A History Lesson......Part III

The Riverside Hotel, Bar and Restaurant is a 13,000 square foot structure, constructed primarily of wood with a hand-laid stone and mortar foundation, situated on the eastern bank of the Colorado River, some 25 miles from its headwaters. One of my biggest attractions in buying the hotel and taking this blind leap from our comfort zone was the opportunity to be stewards and caretakers of not only this historic building, but most importantly of the innumerable yet unaccountable stories and memories ensconced within the walls of this old place; the one hundred and four previous Christmases celebrated, the births of how many Grand County babies, the weddings and wedding nights of hundreds of hopeful brides and grooms and the jubilant hoots and hollers of countless New Years Eve revelers and 4th of July celebrants. How many prayed, toasted and dined at Thanksgiving feasts, how many birthday cake candles were extinguished by the wind from how many beaming faces? How many all but tangible memories of how many lives and how many deaths in the course of the Riverside’s 104-year history lingered in the walls and the halls of this 16 room structure which we gave our all to purchase?

Very early in our ownership, this aspect of being a steward of memories as well as a caretaker of a historic structure became evident to us in a blissfully unexpected event which, to put it mildly, awed and humbled us with the responsibility that we had undertaken.

It was June 29th, 2008, and we had lived full-time at The Riverside for only three days. It was late in the afternoon, and the hotel was almost booked full. We were making last minute preparations for the evening dinner crowd, when I noticed two young men trying to get a very large, full-body wheelchair into our west hotel/restaurant entrance. As the hotel was built a few years before the ADA, it unfortunately wasn’t up to code regarding accessibility. I went to see what could be done about helping them get the wheelchair into the building; it was at this point that I took the time to notice the inhabitant of the chair.

He was an elderly gentleman, probably in his early 80’s, and he looked very much like my father looked shortly before my father died; pale, gaunt and sallow-eyed. He was unable to communicate verbally, barely nodding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to queries from his grandsons, but he seemed fully cognizant of his surroundings and what his grandsons were saying. He also appeared to be paralyzed from the neck down – no sign of movement from his torso or limbs. I immediately gained respect for these young men, who upon first glance I’d judged as hoodlums from their tattoos, piercings and the goofy, oversized clown-like flat-billed baseball caps sitting irreverently askance upon their shaven skulls. Hoodlums? No, they were in fact the epitome of love, tenderness and human kindness in the way that they cared for their grandfather – and care it took, as getting the chair from one cranny in the old hotel through the next would have tried to patience of most. In followed the boy's grandmother, who told me that today was their wedding anniversary, and she and her husband had spent their wedding night 56 years ago to the day at The Riverside in 1952, and that her husband “didn’t have too much time left, and we wanted to see the place one more time.”

When I realized what was happening, jarring me from my immediate mental preoccupation with people checking in, the details of a big dollar restaurant night ahead and guests barking at the bar for high profit rum and cokes, it literally shook me when I took the time to grasp what was happening here; on the day of their 56th wedding anniversary, most probably the last that they would celebrate, this couple and their grandsons had driven to our out of the way town, from Denver some 90 miles to the southeast over Berthoud Pass, to visit our hotel….simply for the memory of it. I was immediately humbled to the point of embarrassment, now all but worshipful of these people and their quest.

The wife took me upstairs – the husband stayed downstairs as ascending the narrow stairways were impossible, even with the help of the resolute grandsons – and showed me the room, ‘Elizabeth’, where they spent their first night as newlyweds. (The rooms were all given female names vs. numbers by Abner, lending to his lurid assertions that The Riverside operated as a brothel at some stage in it’s past; I believe this to be nothing more than a lurid assertion, knowing Abner as I did.)

The wife paused and bowed at the door for a minute, reverentially, and then slowly walked in the room and looked around. It was a very small room, the width of it barely able to contain the full-sized bed that resided within; one of Abner’s beds that we had yet to replace, comprised of an old thin mattress on exposed springs, very probably the bed upon which they spent their wedding night. She stood quietly for only a few minutes, and without speaking a word, she left the room, passing slowly by me without acknowledging me and went back down the stairs to be with her husband. She gently took his hand and told him that she'd found the room, and it was much as she'd remembered; there was the faintest attempt at a smile from the old lion as he closed his eyes - he looked totally satisfied and complete.

I was dumbfounded, speechless, and choked up to the point of not being able to communicate with this family or any others in the lobby. Julie came to me and asked me what was wrong; I couldn’t form words, as my throat was constricted from the emotional scene that I had just witnessed. In fact, to this day I have a difficult time retelling this story to people without tears welling in my eyes and my throat constricting, as I have burned in my memory the eager face of the man who was trying to relive in that instant one of his life’s great memories.

I saw my father die, at peace, surrounded by his family in his bed at home. At the end he had a look of contentment with what he had done, and resignation with the next, final step in his life journey. This man, this 1952 visitor to our hotel who chose The Riverside to begin his post WWII journey into manhood and fatherhood, after hearing his wife of 56 years whisper into his ear, smiled and looked content, much like my father looked before his passing. I never new for certain, but I would bet that sweet closure wasn’t far behind his last visit to The Riverside.

I knew that we bought a hotel and restaurant, but it was at this point that I finally realized that we bought much more than just a business; we were the stewards of this magnificent building and the memories of thousands of unknown people and their stories. What an awesome responsibility it was to be caretaker to such a magnificent old girl as The Riverside. My thanks to this beautiful couple, whose names I didn’t even have the where-with-all to learn, for awakening me to my task, my newfound raison d’être. Thanks also to the grandsons, whose exemplary effort in locomoting their grandfather and granting him what was most likely a final wish; and for again reminding me that rarely should books be judged by their covers.