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Room service for five

Strater Hotel dedicates rooms to people who made a difference

In 2012, the Strater Hotel began dedicating rooms to notables and celebrities who had stayed there, to people who had been instrumental in making it an iconic feature of Durango and to the builders of La Plata County and its communities.

On Thursday, as the hotel teemed with several hundred locals at its annual open house, five more rooms were dedicated – to Maurice Levey, Frank Fitchue, P.C. Schools, Patrick Francis Cummins and Doug Morrison. They join 24 previous honorees.

“I pick them and try to pick people who made an impact but are not necessarily so well-known,” third-generation owner Rod Barker said. “The two that mean the most to me are the ones dedicated to my family and Denny Viles. I knew him really well, and he touched me with his kindness.”

This year, Barker opened about a third of the historic hotel’s 93 rooms in a self-guided tour, which kept the crowd flowing along the four floors.

“I was inspired by the Molly Brown House in Denver, where they open every room so you can explore,” he said.

Members of the Cummins family were on hand for the dedications. Their ancestor was a talented stonemason and bricklayer who brought several of his brothers over from Ireland to help him build much of Durango.

Kitty Ratcliffe, one of Patrick Francis Cummins’ great-granddaughters, didn’t know any of her Cummins relations until she brought her mother, Kathie Ratcliffe, to Durango last year to finally discover her roots. They stayed at the Strater, and that’s where she learned about the room-dedication project.

“I didn’t know anything about the room dedications or Kitty,” her Durango-residing third cousin Tom Cummins said. “I got this email from her asking if I was a relation, and it turned out I was.”

Ratcliffe, who hails from St. Louis, attended the dedication with her sister Pam Von Jouanne, from Alabama. She spearheaded the nomination, with Tom Cummins providing the supporting historical information.

Ratcliffe has had a busy week. Her brother John Ratcliffe was elected in 2014 to the U.S. House of Representatives, and Wednesday, their mother and Ratcliffe joined his wife, Michele, at the First Lady’s Luncheon in Washington, D.C. She grabbed a red-eye flight to make it to the dedication.

“I just met them, and now I have a cousin who’s a congressman,” Tom Cummins said.

This year for Mother’s Day, the Ratcliffe women are off to County Galway in Ireland, where the Cummins clan originated.

After the 2015 dedication, a little less than a third of the rooms have been dedicated, and Barker wants to dedicate them all, he said.

“We can even name the Oak Room,” he said. “There’s not any oak in there anymore, it’s all mahogany and walnut.”

Barker already has selected one honoree for 2016. The Durango Herald will join Mercy Regional Medical Center, Electra Sporting Club and the First National Bank of Durango as institutions that have made a significant contribution to La Plata County.

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The honorees are:

Maurice ‘Morris’ Levey

Room 404

For more than 40 years, Levey owned and operated the Tiffany Mercantile Co. in the small town in southeastern La Plata County. The only Jewish person many residents had ever met, he made his store a place of welcome for the community and helped many a resident feed their families during the Depression. As isolated as Tiffany was, in 1956, Levey had a brush with Hollywood. Mike Todd, in the area while filming “Around the World in 80 Days,” considered the store a sanctuary from the film set and stayed in contact with Levey until his untimely death in 1958.

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Frank Fitchue

Room 306

The hero in an early Durango crime, Fitchue had been born of freed slaves in 1855. While working as the night watchman at the First National Bank of Durango, he was approached by a gang who wanted to break into the bank’s safe through Fitchue’s quarters in the bank’s basement. Agreeing, he instead notified A.P. Camp, then the bank’s vice president, to notify him of the attempt. The plot was foiled, and the $30,000 in gold and currency was saved. Fitchue was not recognized by the bank for his bravery at the time, but in 2007, the bank installed a plaque recounting his courage.

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Philip ‘P.C.’ Schools

Room 411

A man who studied electrical engineering because “electricity is the coming thing,” P.C. Schools was the general superintendent of the Western Colorado Power Co. beginning in 1913. He supervised crews building power lines over the mountains to power plants in places such as Ouray, Telluride and Tacoma. Not only was he a hands-on supervisor, Schools believed that bringing electricity to rural Southwest Colorado should be documented, never leaving his home without his camera. He shot most of the photos in the book Tough Men in Hard Places by Esther Greenfield.

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Patrick Francis Cummins

Room 304

When people say Patrick Francis Cummins built Durango, they mean it in the literal sense. Honored along with his wife, Mary Doyle Cummins, and his extended family, Cummins was a talented stonemason and bricklayer. An immigrant from Ireland, he brought several of his brothers over. Together, they ran Cummins Rock Quarry in Horse Gulch, building many of the stone and brick homes and businesses in town. Cummins was also a civic leader, elected as alderman of the Fourth Ward, perhaps because a vote on the question of whether Durango should be wet or dry was also on the ballot, and the wet supporters thought having an Irishman in office could only help their cause.

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W. Douglas Morrison

Room 410

Of a more recent era than the other honorees, W. Douglas “Doug” Morrison was active in Durango’s business community, including owning KIUP-AM and founding KRSJ-FM, which were purchased by a another room designee, former President Gerald Ford (Room 333), and folded into what is now Four Corners Broadcasting. But Morrison’s most enduring legacy is founding The 100 Club of Durango after a major fire in 1974 killed a Durango police officer and fireman. The club provides immediate financial support to first responders and their families who are killed or injured in the line of duty and has expanded its work today to provide scholarships for their children.

abutler@durangoherald.com

Doug Morrison bio (PDF)

Maurice Levey bio (PDF)

Strater Hotel 2015 tour (PDF)

Frank Fitchue bio (PDF)

P.C. Schools bio (PDF)

Patrick Francis Cummins bio (PDF)

To nominate someone

Anyone can nominate someone to have a room dedicated in their honor at the Strater Hotel. Nomination forms are available at www.strater.com in the About Us section under Room Dedication Project.



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