GRAND JUNCTION (AP) – Matt Nichols’ normally sparkly eyes are shrouded behind a haze of grief as he clutches a stack of sympathy cards, the latest in the dozens that arrive daily at his grandmother’s home.
Some family and friends address the cards simply to Matt on KE Road in Molina, but the cards show up regardless. By now, everyone – including a cousin who works to deliver the mail – knows how the 20-year-old lost the two favorite men in his life: his father, Clancy, and his only brother, Danny.
Day in and day out, Plateau Valley residents rise with the sun, raise children and livestock, share dinner and tuck into bed at night in the shadow of Grand Mesa, the world’s largest flattop mountain.
But the slopes seemed to turn against them when a nearly 3-mile-long landslide consumed three loved and respected men – the Nichols men and the beloved father of five children, Wes Hawkins – as they went to check on an irrigation problem and its possible impact to a road.
While the events of the May 25 landslide are unfair to say the least – something that has been dubbed a once-in-10,000-years event – Matt Nichols can still crack a smile and recall the good times.
“They were up there helping out and were chosen to go,” he said, wiping away some tears, surrounded by family at his grandmother’s home, the homestead where his dad grew up.
“Dad’s probably embarrassed by it,” he surmised, describing his father as always helping someone solve a problem, but not one to step into the limelight.
“Danny always wanted to go out with a bang,” Nichols smiled.
So it’s little surprise Matt Nichols wanted what his brother would have wanted.
Danny Nichols, 24, a geologist with Olsson Associates in Grand Junction, likely went with their father that fateful day, interested in a report of a smaller landslide uphill from where the ground would later give way to a towering wall of mud and debris.
Matt Nichols, a recent graduate of fire science of Aims Community College in Greeley, has plans to apply as a firefighter at the Grand Junction Fire Department.
Battling fires with the Plateau Valley Fire Protection District has long been a family affair, with the three men, and the boys’ mother, Monica, all longtime volunteers.
Nichols is now nearly the same age as his father was when Clancy’s sister, Mary Lane, lost her husband. Mike Lane also worked for Mesa County’s Road and Bridge Department and was likely swept away in a river while checking on a flooded road. Since the moment his brother-in-law disappeared, Clancy stepped right up to be a father figure to her children, Mary Lane said.
Now, Matt Nichols sees the duties of raising the extended family’s younger generation falling to him.
“More than once, people have said that Matt is his father’s son, and he has handled this all with maturity,” said Matt’s aunt, Diana Musselman.
Matt has plans to finish some of the projects his father started, like working on the backyard of his home.
