Ariana Harner formerly wrote and edited for the Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado). She received a bachelor of arts from Mount Holyoke College and a master of arts from the University of Denver. Currently, she lives and works in Denver.
Clark Secrest is a retired editor and writer, now residing in Southern California. He graduated from the universities of Denver and Missouri and wrote for The Denver Post and the Colorado Historical Society (now History Colorado). He is the author of “Hell’s Belles,” a crime history of Denver and Colorado.
The following interview is with co-author Ariana Harner. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
Ariana Harner: Clark Secrest and I both worked in the Publications department at the Colorado Historical Society, since renamed History Colorado. In the mid-90s, Clark interviewed two survivors of the 1931 Pleasant Hill school bus tragedy, in which the vehicle became stranded in a massive snowstorm, for a “Colorado Heritage” magazine article.
The article revealed a need for a comprehensive narrative, so we decided to partner on that. In 1998, I had the time to take on the research and writing and Clark was willing to guide the project.
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Harner: “Children of the Storm” tells the true story of rural Colorado children who were snowbound in a school bus in 1931. It was a horrific two days: Several died from the cold; those who survived dealt with an unfathomable amount of publicity.
Chapter 1 introduces the characters as they go about their ordinary morning. That scene contrasts with the action that follows, both on the bus and in the ensuing weeks and months.
UNDERWRITTEN BY
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SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Harner: We felt very strongly that the story belongs to the people who experienced it. As children, they were not asked about their experiences or encouraged to share their unique perspectives. They were treated as objects upon which others laid their own agendas—which, of course, forms the second half of the book.
We saw our job as finding all the available facts and perspectives and shining a spotlight where it belongs: on the survivors.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Harner: Clark and I are history fanatics. We became experts on this very specific time and place — a part of Colorado that many newcomers to the state don’t know much about. I now know a fair amount about frostbite and hypothermia.
My favorite part, though, was getting to know the elderly survivors. Every single person welcomed me and my tape recorder into their homes. (As this occurred in the late 1990s, it was an actual tape recorder!) They were absolutely lovely humans, all willing to open up. I feel lucky to have known them even just a bit.
“Children of the Storm: The True Story of the Pleasant Hill School Bus Tragedy”
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SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Harner: Historical research is always limited by whatever information happens to endure over time. We spoke with all the survivors who were alive when we took on the project, people who were at the rescue, and community members who knew the survivors and had their own memories of the aftermath.
I spent a lot of time reading contemporary newspapers, knowing some were more reliable than others. We found the first page of a longer letter in the state archives that gives insight into the school board’s handling of the incident afterward.
There were enough primary sources to write the book. However, there’s a lot we will never know: What did that second page say? What photos were not preserved? If there had been diaries or letters left from those who had died decades earlier, those sources would have enriched or complicated the narrative.
SunLit: What’s the most important thing – a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
Harner: I see a theme of community being a supportive force. The only reason the children lived was because their neighbors and parents searched for, then cared for them. Neighbors in that setting gave practical help to each other as a matter of course.
Part of that stemmed from a lack of infrastructure — there was no one else. Dominant American society nearly a century later is not set to that default, which has advantages and perhaps disadvantages. It’s just very different.
SunLit: This is a reissue in honor of Fulcrum Publishing’s 40th anniversary. How does it feel to talk about a project you worked on 25 years ago?
Harner: I’ve had to reread it a few times because I didn’t remember much. It’s such an important and interesting event in Colorado’s history; I’m excited for people to read it. It’s a short book that rolls right along, so I’m hoping it grabs a hold of a new generation of readers.
A few more quick questions
SunLit: Which do you enjoy more as you work on a book – writing or editing?
Harner: Honestly, research!
Writing — while ultimately satisfying — is laborious and time intensive. I’ve been recently obsessed with replacing our lawn with low-water, native plants, so I’ll use gardening as a metaphor. Research informs the design and plant choice. The multiple factors such as light and shade, slope, soil pH, rabbits, rainwater — you have to do the research and make the right choices so the subsequent work (the writing) will result in your desired outcome.
Writing involves clearing land and amending soil, discovering and removing knotty old stumps beneath the surface, getting sunburned and sore over time. All that work happens before the seedlings can go into the ground. I think a common misconception is that writing is just planting.
The metaphor weakens when I think about editing, because it’s more realistic to move sections of text around than to dig up and replant flowers and grasses. But the process is basically adjusting the design to solve for unexpected or new pieces of information or goals. It feels good to get to the final editing stage of watering and weeding.
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
Harner: In college, I analyzed a piece of literature and the professor praised my paper. His reaction gave me confidence that I could express complex thoughts in writing and helped me decide to major in English.
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing?
Harner: Laura Ingalls Wilder served as an early model for fictionalizing memoir. I read all her books multiple times as a kid. A few years ago, Lighthouse Writers Workshop invited the memoirist Alexandra Fuller to Denver to discuss her writing process, and she blew me away. Her writing style and audience, culture and era couldn’t be more different than those of the “Little House” books, but there were some commonalities in their life experiences.
Listening to her talk with Wilder could be interesting. Zadie Smith’s first novel, “White Teeth” is one of my favorite novels, so I’d like to mix her in. I always enjoy being around brilliant women.
SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
Harner: Cheryl Strayed said, “Writing is hard…coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
Harner: Less than you’d think, as I read a lot of library books. But since what you’re asking is what I read, literary fiction is my love.
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
Harner: I don’t really consider myself a writer. I wrote this book almost 25 years ago, when I had little else going on and a co-author to egg me on. Since then, I’ve gone through brief writing phases, but have never established a consistent practice. When I write as regularly as I eat, I’ll call myself a writer.
SunLit: Greatest writing fear?
Harner: Mediocrity.
SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?
Harner: I think we accomplished what we set out to do with “Children of the Storm,” which was to offer some long-overdue respect to people who’d been misrepresented as children.
The survivors are all gone now, but in 2001 after they read the book, they wrote me letters expressing gratitude for the fact that we shared the events accurately. It matters a lot that we did right by them.