Fly away home: Meyer plane takes off

Taxiing down a runway became a trip down memory lane on Sunday as the curious, history buffs and pilots gathered to bid adieu to a Conifer landmark.

About 300 people gathered at Norm Meyer’s home on U.S 285 to see his Cessna 180 leave Conifer for its new home in Hotchkiss on the Western Slope.

“It’s wonderful to have everyone here to help me kiss my baby goodbye,” Meyer said.

Before most people arrived for the event, Meyer slowly stepped up to his plane — and literally kissed it goodbye.

“Norm’s probably a little nostalgic,” said pilot Dave Callender of Arvada. “There’s a lot of history here.”

Meyer shared stories of flying adventures, and others offered their memories of the Cessna and their history with Meyer. Still others came to photograph and preserve the historic event — the moment the Conifer landscape changed.

“It’s been here for 40 years. I can scarcely believe it myself,” Meyer said.

The plane, housed at the Meyer home, has caught the attention of drivers on U.S. 285 for many years.

“You can talk to anyone, and they know this airplane,” said pilot Keith Serkes of Erie. “It’s kind of a hard day for Meyer.”

Meyer asked Serkes and Callender to fly the Cessna 180, tail No. N3490Y, to Erie, and from there new co-owner Ron Rouse flew it solo to Hotchkiss.

“I’m one of the few people who’s flown in and out of this airport,” Serkes said. “For a one-way airstrip, it’s fine, but it’s no place for an amateur or beginner.”

Bill Bredar of Denver, a former Navy pilot, said Meyer was a member of the UFOs, the United Flying Octogenarians, a group of more than 80 pilots who, to qualify for membership, must fly as a command pilot on or near their 80th birthday.
“The time has come, and Meyer can handle it,” Bredar said.

Fellow pilot Graham Witherspoon said it was sad to see the plane fly away. He enjoyed all the trips he and Meyer flew together.

“It’s a happy/sad event, having flown in the plane so many times,” said Meyer’s son, Norm Jr. “Having the plane is just like people. It’s a little bit transitory. What a great community that something like this will bring us all together. Let’s find more things to do just that.”

Friend Tim Horgan of Bailey helped prepare the plane for departure and was melancholy as he watched the Cessna take off and fly to the east of Meyer’s Yellow House. He said he’d flown several hundred hours with Meyer and saw the plane’s departure as the end of a chapter.

“Twenty-five years of flying with him,” Horgan said. “It was fun.”

“We’re sad to see it go, but an airplane needs to be flown,” said Meyer's daughter, Sharon Rouse.

As the Cessna’s 230-horsepower engine thrummed to life, Denver resident Ron Dreyer provided a bagpipe serenade of an old Irish tune, and as the red-and-white Cessna flew past the crowd, the air was filled with the Air Force theme song, “Wild Blue Yonder.”

The crowd cheered as the plane circled the historic property twice and disappeared over the mountains. Leaning on a split-rail fence, Meyer, who has logged 30,300 flying hours, watched from the ground as his flying career came to a close.
According to Meyer, new owner Ron Rouse called after making the flight from Erie to Hotchkiss and said the trip had been interesting.

“ ‘I didn’t realize how touchy that airplane really is,’ ” Meyer said he was told.

This story ran in the August 25, 2010 issue of the High Timber Times

Conifer icon to fly away

With a heavy heart and misty eye, longtime Conifer resident Norm Meyer will watch his beloved red-and-white Cessna take off, possibly for the last time.

Meyer has sold his plane, which sits in its hangar near the Yellow House along U.S. 285 as an unofficial landmark of Conifer. It will soar to its new owners in Gunnison on Aug. 22.

Though the plane is leaving Conifer, it will still be in the Meyer family, and a pint-sized family member, 3-year-old Porter Norman Houck, is excited about the flying skills he will acquire in his great-grandpa’s plane.

Meyer calls Porter plane-crazy, and the youngster already has many miles under his toddler-sized belt.
“I like the wings, and I like to make turns (in the plane) and turn the flaps,” Porter said.

Roanne Houck, Porter’s mom and the plane’s new co-owner, said: “It’s sad to just sell (the plane) to a random pilot. It’s great to keep it in the family.”

Meyer felt it was time to quit flying but didn’t want to let the 1968 Cessna 180 Taildragger sit idle.

“It’s just time. I’m going to be 94 years old, and I’ve got to quit flying sometime,” Meyer said.

Houck is buying the plane along with her father, Meyer’s former son-in-law, Ron Rouse of Gunnison. Rouse, also a pilot, now needs to get current on Cessna Taildragger certification, a requirement because of the plane’s unusual wheel configuration. Houck doesn’t fly.

Home base
Meyer said he bought the Cessna in 1970. A plane’s odometry is gauged by hours, not miles, and the plane has been flown only about 1,300 hours. It has been struck by lightning a few times while in the air and received little or no damage.

The hangar is a converted garage with only a few inches of extra space on each side of the wings. A winch system pulls the plane out and rolls it back into its berth.

Meyer created an airstrip in the back hayfield of the Meyer Ranch, and on sectional aeronautical charts the strip is labeled the Meyer Ranch Airport-5co6. He said many fliers have availed themselves of the strip when in jeopardy. The airstrip will remain as is, just in case.

Long history of flying
Meyer said he couldn’t hazard a guess of how many miles he’s flown in his 67 years as a pilot, but probably the number is “many millions.” He said he was proud to be a trusted pilot who took responsibility for his passengers and cargo. He shouldered that responsibility while flying for the military and Continental Airlines.

“I never scratched a person or an airplane,” Meyer said. “I had no right to be tired or sleepy or hung over. Those people trusted me.”

Meyer calls the Cessna “my baby” and said it will be hard to look at the empty hangar. He wonders if he could find a junk airplane, a ghost-like apparition of his life-long passion.

“I hope they come back once in a while and take me for a ride,” Meyer said.


This story ran in the August 18 issue of the High Timber Times

Room to move: Community center to get new foundation

The Pine Grove Community Center was slowly winched off its foundation and onto its temporary home in preparation for a historical facelift.

The historic building, located at 16624 Pine Valley Road was moved on July 26, inch by inch over to a vacant area on the property. The building is in bad need of repair and renovation and the project has been the focus of the Pine/Elk Creek Improvement Association and the Pine Grove community. The first step was removing the building from its old, unsteady foundation.

Moving an approximately 110-year-old building is easy, according to Jim Ryberg of Ryberg Construction.

Ryberg said it took about four days to prepare the building and was just a matter of picking it up and moving over using rollers and jacks. He said it wouldn’t be hard to move the building back onto its new foundation. Excavation and construction on the foundation have already begun and the project should be completed sometime by the end of the year.

Community center history
According to the PECIA, the community center was the town’s first church and served different denominations for approximately 50 years.

In 1949, William Baehr, owner of the property now known as Pine Valley Ranch Park, donated the money for the PECIA to purchase the aging church, now the oldest remaining church building in Jefferson County. The center was placed on the Jefferson County Register of Historic Landmarks in 2004.

The PECIA is a non-profit, corporation formed in 1947 by citizens to bring about changes to the community.

The center is a place for public meetings, potlucks, parties, weddings, educational activities and community events.

New construction
Pat Lang of Buffalo Creek is overseeing the building’s renovation and this is the third building she’s moved.

“I love working on old building,” said Lang. “The whole town is excited about the move.”

A few days before the move, the building was raised four-feet off the ground with hydraulic jacks and placed on large beams. Construction crews moved the building in about an hour.

Lang, who’s been in construction for 36 years said before the move, the building was braced because it was sagging due to the dry-stack rock foundation underneath the building. Sections of airline cables criss-cross the inside of the building providing stability for the move.

“That’s the reason the building is off kilter,” said Lang.

The building is 864 square feet and measures 36 ½ feet by 24 ½ feet. The ceiling is at 16 feet tall and the walls are 14 feet tall. The outside of the building is covered with beaded car-board siding and all interior walls are all wood.

When the renovations are completed a foundation with a three-foot crawlspace and foundation walls will support the building, the boards on the outer walls on the north and south sides will be removed, labeled and stored while the walls are straightened and strengthened with plywood sheeting. The roof will be replaced and the bow in the structure fixed. New insulation will help with heating the building - it’s currently heated by a woodstove. Any damaged windows will be replaced.

“We’re making it better with every step we take,” said Lang. “We’re making it straighter and flatter.”

The move was a culmination of a five-year process by the Pine/Elk Creek Improvement Association. The renovation is funded through the Colorado Historical Society’s State Historical Fund Grants for Historic Preservation. The project is called The Exterior Rehabilitation of Pine Grove Community Center. The total grant is $113,582.

Old made new
“It’s wonderful to work on old buildings,” said Kathy Lingo, architect with Avenue L Architects.

Lingo said that Avenue L Architects has been involved in the projects as the architects for several years, beginning with a historic survey that we did for the entire North Fork valley in 2005 and a historic structure assessment of the community center building in 2008. The firm specializes in historic architecture and has been involved with over 700 historic structures. They designed the architectural improvements that will refurbish the building.

Archeology in the grove
Steven Dominguez, senior archeologist for RMC Consultants arrived at the center’s newly exposed dirt foundation the day after the move. His job is to sift through the dirt and find artifacts that act like a puzzle pieces of the final picture of the building’s history.

“We observe everything that comes out and start to assemble that as an image of the activities of the area,” said Dominguez.

Thanks to a few select items unearthed during Dominguez’s excavation, he surmises the community center was built sometime in 1898. According to his research, the land was acquired the land in May of 1898 by Reverend Charles Seitter who immediately transferred the property’s ownership to the Pine Grove Methodist Church. He believes construction on the church began that year, but there’s no record of its construction.

Dominguez said building changed hands somewhere in the 1900’s and he felt it wasn’t used as a church.

Dominguez said it was common for items to simply be discarded in an around a property since there was no trash removal in the 1800’s. He said pieces of people’s lives got tossed out, covered up with dirt and forgotten and now are found when a building’s moved.

“People can choose what they are going to say, but trash tells the truth,” said Dominguez.

Items found under the church helped narrow the date of the church’s construction including woman’s dress boot common in the 1880’s, a mousetrap, a few light bulb and bottle fragments, two pieces of crockery and a hand-painted blue pattern blue porcelain bowl, vases, liquor bottles and molding, flooring, nails, a Castoria laxative medicine bottle, and a pre-1898 food can. Dominguez said the can is one of the most significant items due to its type of metal seam that was used from 1894 to 1898. Simple clues such as a can seam are used by archeologists to determine dates and that there are numerous publications on can seams. The found items will be returned to the PECIA after they are cataloged.

Lang said she’s eager for the completion of the renovations and the center is on its new foundation.

“It will be a big party when it’s done,” said Lang.


This story ran in the August 4, 2010 edition of the High Timber Times. The above is the unedited version of my story.