23 June 2021 – Before I leave town tomorrow, I thought I would spend the day focusing on where I am. Arvada, Colorado, is where my parents live. It sits in the suburbs of Denver to the Northwest, bordering on Golden and reaching toward Boulder. This is the city my parents grew up in and where they went to high school, met and fell in love. Since my dad was in the Air Force and we always lived away, our family vacations were usually spent coming to Arvada to visit my grandparents. We would drive cross country from wherever we were living. Usually, we can in the summer, but a few times we came during the holidays. We also lived in Arvada twice, if only for short times.

The first visit I remember was Christmas of 1978 when I was almost 7 years old. We had been stationed at Andrews AFB in Maryland, and my dad had just received orders to Rhein-Main AFB in Frankfurt, Germany. The plan was that my dad would leave after Christmas to fly to Germany, get settled and find a place to live, then we would fly over to live with him. In the meantime, my mother, sister, brother, and I would live with my Grandma Rita. My brother was a newborn. He had just been born in October. So, my mom, sister and brother flew to Colorado. We weren’t taking everything to Germany, so we had a truckload of stuff to store at my grandma’s house. My dad and I traveled by U-Haul from Maryland to Colorado. It was an adventure. It was also the first time I ever had a Wendy’s hamburger, and I have loved them since. My favorite part of that memory is arriving in Arvada after dark and seeing Christmas lights everywhere. Christmas lights look so much brighter and cooler when you are on a hill looking into a valley.

While living with Grandma Rita, I was in the second grade. The second-grade classes at Secrest Elementary were doing something different that year. They were meeting in cottage schools. It was two houses side by side in the neighborhood that had been converted to classrooms. I loved it. I made a friend who lived across the street, and it was great. This was the year math became big for me. My teacher was giving us timed addition and subtraction sheets. We’ve all done them. One hundred problems on a sheet, and you do as many as you can in the time given. She would grade them and tally up the number correct for each person, and we would get a star for every ten we got right. The first person to 1000 got to go to McDonald’s for lunch with the teacher. They had been doing this for about a month before I started, so I didn’t have a chance until I did, and I was the one who got to lunch. We lived in Arvada just until April when we moved to Germany with Dad. Arvada memories stored away.

Right before sixth grade in August of 1983, we moved back to Colorado for a few months. We had been stationed at Malmstrom AFB in Great Fall, Montana, and we were moving to Myrtle Beach AFB in South Carolina. My dad was cross-training into Logistics and had to go to school at Lowry AFB (now closed) in Denver. This time we lived with my dad’s parents, Oddy and Helen. They lived right across the street from Fitzmorris Elementary School, where I would start sixth grade. I was all in again. I made quick friends, and I was even the crossing guard for the light in front of the school. We left Colorado in late October for South Carolina. More Arvada memories stored.

Grandma Rita is my mom’s mom. We used to love going to her house to play in her high heels and get our nails painted. She always had long nails painted bright colors. She used to play bingo on the weekends, she drank a lot of coffee, and she smoked. If you had Mountain Dew in her house, it had to stay in the can because she hated the color. She loved Colorado Sports, especially the Broncos, and she was a huge John Elway fan. Rita loved to crochet and made everything. We all have matching afghans she made for us. She used to drive a school bus before she had an office job. She helped coach softball, and she sold tickets at high school football games. She was always on the move until she got sick with COPD several years ago, and she was forced to slow down. Rita was widowed in 1976 at age 44, and she remained single the rest of her life. She died last year at the age of 86. Arvada memories stored.

Oddy and Helen were my dad’s parents. They were the kind of grandparents who did grandparent things. My grandmother had a wonderful garden where she grew everything from flowers to vegetables and gooseberries. She always made homemade pickles and canned peaches. She taught me to make the best banana bread and drink my Tang warm (try it, you’ll love it). She made many of her own clothes and hung her clothes on the line. My grandfather was the type always to have a project. He built a bar in the basement, including shelves of liquor and cool glasses. He had light-up beer signs and mirrored walls. He kept a candy jar on the bar for us. We loved that room in the basement with the lights and the comfy furniture and the other crazy things we found. Oddy loved me like I was the only person in the world when I was around. It was an adorable love. When Helen got sick with dementia, I would drive twelve hours from Oklahoma City up to Arvada on the weekends to visit. I remember Meghan and I watching the Broncos win two Super Bowls with him. Arvada Memories stored.

In 1999, my parents moved back to Arvada. They had always wanted to move back, and after Helen died and left Oddy on his own, it was the perfect excuse for them. It worked out well because it allowed my mom to have a relationship with her mother and sisters that she had missed out on since she lived so far away. They have made a wonderful home here with some great friends through their Colorado Auto Racing Club and their work with the organization Warm Hearts, Warm Babies. My mom has had many health issues over the years, and they have found doctors they really like and trust. We’ve traveled to visit them many times over the years. We’ve come for a couple of family reunions, Christmases, their 50th wedding anniversary and just because. I have been here many times in the last few years. Today I drove to all of my favorite Arvada places. I am trying to continue to make Arvada Memories.

A special note: Earlier this week an Arvada police officer was shot and killed. His name was Gordon Beesley. He was killed in Olde Town Arvada. This area is where my grandmother’s church is and where the girls and I love to go when we are here to eat and shop because everything is little local places. It was a sad thing for the area and for us. Blessings on his family and the community. Read article here.