Day: July 4, 2024

… Revered Lake City artist, 96, mirrored quickening pulse ofLake City in early 1970s. Born in Brooklyn, New York, April 4, 1928, Bob Maurer followed a passion for art from his earliest years. His acclaimed art career extended from Brooklyn to eventually Lake City and then on to Grand Junction and Gunnison. Early in life, his art career took a brief intermission 1947 to 1950 when he served in the U.S. Army Reserves as an upholsterer apprentice and as Army Sergeant/Cook from August, 1950, to April, 1952. At his death, age 96, earlier this spring at Aspen Ridge Alzheimer’s Special Care facility in Grand Junction, the former Lake City resident told jokes and conversed with family. He retained his art skills until shortly before his death, avidly scanning a blank sheet of paper and then skillfully creating a line drawing depicting family and friends and creating a lifelike image of a family dog. On the day of his death, he inquired about family members and, in a final gesture, laid aside his art markers and pencils for one last time. “And that was just dad,” says Maurer’s daughter, Kim Spirek, “like the Energizer Bunny, he was a fighter to the end.” A memorial service will be held at Veterans Memorial Cemetery, 2830 Riverside Parkway in Grand Junction, at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, July 9. As a native New Yorker, Bob received formal art training at Cooper Union and School for Visual Arts in New York. Fresh out of college, he joined the scenery painters union and painted scenery for such Broadway smashes as “Voice of the Turtle”, “Oklahoma!”, “I Remember Mama”, and “Detective Story”. A blind date on August 25, 1957, was particularly eventful. As luck would have it, Bob’s date that night was Lydia Victoria Holtz (1928-2007), a native of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who was working as a fashion illustrator in New York City. Smitten at first sight, Bob and Lydia married on September 21, 1957, just three and a half weeks after their initial date. The couple relocated from New York to Denver in 1959 and started a family. In Denver, Bob was art director for ABC Television. He opened Studio 10 with corporate accounts which included Pepsi Cola before relocating to Boulder, Colorado, where he worked as graphic designer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Despite having a fine house and comfortable livelihood on the front range, the Maurers were restless. When asked about their eventual relocation from comfortable Boulder to a pioneer cabin in a small town called Lake City on Colorado’s Western Slope, Bob Maurer reflected, “sure we had a comfortable home but in retrospect we spent 10 months of the year camping out, we liked rural areas better than we liked city life.” 1972 was a milestone year for Bob and Lydia, and their young family, which by that point had grown with the birth of eldest son Marc, twin daughters Kim and Lisa, and youngest son Toby. Enchanted with the art prospects of Lake City, they arranged with Harold Stewart to purchase a near-century-old log commercial building at the southwest corner of 4th and Silver Street. The structure had a storied past starting with Bank of Lake City in 1876 and engineer and surveying headquarters for brothers J.J. and J.W. Abbott. Still later and before the Maurers opened The Artists’ Workshop, the log structure with clapboard siding was home of W.C. Blair’s Lake City TIMES and SILVER WORLD Newspaper from 1916 until the newspaper ceased publication in 1938. In Lake City, the Maurers made ends meet by creating an inspirational art studio and gallery which they christened The Artists’ Workshop featuring pen and ink, calligraphy, acrylic, oil, and watercolor artwork of local scenes which they created, together with the works of other local artists. The original log cabin building was enlarged with an addition, now World of Gem Creations, starting in 1975. Relocating to Lake City, according to Bob Maurer in 1972, “has been the most rewarding experience of our married lives. We’re breathing fresh air and meeting a lot of people who enjoy the same lifestyle we do. We have found a good place to raise our children and we have found friends who are not afraid of openness and love. What more could you ask?” The Artists’ Workshop, a combination of print shop, mini gallery and the Maurer family residence with its round oak dining table and nearby coffee pot, was the epicenter of Lake City’s resurgence starting in the early 1970s. Comfortable entertainers who enjoyed lively conversation and debate with like-minded progressives, it was at the Maurer dining room table that initial conversations were held on the formation of a local historical society and museum, in 1973, and — January 22, 1974 — it was at the Maurer family’s round oak dining table that initial discussions were held which resulted in the formation of Lake City Area Medical Center.  While small Lake City, set in a virtual wilderness setting had many good points, Mrs. Maurer as the mother of four young children acknowledged that the lack of medical facilities was a glaring drawback. “I was getting very nervous about there being no doctor,” Lydia said in 1975, “when you have youngsters who hunt, fish, and ski you get that way.” In addition to Bob and Lydia Maurer, also present for that initial landmark discussion on the requisite need for establishing locally-based medical facilities were Terrance Burnell who worked with Outward Bound on the upper Lake Fork, and local business owner Margaret Therese Ryan. Others taking part in those early discussions were Lake City native Jessie Hunt Wheeler, Tom Ortenburger, and Bob and Becky Weeks. I believe Phil & Susie Mason and Burton Smith and Patsy (Smith) Troutner were also involved. Lydia Maurer headed up a group of local volunteers to raise $5,000 and convince members of Pioneer Jubilee Women’s Club to vacate the front portion of their Silver Street club rooms — now Linda Gardner’s Inklings in the Mountains