The newly created Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument helped spark the ski industry and was used as a high-elevation military training site.
World War II
Posted inColoradans, News, Politics and Government
Amache is on the verge of earning national park status — and its place in history — after U.S. Senate approves bill
Nearly 80 years after a presidential order created incarceration camps on American soil to hold people of Japanese descent, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation Monday night designating the site of Colorado’s Granada War Relocation Center – also known as Camp Amache – a national historic site. The vote marks the last key step toward […]
Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews
SunLit Interview: Author Bill Sonn found a “starter drug” in library archives
Bill Sonn is an author and long-time writer whose work has appeared in Outside/Mariah and Chicago magazines, The Progressive, Columbia Journalism Review, The Boston Globe, Bild, Westword and more. A former news and communications executive and editor of several health care and general periodicals, he co-founded a news company and served as a consultant to […]
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
SunLit Special: “Something Like Treason” tells a bizarre Colorado-based story of WWII
Editor’s note: This passage from “Something Like Treason” tells the true story of a U.S. Army company, based in the Colorado mountains, designed as a landing spot for misfits, including men who were alienated, brilliant, suspected of harboring anti-American sentiment — or gay. Led by the only American soldier convicted of treason in the U.S. […]
Posted inColoradans, News
Colorado forgot this WWII hero. A new statue at the Capitol will help it remember.
In George Lundeen’s second-floor studio, the 3-foot tall clay model of the war hero stands surrounded by military paraphernalia acquired to guarantee historical accuracy, from the general’s two-starred helmet to the cut of his jodhpurs to the way his signature cavalry boots creased from constant wear. But one conundrum remains: Lundeen, the 72-year-old Loveland sculptor, […]
Posted inArts, Culture
Memorial honoring Korean “comfort women” during WWII turned down by Aurora
AURORA — David Oh has a clear vision for a “Statue of Peace” memorial on Aurora city grounds, but it won’t likely ever materialize. He envisions a girl dressed in a hanbok, a traditional Korean dress, sitting on a chair with a bird perched on her shoulder. Her hair is cropped short and she has […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, News, Politics and Government
Push to get Colorado’s Amache internment camp a national park designation interrupted by coronavirus
At first, the trip unfolded as just an academic tracing of family history. John Tonai had for years heard the stories from his father, Minoru, about the Amache internment camp in southeastern Colorado, where the U.S. government transported thousands of Japanese Americans from California and held them behind barbed wire and guard posts for three […]
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
In “Scholars of Mayhem,” a real-life WWII secret agent’s exploits remained hidden for years in a tin box
Daniel C. Guiet is the son of Jean Claude Guiet, who began his clandestine career as an embedded agent in occupied France during WWII. Daniel graduated from Manual High School in 1970. He attended the University of Colorado and subsequently became the associate director of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood. He later moved to Durango, Colorado, […]
Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews
Daniel Guiet pieced together his father’s clandestine life slowly, from a discovery at age 5
Daniel C. Guiet is the son of Jean Claude Guiet, who began his clandestine career as an embedded agent in occupied France during WWII. Daniel graduated from Manual High School in 1970. He attended the University of Colorado and subsequently became the associate director of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood. He later moved to Durango, Colorado, […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Silverman: Our greatest generation succeeded despite setbacks. Let’s hope our kids can do the same.
What happens when world events interrupt scholastic achievement? Severe disruptions such as COVID-19 are rare, but not unprecedented. An American boy named Felix Sparks, born Aug. 2, 1917, was a superb sportsman and student at his Miami, Arizona, high school when the Great Depression hit. His copper mining town got crushed. There were no jobs. […]