Joe and Esther Romero
October 28, 1944 - 2009
65 Years
Mom and Dad met at a party on October 1, 1944 in Denver.Dad's cousin, Bonnie, had invited a few friends over for drinks and music.Mom, new to Denver, had been invited through a mutual friend.
Bonnie's phonograph wasn't working, so she called her cousin.Dad was working on his car and was in grease up to his elbows, but washed his hands and came over anyway, greasy clothes and all.He fell for Mom the minute he saw her.
When Mom thought it was time to go home, another guy offered to walk her, but Dad insisted that HE walk her home.28 days later they were married.(It would have been sooner, but Dad's mother wanted another week to clean her house.)
Mom says Dad "tricked" her into marrying him.On one of their first dates, they were going up to the mountains to go fishing and Mom had fallen asleep.Dad asked her, "Do you think it's too early to get married?" Sleepy and not understanding what he said, she thought it best to say "NO" to whatever it was he was asking.
They each came from neighboring states and diverse backgrounds. Dad's family originated in Taos, New Mexico, the descendants of Spanish settlers, some of which arrived in the territory in the late 1600's.His father was a New Mexico State Representative in 1917.In the late 1920's, his father's ranch was unable to sustain their family, and they moved to various Colorado mining towns where he could find work and finally to Denver.Dad grew up in North Denver during the depression.Because of such hard times, he was only able to complete 8 th grade.He worked at farms in the Brighton area and wherever he could find work.At age 17, he joined the CC's and worked in Wyoming.
Mom came from a Danish family who were farmers in the Hardy/Ruskin, Nebraska area. She vividly remembers the dustbowl days and having to walk or ride their horse to their small rural school with their heads and faces covered with scarves.They raised cattle, hogs, and chickens and grew wheat, barley, and corn. During the depression and then the war, they rarely ate beef or pork - they ate canned fish!Meat was too valuable and was sold. She remembers when they received a letter from her grandmother in Copenhagen telling about the sound of the German tanks coming down the street when the Nazis invaded Denmark. She had three older brothers and an older sister. When the war broke out, one brother was married and the other two brothers joined the army.Her older sister left home and went to work in an aircraft factory in California.Mom had to quit school after the 10 th grade in order to help her father with the farm.Two years later she joined her sister in California.She really didn't care for California, and moved to Denver, where she stayed with an aunt and uncle who ran a boarding house.She worked for them and went back to school at Emily Griffith Opportunity School studying secretarial skills.
After Mom and Dad were married, they worked and saved and bought an acre of land in Wheat Ridge.By that time (1948) my sister, Pricilla, and I were on the scene.They divided their land into two lots and started building a house on one of them.They used cinder blocks and had the outside walls and the roof on when they moved in.They didn't have running water into the house yet, and no windows.They had a well on the other lot, so water had to be carried in.That was when Dad fell off a roof at work and broke his leg and crushed his ankle.He recuperated at home, with Mom giving him his morphine shots.And that was when an early September blizzard struck.They had tarps on the windows and no heat.They called Public Service to come out to get a gas line to the house, but the roads were too deep in snow.Finally they came.Mom was trying to light the pilot light to their gas heater when it blew up and blew Mom across the room. She swears to this day that is why she no longer has eyebrows.
They worked and built their house and added on a couple of times. They grew a vegetable garden, raised chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits, and later milk cows and an occasional lamb and one goat. Dad was a welder and made us a swing set out of pipe, he made us a teeter-totter, and found an old wagon wheel near Clear Creek (which runs near the house) which he turned into a merry-go-round by driving the axle into the ground.We could get that old wagon wheel going fast - it was a perfect size - we could fit our legs between two spokes and then hang on for dear life while one of us spun the wheel.We usually had many neighborhood kids in our yard all the time.
Mom sewed ALL of our clothes, including coats and hats.She knitted all our sweaters and mittens.She canned vegetables and fruit, and we always had a large freezer full of food.And they NEVER had a mortgage on their house.Mom sold eggs and did sewing for others.Dad worked all the overtime he could.
My younger sister, Arlene, and brother, Wayne, arrived 7 and 9 years after me, making us a family of six. We all grew up helping with the yard, the garden, the animals and building the house. It was not a life without hardship, but it was a life of love and family. Our original house (before all the additions) had a front door in which Dad had carved a heart and inserted glass.Our original driveway was paved with concrete in which Dad had drawn a heart with an arrow through it and the initials "JAR + ELR".
JAR + ELR forever