by Roger Poe
It was a thrill recently to meet a former resident of Morrison who had moved away in 1969. He was just a guy who was looking for a residence to buy, or property on which to build. (Of course, we meet people every day with a similar design.) It was only after lengthy conversation, finding that he knew every one of our Morrison forefathers, that we realized he had been here before. He had grown up in the LaGrow house on Bear Creek Lane. He was a LaGrow, his name is Ed Drab, and he’s the son of Morrison’s hairdresser, Ed Drab Sr., who ran a shop on Bear Creek Ave. in the 1960s-70s [in the former bank building where Guiseppe’s is now located; later Mill St. Deli].
After finding out about his family tree, I showed him the “Memory Album, Morrison, Colorado,” by Lorene Horton, published in 1976. Flipping through the pages, he remembered many of the original photos and commented frequently: “that’s my aunt Bertha,” or “there’s Alex (Jordan),” or “there’s my mom when she was a child,” and “there’s Frank Baker.” And so it went, for hours!
He presently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. His personal knowledge and growing up stories of people, places and experiences were exceedingly valuable. With time, our connections with the important past are thinning.
Footnote: Museums Coordinator Sally White adds that we have also been visited recently by two other distinguished relatives. Grace (Schrock) Henderson, youngest child of Morrison pioneer Jonas Schrock (Schrock Saloon), and her daughter Joyce stopped in, and Henry Baumgartner, a descendant of John Brisben Walker, came in search of our records on our local innovator and entrepreneur. We’ll have more on their visits in a future issue.
Morrison History 