and personal with rocks — especially granite. After college, Bill returned to Los Angeles, but his love for adventure soon pulled him away. In 1968, Bill spent a winter bussing tables and bartending in Aspen where he discovered his first love — the mountains. In the early 1970s, Bill met his second (true) love, Susan (Davis). After some cajoling, he convinced Susan to trade in her practical low heels for hiking boots and move where the air is cleaner. In 1972, they loaded Susan’s toddlers Scott and Lorraine up in the van and headed east toward Aspen. Along the way, they stopped in Telluride, where the ski area would open the following winter. They pitched a tent in the town park, did laundry at the Miner’s Union, and quickly realized there was no place they would rather be. Over the next 50 years, Bill wove himself into the fabric of the Telluride community. In 1973, Bill and Susan got married beside a waterfall at Dunton Hot Springs. Two years later, their son Blake was born in the small clinic in Norwood. After various odd jobs, Bill discovered a talent for carpentry. He worked as a general contractor for many years, but soon realized his gift of gab could be an asset in real estate sales as well. Bill rode Telluride’s real estate wave through the early 1990s, retiring at age 55 to get back to his passion for adventure and the outdoors. Throughout the 1970s, Bill dedicated himself to perfecting the art of mountain living. Known to many as “The Father of the Ophir Wall,” he was among the pioneer climbers in the area, with dozens of routes to his name. An avid backcountry skier, Bill and his friends got first tracks down nearly every face in the San Juans. In 1979, he co-founded the Telluride Mountain Film Festival to celebrate and share his love for climbing, mountaineering, river rafting, hiking and adventures of all sorts. Bill’s van became a fixture across the Southwest as he and Susan rafted nearly every river in the region. His rafting swansong took him from the headwaters of the Green River to the confluence with the Colorado, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. This feat is catalogued in Susan’s recently published memoir “Tandem Rowing.” Above all else, Bill loved his family, which extended well beyond bloodlines to his countless cherished friends, the entire Telluride community, and his second home in Pescadero, Mexico. He is survived by his loving wife Susan, sons Scott (Mandie) and Blake (Deb), daughter Lorraine (Paul) and grandchildren Mira (22), Alex (21), Zach (19), Marius (19), Cricket (12) and Ozzy (11). Details about Bill’s celebration of life gathering will be shared when available. William “Bill” Kees passed away on Tuesday, Nov. 9 (2021) at his home in Telluride with his wife Susan by his side. He was 79 years old. --Taken 11/19/21 from: https://www.telluridenews.com/news/article_6eafc7b4-4406-11ec-8f36-53fb4f84491c.html
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- Bill Keith
- An artist who had artwork displayed in the Art on the Corner (AOTC) exhibit in Downtown Grand Junction.
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- Bill Liddle
- A road construction supervisor on the Colorado National Monument during the building of Rim Rock Drive. He witnessed the road-building disaster that killed several workers. He died in 1934 during a separate blasting accident on the road.
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- Bill Little
- He was a foreman under the command of National Park Service engineer Thomas Secrest during the construction of Rim Rock Drive over the Colorado National Monument in the 1930's. He worked with men who lived in Civilian Conservation Corps camps on the Monument and in Fruita (near the Monument entrance). According to oral history interviewee Elbert Miracle, Little was present when a tunnel building accident that killed nine men occurred. Miracle had stomach problems and had walked away from the worksite. There, Little was trying to help him when the accident took place nearby.
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- Bill Masters
- "When San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters first started on the job, as undersheriff in 1979, he was responsible for patrolling 800 square miles of the sparsely populated West End and sometimes wouldn’t see another car for hours. There also wasn’t a county jail at that time, meaning every person arrested was transported to Montrose, a process that could eat up hours. “It took a long time to arrest somebody, so often you just didn’t,” Masters said. “You tried to resolve things on the street. We drove people to the county line and told them never to come back. It’s probably better that we have [a jail] now.” The San Miguel County that Masters presided over in those Wild West days is very different today. He has steered the county’s law enforcement through more than three decades of changes and hopes to continue for at least four more years. On Monday, Masters announced he is running for a 10th term. Masters says law enforcement is the perfect career for him. “It’s become such a part of me, I’m not sure how I envision myself otherwise,” he said. “‘Like’ isn’t really the right word. It’s a great challenge and it just seems to be something that suits me well and I can do it well.” But it wasn’t always that way. Although Masters studied criminal justice in college, he fell into law enforcement by happenstance. In the late ‘70s Masters was running lifts and cutting trails for the Telluride Ski Resort and living in Sawpit when a rockslide crushed his car. Forced to hitchhike to town, he caught a ride from the Telluride Marshal Jim Hall to Society Turn. Hall offered Masters a job with the department on the spot. The first year was difficult, he said. Instead of heading to the state police academy, Masters was put out on patrol right away with minimal training. After a year of trial by fire, the town council sent him to the academy. While he was there, the marshal quit and moved to Grand Junction. Masters was appointed to take his place. “Just by accident I ended up working as a marshal,” Masters said. “I was just a kid. I looked like I was about 14. The miners were a tough lot and giving the marshal a hard time was one of their greatest joys.” A few years later, Masters switched over to the county sheriff’s department, and the rest is history. He became county sheriff when he was just 27 years old, replacing Fred Ellerd, and never looked back. Masters now oversees a department of 33 employees. Although there is little violent crime in sleepy San Miguel County, the region still has its issues. With roughly 40 businesses with liquor licenses in the Telluride area alone, the region has its fair share of alcohol-related problems, Masters said. He has recently pushed local lawmakers on the need for a detoxification facility in Telluride. Masters also uses social media like Twitter to communicate with county residents and videos to right wrongs. Two videos he posted to YouTube — one of an asphalt spill and one of a shooting range turned garbage dump — lead to a public outcry and resulted in their cleanup. Master’s crime-fighting philosophy is to be levelheaded and pragmatic. He penned a 2001 book, “Drug War Addiction,” about the damaging results of the war on drugs and his belief that drug prohibition should be repealed. But his philosophy is about to be tested as the experiment of marijuana legalization is just beginning. “I hope people are responsible enough that we don’t have to go back into a prohibition era, but that remains to be seen,” Masters said. “It’s an interesting experiment and it may not go well. We have to see how that plays out.” Masters, originally from the Los Angeles area, is still going strong at 62 years old. Like many Telluride locals, he falls into the super-fit category, cranking out more than 20 pull-ups at the annual Noel Night contest at Jagged Edge. “They limit it to 20, but I could keep going if I had to,” he said. Masters knows of no challengers who have thrown their hat into the ring for the sheriff race — and there’s a good chance Masters, who is running as a Democrat, will remain uncontested. The last time a candidate attempted to unseat the longtime sheriff was in 1998. But he is committed to the campaign and will plan forums and answer questions closer to the November election. If an opponent emerges, he will set up a committee and begin raising money, he said. “I really appreciate the great support from this community,” Masters said. “I’ve usually won in landslide elections … and I hope I can do that again.”--from https://www.telluridenews.com/news/article_eb3fd15c-f548-53fb-af24-5d09a4cab000.html
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- Bill McCarty
- A member, along with his brother Tom and son Fred, of the McCarty Gang. He was killed by Ray Simpson, a hardware store owner in Delta, Colorado, after he and the gang tried to rob the Farmer's and Merchant's Bank on September 7, 1893.