After living a life that required a great deal of hardy survival, Allene Pera has turned 100 in high style.
A resident at Sunshine Gardens, she doesn’t need any assistance walking, and instead helps others get to meals and activities. Pera does suffer from hearing loss, but that hasn’t stopped her from knitting and quilting 140 blankets in the last three years for Project Linus.
But perhaps I should get back to the hardy part. Born in Nucla, raised primarily in Rico, she and her husband, Walter, were living in Telluride during the Depression.
This might particularly resonate with those of you who have read “The Tomboy Bride,” which is about a young woman beginning her married life at the 11,500-foot Tomboy Mine near Tellurude. Pera can do the bride one better.
In 1939, Walter Pera was working for Western Colorado Power Co., in the summer and in the mine in the winter.
Then he got a job offer - a full time job with Western Colorado Power working at a switching station. The catch? The couple, who already had a toddler with one on the way, would have to live above the Tomboy year round, and in the winter, it would be just them, connected to the world by a phone line. As Walter Pera didn’t like working in the mines, they decided to go for it.
Allene Pera’s sister owned a grocery store, so they purchased a year’s worth of nonperishables on credit and off they went. In June, it was beautiful, and the small mining town was abustle. Then came October, and it was a ghost town. Except for the Peras.
In February, as Allene Pera’s due date was fast approaching, her doctor wanted her to come to town to give birth. So, at 9 months pregnant, she snowshoed two miles with a toddler and a suitcase.
That was just the start of the journey. Stage Two was working her way down through the shafts and ladders of the mine to get down to its lower entrance. And then she had to ride down in the tram, which transported both personnel and ore, with a miner perched on the edge to balance it, finally arriving in town. Whew!
That baby, her daughter Dorothy (Pera) Burr, decided to make a late arrival, and after two weeks, the doctor wanted to do a C-section. The Peras decided to wait one day, because they didn’t want her to be born on Feb. 29. (Now that’s thinking ahead!)
After giving birth on March 1, Allene Pera had to do the trip in reverse after two weeks in the hospital. (That’s what they did in those days, unlike the give-birth-today, go-home-tomorrow schedule we have these days.) Her husband, who came down to be with her, had taken the 2-year-old back with him, along with their newly purchased console radio. After stringing a wire to the antenna, he found they had such good reception at that altitude, they could listen to programs from all over the world. But I digress.
Allene Pera had to make that daunting journey again, this time uphill with a baby and a suitcase. Fortunately, she had her sewing and embroidery as well as two young children to keep her occupied once she was back on top.
At the end of their year, the Peras decided one year was enough of that, so they moved back into town. Walter Pera went back to his two-job schedule until he was finally hired full time at Western Power. Next stop: Electra Lake. The water in the lake is used for generating power at the Tacoma hydroelectric power plant, and the company needed a man on site.
Much like their time above the Tomboy, the lake was busy in the summer, but only the Peras and the Electra Sporting Club’s caretaker lived there 12 months of the year. That was home for 15 years. By this time, the couple had five children, who went into town every day for school via a private car hired by School District 9-R, because they and the caretaker’s children were the only ones to be picked up at the northern end of the county.
Pera lost her husband in 2006 at the age of 92.
Her grandchildren often hear sentences like “You’re 55 and you still have your grandmother?”
The Pera clan stretched to five generations three years ago, when the first great-great-grandchild, Spring D’Angelo, was born.
All generations were on hand to celebrate the landmark birthday Saturday at the Durango Community Recreation Center.
Of course, the question everyone asks someone who reaches this august age is, “What’s your secret to living so long?” The answer is often something like “a brandy and a cigar every day,” which makes all of us think this clean-living style is vastly overrated.
But Allene Pera has narrowed it down even farther.
“I’ve lived this long because I haven’t died,” she says.
Many happy returns to Durango’s newest centenarian.
HHH
The weather is supposed to be sunny and bright for the birthdays of Tom Compton, Marian Hamlen, Brenda TeBrink, Caroni Adams, Karen Thompson, Joan Forry, Lauren Rardin, Anne Chase, Pat Smiley, Jim Trump, John C. Hening, Carleen Utterback, Haley Benjamin, Roger King, Lois Bartig-Small, Greta Cahill, Anne Chase, Nancy Welch and Barbara Morris.
HHH
Now we go from one of Durango’s super senior residents to one of its youngest, 8-year-old Chloe Harris, who was diagnosed with leukemia in January. The good news is that she’s in remission.
But she got there by undergoing chemotherapy at Children’s Hospital in Denver a month at a time from Jan. 20 to June 1. Her mom, chiropractor Stephanie Harris, had to quit her job to be there with her, and Chloe only got the occasional week here and there to come home.
As anyone who’s had cancer knows, remission is only the first step. Chloe and her mom or dad, Craig, will have to return to Denver for monthly checkups for the next year and ongoing checkups for the following two years.
To say it’s been an intense time for the Harris family would be an understatement, and they’re working on regaining an equilibrium. They’re also working on paying the assorted travel and medical payments that go with a major illness like this.
Craig Harris is well-known in the music community as a longtime disc jockey at KDUR-FM public radio as well as music director there for many years in the 1990s and 2000s.
When Chloe was diagnosed, KDUR and the folks at the nonprofit Durango Acoustic Music started planning a way to help. At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, they are sponsoring a concert featuring Truckstop Honeymoon at the Rochester Hotel’s Secret Garden.
This is how Kim Pappin of DAM introduces the band that is right up Durango’s musical alley: “Described as a combination of bluegrass, jazz and straight-up rock ’n’ roll, Truckstop Honeymoon is a husband-and-wife duo that sings songs with fearless honesty and entertains crowds with their ‘vaudevillian’ wit and showmanship.”
DAM is covering the costs, so everything earned at the gate goes to the Harrises. They’re asking for a minimum $10 donation, but if your generosity of spirit moves you, more would be greatly appreciated. If you can’t make the concert but would like to help, a Chloe Harris Fund has been set up at First National Bank of Durango, 259 W. 9th St, Durango, CO 81301.
Kudos in the story go to Chloe’s second-grade teacher at Needham Elementary School, Dawn McDermond. As soon as she realized that Chloe would miss the bulk of second grade, McDermond went to School District 9-R and arranged for funding for summer tutoring, so the 8-year-old could advance with her classmates.
Chloe’s a happy, active kid who loves science and plans to be an artist-baker, the kind who decorates those fabulous cakes. Her little brother, Jordan, 5, is happy to have her back and his family settling back into its natural rhythms again. And it’s nice to see Chloe’s smile back.
HHH
It was a glorious weekend at Music in the Mountains as the Festival Orchestra took the stage.
Maestro Guillermo Figueroa conducted the orchestra in Battle of the Ages. Ida Kavafian shone on Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Opus 19.
There was a pause as the audience took a breath as she ended, not the kind of pause where you’re wondering if the final movement has been played, but the pause the audience takes because it doesn’t want to ruin the magical moment it has experienced. For the second half, the orchestra played its heart out on Dvorâk’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Opus 70. The Dvorâk has a special meaning for Figueroa, as it was the piece he conducted as an audition for the position as music director at Music in the Mountains he has held since 2007.
The concert was also a reunion of sorts. Kavafian and Figueroa met at the famous Interochen Center for the Arts summer camp when they were kids, and the two studied violin with the same teacher for five years at The Juilliard School in New York City. Kavafian is a faculty member both at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute, where the next evening’s guest conductor, Karina Canellakis, was one of Kafavian’s favorite students.
And I find myself wordless when it comes to Sunday’s concert. Bravos all around, to Canellakis, a talented and graceful conductor, pianist Petronel Malan, who owned Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G and for the orchestra, who played Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A, Opus 92, as I’ve never heard it before. A double standing ovation for Malan and a triple standing ovation for Canellakis said it all.
HHH
Nothing says happy anniversary like chilled champagne and fresh strawberries for the anniversaries of Mike and Marie Davidson, Tom and Missy Carter, Bruce Harris and Leigh Nielsen, Melinda Riter and Dan Martin, John and Judy Peel and Harlan and Bonna Steinle.
HHH
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