Last week I wrote about my parents’ glittering 1926 wedding in the then-new Grace Episcopal Church, the first couple to be “solemnized within its walls.” (See “Finding a treasure in an envelope” in the Bulletin’s Aug. 2 edition. –ed.).
They weren’t kids – my father was 32, my mother 27. They were small business owners from prosperous families, neither had been previously married and both were active in the community. My mother’s bookstore was housed in the Broadmoor Hotel, while my father’s Bond and Stock business occupied most of the first floor of the Mining Exchange Building.
After a post-wedding trip to Santa Fe, Edith and Blagden Hazlehurst settled down in a rented house on North Cascade and enjoyed life. The city was prosperous, fully recovered from the end of the Cripple Creek bonanzas and the stressful years of the First World War. Optimism reigned. From 1921 to 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) increased nearly 500%, from 63 in August 1921 to 381.17 on Sept. 3, 1929. The rising tide lifted all boats, and their businesses thrived.
Yet the stock market seemed jittery that fall, with sudden dips and recoveries throughout September and October, culminating in Oct. 28-29 (Black Monday and Black Tuesday) when the market crashed, closing on Nov. 13 at 198.6. The crash signaled the beginning of the Great Depression, eviscerating the market until 1932, when it bottomed out at 41.22, having lost 89% of its value. Blagden had been a conservative investor, refusing to borrow money to make market killings and counseling clients to do the same. That saved him from bankruptcy, but his business cratered. He moved to a one-room office on the fourth floor, but his partner Clem Flannigan died in 1932 – possibly a suicide. Edith’s bookstore stayed in business, likely kept solvent by helpful grandparents.
Wish I’d been at those pre-Depression banquets.
They refused to hunker down and wait for things to get better. Instead, they charged ahead. Their daughter Frances was born in 1931, and there were still parties to attend. A few months after the Crash, a costume party for more than 100 guests was held at the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club on Valentine’s Day in 1930. A photo reproduced in Marshall Sprague’s Newport in the Rockies shows the inherent optimism that has driven our city since its founding – “we may be broke, but we’re still going to have a good time!” The party was funded by Fountain Valley School benefactress (and Illinois Congresswoman) Ruth Hanna McCormick, daughter of Senator Mark Hanna.
Edith was there, as were her parents Edith and Francis Drexel Smith. Yet as the Depression wore on, things tightened. Edith and Blagden stopped hosting or going to parties and figured out a way to stay on the social circuit without paying. The answer: go to polo matches at the Broadmoor. Admission was free, and their equally broke friends were there.
The once-proud North End lost its glamor. Grand mansions on Cascade Avenue were abandoned, foreclosed homes were unsaleable and those who remained tried to ride out the storm. Edith and Blagden were solvent enough to stay in their rented home but had to defer their dreams of home ownership for ten years.
The glitter was gone forever. They would soldier on for decades to come, buying a rundown house on North Tejon for $2,100 in 1941, raising their kids and keeping their businesses afloat. They never talked about the Depression, the Roaring ’20s or their once-adventurous lives. They tried to instill their learned values of thrift, hard work and simple living in their children. Worked for my sister, not so well for me!
Wish I’d been at those pre-Depression banquets, parties and balls, but that’s ok. Hard work and thrift were fine during the Depression, but in the ’60s? I decided to party on and I’m not finished yet…but here’s a final thought.
Does August of 2024 feel something like October of 1929?
