November 21, 2024
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Lake City Silver World. All rights reserved.
Thanksgiving next week marks the 30th anniversary of the first benefit Jingle Bell Fun Run in aid for Toys for Tots. Next week’s Fun Run starts at 10 a.m. Thanksgiving morning at Hinsdale County Museum and follows a meandering two-mile route before ending back at the museum for cookies and hot chocolate being prepared by museum director Peggy Bales. Runners and walkers taking part in the event are asked to contribute a $5 donation which goes to Hinsdale Sheriff’s Office to fund winter clothing and toys for area children. Last year’s run raised $930 which was augmented with $1,500 which was raised through Pioneer Jubilee Women’s Club’s Silent Auction. As an added challenge to this year’s Toys for Tots funding, the women’s club is not doing the benefit silent auction but is instead collecting donations with a donation box in the Armory until noon, and at the Arts Center in the afternoon during Christmas in Lake City on Saturday, December 7.
Sheriff Coursey, 44, and his Undersheriff, Ray Blaum, were on Highway 149 near the Packer Massacre Site at the base of Slumgullion Pass early Friday morning, November 18, 1994, when they halted a pickup with a man and woman suspected in a series of burglaries which had occurred hours before in Creede. After stopping the pickup, Sheriff Coursey was standing beside the vehicle when he was fatally shot with a .44-caliber Regur pistol. The vehicle’s occupants, driver Mark Allen Vredenburg, and his companion, Ruth N. Slater, then fled the scene, Undersheriff Blaum firing several bullets through the tailgate of the pickup. An intense search for the suspects followed the Sheriff’s murder, although it wasn’t until several weeks later, December 17, 1994, that the bodies of Slater and Vredenburg — an apparent murder/suicide — were found beneath a tree overlooking Lake City Heights Subdivision. Among those with heartfelt memories of Sheriff Coursey’s death is Ray Blaum, now a resident of Norfolk, Virginia, who was in Lake City with his son, Tim Blaum, for Monday’s anniversary. Jerry Gray shares the above photo of father and son Blaum who are posed beside a memorial near where Sheriff Coursey died. In addition to flowers, attached to the white cross memorial is an enclosed sign-in sheet for those visiting the site, signers including law enforcement officers from throughout the U.S. who leave their names with badge numbers.
Town of Lake City has been awarded a Tier Two Energy Impact Fund Grant in the amount of $315,000.00 that will be used to forward progress of the Town’s affordable housing project. Town Manager Lex Mulhall traveled in October to Wray, Colorado where he gave a presentation to the State Energy and Mineral Impact Assistance Fund Advisory Committee, detailing Lake City’s desperate need for affordable housing. Earlier this week, Mulhall reports to WORLD, he received word from the Committee that the grant was approved with a $35,000 match from Town of Lake City. This money will be used for design, engineering and architecture of a 28-unit structure to be erected on the lots adjacent to the Medical Center. A Request for Proposals for completion of this work will go public in January 2025.
Copyright ©️ 2024 Lake City Silver World. All rights reserved.
