Article by Orville Wright
Ku Klux Klan – April 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
POLITICIANS ARE AFRAID of skeletons in the closet — especially around election time. No matter how squeaky clean a candidate claims to be, the opposition usually manages to dredge up dirt from some obscure location and proceed to start slinging mud. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all recently been force-fed an overdose of political nonsense, so the point won’t be taken any further here.
Besides, I’m no politician — just a retired State Patrol Captain — but, there are skeletons in my closet. (Actually, they’re in my tie-tac and cufflink box on the top of the dresser.) Here’s the story:
My mother’s family moved to the Salida area from Missouri in the early 1900s. The family surname was Fields. It was a large family, with eleven children.
Grandpa Fields worked in the oilhouse for the railroad. The boys also worked for the railroad after they graduated from high school. One of them later lost his life in an accident on the railroad. After the girls graduated, they eventually married and left home.
After graduating from high school in the mid 1920s, my mother and an older sister went to business school in Grand Junction. Upon completing business school, they began working in Salida. My aunt worked as a bank teller for J. Ford White at the 1st National Bank for a number of years until she married and moved to Pueblo.
My mother started working as a receptionist for Dr. Fuller, one of the big-shots at the D&RG Hospital. After working for Dr. Fuller for several years, she became Secretary to the Superintendent of Schools, Mr. Hightower. She held that job for several years until yours truly came along.
My father’s family originally lived in Chama, New Mexico, where Grandpa Wright was a locomotive engineer for the Rio Grande Railroad. After Grandpa Wright was killed in a head-on train wreck on Cumbres Pass in 1922, Grandmother Wright moved to Salida with their three sons. The two older boys worked for the railroad in Salida for a while, then moved out of state. My father graduated from high school in 1924 and worked for the railroad in Salida until 1958 when the job required him to relocate to Montrose.
Okay, now you’ve been bored with the life history of some people from two families that used to live in Salida a long time ago. But how does all this stuff relate to skeletons on my dresser top?
I wanted to provide information that these folks were just ordinary people from working-class families. They were a small part of a small town in Colorado. Nothing special. Nothing unusual. Registered Democrats, no less. They were just like a lot of other people in Salida, both then and now.
MY MOTHER KEPT her costume jewelry in a small cedar chest she got as a high school graduation gift in 1925. Every girl in each Senior Class at Salida High School received a small Lane cedar chest as a graduation gift from Abe Greenberg, owner of Greenberg Furniture Company. The tradition continued at least until 1958, when the girl that is now my wife also received one from Mr. Greenberg.
[Fiery crosses]
Being a boy, I wasn’t too interested in woman-stuff such as jewelry. Once in a while however, if my mother was getting ready to go somewhere, I could see what was in the jewelry box if I happened to be nearby. Among the contents was a small box that contained a little silver pendant in the shape of a cross. It had tiny red stones set in it.
There was another larger cross-shaped pin in the same box that also was set with red stones. That one looked like it could be worn on clothing, since it had a pin on the back of it. I knew it was jewelry and the jewelry box belonged to my mother. That was all I needed to know.
When my father died in 1976, my wife and I had the unpleasant chore of closing the family home in Montrose. Among my father’s effects was my mother’s jewelry box; she had passed away ten years before my dad. The cross-shaped pendant and pin were still in that little box inside the small cedar chest.
By this time, I had been a police officer for a number of years. College, police training and plain old life experience had exposed me to subject matter that was NEVER mentioned in the history books when I went to school in Salida. Family members had also been pretty closed-mouth about a lot of things back then. People usually didn’t even cuss in public when I was in high school. Decency was the rule, not the exception.
The light came on! Something my mother said when I asked her about the cross-shaped jewelry years before resurfaced. She said they were “Fiery Crosses.” A conversation with my now elderly aunt who used to live in Salida confirmed our suspicions. Aunt Mildred said that she and my parents were all members of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1930’s.
No names were given out of courtesy to the families, but she stated quite a few influential people in Salida were also members (so I’ll bet there are a lot more skeletons in jewelry boxes if anybody cares to look for them).
Apparently the Salida branch of the Klan did their thing somewhere in Adobe Park and at the old Chautauqua Grounds on Rainbow Boulevard (Highway 50) near where the skating rink and ice house used to be.
Since this embarrassing revelation came home to roost, a bit of research on Klan activities reveals that Colorado was one of the states where the Klan was quite active, particularly in the 1920’s, early 30’s and again in the early 1940’s.
If it is any consolation to others who might be similarly tied to the Klan, historians claim the Klan, as it existed back then, was not the same hate-mongering group that exists now. I hope so.
This Orville Wright did not invent the airplane. He’s a retired state patrol officer, and now lives in Broomfield.
