Frank J. Butala

• born October 7, 1926
• in Salida, Colorado
• Dr. L. A. Shaffer, attending

Father:

• Jake Butala
• born January 9, 1894
• in Cernome, Yugoslavia

Mother:

• Anna Bayuk Butala
• born November 10, 1904
• in Leadville, Colorado

Brothers and Sisters:

• Mary Ann Veltri

interviewed by Pat Warner, January 29, 2004

transcribed by Phylis Smoak

This is Pat Warner and we’re, we’re recording Frank J Butala.

Frank Butala: Born on 10/7/1926. My Dad, Jake Butala, there was no middle name, was born 1/9/1894 in Cernome, Yugoslavia. My mother’s name is Anna Bayuk Butala. Her date, her birthdate was 10, excuse me, ……

Pat Warner: November, eleven

Frank Butala: Eleven, yeah, November the 10th, 1904, and she was born in Leadville, Colorado. Ok, what else do we need to say there?

Pat Warner: Can you say your, your sister’s name?

FB: Oh. My sister’s name is Mary Ann Butala. She was born in June 1924. I don’t know what this is.

PW: June 26.

FB: No, she was born …….

PW: June 26, 1924.

FB: No, I was born in ’26, she was born in ’24.

PW: That’s what I put there. This says ’24. She was born June the 26th, 1924. She died January the 9th …..

FB: 1982.

PW: And her married name…..

FB: Her married name was Mary Ann Veltri. Her husbands name was Mike Veltri. I don’t have any dates on him. Oh wait a minute, maybe I do. Yeah. He was born on 5, what’s the 5th month, June?

PW: May. May the 5th..

FB: May the 5th

PW: 1913.

FB: 1913. And died……

PW: November

FB: Novmber 27th, 1993. Ok. Then what?

PW: Alright, you were born.

FB: I was born we already give that up here, I think.

PW: Well, yeah, but then you lived at that address…

FB: I just can’t read it.

PW: Ok, you were born on “I” Street.

FB: On “I” Street. Yeah, on “I” street and lived there for six months. Then moved to the house that my Dad built at 605 West 2nd, till..

PW: 1951

FB: Till 1951. The school that I attended was St. Joseph’s, from…

PW: Parochial school…

FB: Parochial school, from...

PW: The 1st…

FB: 1st to the 8th grade. And then on to Salida High School, 1940 to 1944.

PW: How long was your paper route?

FB: The paper route I delivered all of 2nd street, 3rd street and the Mesa. The Mesa had very few houses, but it was a very good route because the houses were spaced a good distance apart.

PW: What year was this, do you think?

FB: Well, that would have been 1932.

PW: Ok.

FB: And we some of the friends that I had to play with, at that time, our neighbors, George and Tom Theotocatos and Tom Evans and Ralph Cappelli. And the Dickinson boys, Buster and I can’t think of the other ones name. See that’s why I wanted these notes, so that I’d, I’d have it.

PW: Well, that doesn’t matter.

FB: Ok.

PW: But tell ‘em about how much money you made. How much money did they pay you for deliverin’ this paper?

FB: I already give you that.

PW: That wasn’t recorded at that time.

FB: Oh, it wasn’t? Well, ah, the boy that I was helping, which was James Sweeny was getting $1.10 an hour, I mean a week. And he gave me 10 cents to deliver that half of the west end of town.

PW: Ten cents a week?

FB: A week.

PW: A week?

FB: A week, yeah. And he kept the dollar. And then two years later he gave up that job and I had the whole route. So I hired Raymond Gentile for half of the route for 10 cents a week, and I kept the dollar. Yeah.

PW: So what did you do with all this money?

FB: I ah, I wanted a bicycle real bad, but I couldn’t get it until I paid for it myself and it took me two years to accumulate $10.00 to buy a used bicycle, keeping every dime as well as doing a few errands for people and getting a little extra money. Let’s see, then after I did that, I got a job with the Salida Mail. And they paid a dollar and a quarter a week and I was able to keep all of that because I, once I had the bicycle I done the whole route. And The Daily Reminder was a free paper and the Salida Mail was a subscription paper, so we didn’t have as many places to stop.
The friends that I had, did you, do you have that down? The friends that I had were Tom and George Theotocatos, who was next door neighbors and Tom Evans, who was a neighbor on the other side. And Ralph Capellli who was a neighbor across the street and James Sweeney, a neighbor a block away. And the Dickenson boys, Buster and… I can’t think of his name. I’ll have to think about that. Buster and his brother which was about two blocks away. And we played ball in the street, “K” street, which was between George and Tom’s house and our house. And we played ball, and kick the can and things of that nature. And we also would go, a few, or most of us, up one block up to what we called the sandbags on 3rd street and dig tunnels and play in the sand. It was loose sand so it was real easy to dig. We had done some dangerous things; dug some deep, deep tunnels that we crawled in and very luckily they didn’t cave in.
When I started High School, the 9th grade, I also got a job at Patterson Hardware for twenty-five cents an hour. And I had to be there at 7:00 o’clock in the morning and I worked until just a few minutes before 9:00 and then had to run to school. And then after school, which ended at 4:00 o’clock, I had to be down there by ten after four and work till the store closed. My job was sweeping the front sidewalks, washing windows occasionally, and cleaning all the dishes and separating hardware that was misplaced by customers. And then I worked all day Saturday from 7:00 in the morning until usually about 8:00 o’clock at night, is when they closed the store. on Sunday’s we went to church with my family; St. Joseph’s Church which is on D Street; 5th and D. And then quite often went to my Grandparents’ ranch, Nick and Catherine Bayuk. And we played in the fields and on the haystacks in the barns and occasionally was able to ride a workhorse. And ah, let’s see what else did we do? Let’s see, what else did we do. Ithink that’s all.
During the time I was growing up, about the age of 10, I worked for my Dad and Uncle, numerous jobs, like pouring sidewalks and building sheds and cuttin’ wood. And my Dad put an addition, a back porch on the house, that we worked on. And built two rooms upstairs, one for my sister and one for myself. And my Uncle put a major addition on his house. So on weekends, we worked on Sunday’s generally, we worked on, we helped him doing carpenter work. And then, in the summer of that I was a Junior…ok…..during the time that we was remodeling the upstairs the steps you had to put in, we was using the ladder on the outside of the house to get up there to do the work. During that time, I was in grade school and I had a terrible cough and the Sisters sent me home in the afternoon. I went through the alley and found a plugin, electrical plug in that had about two inches of wire stickin out of it, bare and I was twisting them together. And when I come home, I didn’t say a word to anybody, I plugged it into one of the outlets of course and caused a small fire. Scared my Mother to death. And she was after me, so I ran up into the attic on the ladder and then kicked the ladder down so she couldn’t get me.
Then, then, when I was a Junior, the summer that I was a Junior, I went to Minturn, Colorado. We had our next-door neighbors had moved to Minturn because his Dad was transferred on the railroad. He was a railroader boilermaker and he was transferred to Minturn, so I went to Minturn for the whole summer and worked at Camp Hale. I was fifteen years old. And I guess that would have been when I was in 10th grade. Not the, the 10th grade. I worked with Tom Evans, who was my very closest friend and lived in Minturn with his folks. I lived with them their next-door neighbor was also working at Camp Hale, so we had a ride everyday to go to Camp Hale. And our job was making beds for the construction workers. And there were several teams doing that. Tom and I worked as one team and our job was to make 300 beds a day for the construction workers. And the rooms were set up to where there was 10 beds in each room and three rooms in each building. So we had to make the 300 beds a day, seven days a week, ten hours a day, and we was paid seventy-five cents an hour and thought that was the most money in the world. Then come back and went to school and ah, went back to work for Patterson for that next year. And the following year, I didn’t work, I went out for football. And Guv Brunner was the Assistant Coach and Neal Merry was the Coach. And Guv was extremely upset with me because I didn’t start playing, or playing football when I was a Freshman, so I didn’t get much playing time, but I had a lot of fun.
And when I graduated, when we graduated from High School I was seventeen years old and I had to get my parent’s permission and practically had to beg on my hands and knees to be able to join the service. I would have been drafted at eighteen, and they wanted me to wait, but I just couldn’t wait to get into WWII. So they, they finally consented and I joined the Marine Corp in June of 1944, as I got out of school. Bob Fraser, a classmate of mine wanted to go to Denver. And his Dad worked with a man who went back and forth to Denver about once a week. So we rode into Denver with him and the next morning we went to the New Custom House, Custom Home in Denver and joined the service. Bob joined the Navy and I joined the Marines Corp. When we went into the building, the Navy office was first in the new Custom House, and Bob gave his information and joined. And then the man that was in charge of the Navy there wanted me to sign up and I says no, I was going to be a Marine. And he says anybody that wants to be a dumb Marine has to go down the hall to the Marine office. And I did, and signed up for the Marine Corp. I signed up as a… I can’t think of it. Anyhow I signed up and then a few months later they called and I had to report to Camp LeJune, South Carolina. We rode trains from Denver to Kansas City then on to Chicago. And from Chicago we went down South and finally ended up at Camp, at Parris Island, South Carolina. And every time we changed trains, the trains were in a little worse shape and had cars that were very poorly lit. And going from Beaufort, South Carolina to Parris Island we finally rode in cars that were, had just gas lights, and then they had never even put electric lights in them yet.

PW: Oh my goodness.

FB: Yeah. And when we got to Parris Island we got off the train and they had two big semi trucks and trailers with stock racks on ‘em. And we all had to get in them trucks and they took us the last six miles into Parris Island. And I was there for nine weeks for ah, boot camp and then was allowed a two week furlough to home, before I went on to Camp LeJune, North Carolina for advanced training. We was there five weeks and then shipped across the United States in troop trains to Camp Pendleton, California. We were in Camp Pendleton for several months, or a couple of months I should say. And ah, we was to go overseas, but we wasn’t 18 years old yet, we stayed at Camp Pendleton until our birthdays. And right after that we shipped out to Hawaii. Honolulu. Honolulu. And we was in a transit camp there for about 30 days. It was nearing the war end and they didn’t know what to do with us so they put us on a ship and said we was going to Okinawa. But when we got to Guam to refuel, they held us there for about five or six days on the ship. And then they called the names of twelve guys to get off the ship, was goin’ to be stationed in Guam. And I was one of the twelve. And we got put into a construction company there, in the Marine Corp. Not the C-Bees, it was actually in the Marine Corp. And they was doing a tremendous amount of work building P-X’s, sewer plants, and churches. And later, I was there for a little bit less than two years, and the last six months we had a, we was livin’ in tents, which was perfectly ok. There was sixteen to a tent. And there was a terrific typhoon that wiped out all the tents and numerous warehouse buildings and several other things. So, then we had a few barracks that had been built by the prior C-Bee’s that they put us in. And ah, I was there for six months and then headed home, or back to the States. And we caught a ship that was just coming out of the United States then and made the first stop at Guam. And we went from Guam to the Philippines, and from the Philippines to China; Shanghai, China. And when we was in Shanghai, we had gone up the Yangtze River to get to Shanghai. And because it was so recent after the war the channel wasn’t dredged of sand before it went into the ocean. And they took on fuel at Shanghai and the next morning we was supposed to leave and a couple of tugs come to push us out from the dock and the ship wouldn’t move. So, we had to wait till the next day for the tide to come in. And the same thing happened for the next three or four days. And finally one night I heard this terrible noise, and they had two big pumps, pumping a bunch of fuel off right into the Yangtze River.

PW: Oh.

FB: Yeah. And lightened the ship. And then the next morning, which was about a week later, why they had about five tugs that came and we finally got out of the Harbor, or out of the docks and, and went back into the ocean and went on to TenSen, or a port that was near TenSen, it wasn’t in TenSen, China and was there for a few days, and then went on to ah, to Japan; Tsjakuska, Japan. We spent several days there and then headed back to Pearl Harbor, and just took on fuel at Pearl Harbor and left within a couple of days and came back to Treasure Island in California. We was in Treasure Island for about four days while they processed us for discharge. And we didn’t have any leave during all this time, so they told us they would put our leave onto the end of the, our journey time and that we were still Marines until July, July of 1947. And then we was discharged, they mailed our discharge papers to us.
FB: Alright, I, when I first come home I first went to work at the Poncha Fluorspar mine. And it was owned by Everett Cole who lived in Canon City. He was a very crippled man, but a very nice man to work for. My job was then, building compressor buildings and we had to build a concrete portal for the tunnel. There was an existing tunnel, 600 feet. And the mine inspector insisted they put a portal on it right away, out of concrete with a steel trap door. And then I built the compressor house to house the compressors. And then we built a dry house for the miners to come to so they could hang their wet clothes up at night on, on racks in the dry house. They shut down in February, because the weather was so cold in particular. A few days before that it was 47 below zero up at the mine, so they said they would be down for about a month. Well, they were down longer than that and I was getting anxious to go to work. So finally in February I decided to go, I tried to get a job in Salida, and I couldn’t get a job anyplace. So I went to Denver to get a job. I went on the weekend and checked things out, bet on Monday morning that I would get a job. And ah, I stayed in a motel on South Santa Fe for $5.00 a night. And next morning, Monday morning, when I got up real early I looked out the door, or the window and there was about ten or twelve inches of snow. And I drove by several of the jobs that I thought I would try to get a job at and there was not a soul around anyplace. So I decided to, to come home and reorganize and see what I could do. On my way home I happened to notice a big cabinet and mill shop and I loved doing cabinet work, so I stopped there. The name was Hallick and Howard and it was under or near the Colfax viaduct. So I found a way to get down there and went in and talked to the Personnel man and he said that they was probably going to be needin’ another cabinet maker in about a week so go ahead a fill out an application. So I filled out the application and handed it to him. It was a very simple thing. And the phone number I used was 353W, which was our home number here. And he said “what the heck is this?” And I says, "What do you mean?" And he says, “This phone number, where’d you get that?” And I said, "Well that’s where I live in Salida." He was all upset, he said “If you’re in Salida, how you gonna work here?” I says, "Well I’m goin’ home." And I said, "If you need me in about a week, give me a call an I’ll come down." And he said “Oh no, we can’t do that.” So, I said “Well, ok then." I went on, drove home. When I got home, this was in the very late afternoon, the next door neighbor and friend, Mr. Chris Theotocatos who was living next door at that time; Sam and his family moved about a block away into one of other, Chris’s other houses. And Chris had five houses and Chris needed some work done on one. And he saw some of the work that I had done on off hours, or off time for my Mother and Dad, changing the kitchen, puttin’ in new cabinets, and remodeling the bathroom and everything and he was very impressed, so he says, "Can you do some work for me?" And I said yeah. So, I went in the next morning, to the house he told me that he would have a little bit of material delivered there. The house was empty. And the fellow that he had put the windows and doors in was 80 years old, and there wasn’t a window that worked or a door that worked. They was either hinge bound or stuck. So I told him that I could fix them. And I went ahead and started that morning and worked. And he come home and looked and was very, I assumed, satisfied with what I had done, and said how much do I owe you? And I said “Oh Chris”, this was Mr. Chris Theotocatos, Christopher Theotocatos. He was a single man and never been married. He said that he wanted to pay me and I thought that I was bein’ fired. So, I wouldn’t tell him what I wanted or anything. And he said, “Is a dollar an hour good enough?” And I said, “Oh yeah, that’s fine.” So he give me eight dollars, cause I worked there eight hours. And then he said “what do you need for the next day?” I said, I thought we was done, “no, no, ne, he said, I want you to finish.” So I worked for about a week there fixin all the doors and windows. It was a small house. And ah, he paid me every night. And I asked him why he done that and he said, well, he might die. He was an older man and he might die and he didn’t want to beat me out of anything, which I thought was really something. And when I finished his job, he lined me up with about 3 or 4 more regular railroaders that needed a door changed or a window put in or something. So, that’s kinda the way I started and went, went from that point. But he really lined up about the first 4 or 5 jobs for me besides the work he had on his house.
In 1948 when I started my construction business because I couldn’t get a job anyplace; there wasn’t that many jobs in Salida at that particular time. So, I started doing very small jobs, and remodel, remodeling rooms, and kitchens, bathrooms and so forth. And then in about 1949 I got the first house job on “F” Street, built a brick house. Got along very well.

PW: Whose house was that, Frank, do you remember?

FB: I can’t think of his name right now. I, I guess, I will. Oh, Tuttle, Mr. Tuttle.

PW: Oh, I remember that.

FB: But, not the one that had the store. It was ah, he, he moved over from ……

PW: From the valley.

FB: From San Luis Valley. His wife had died and he sold the ranch and he wanted to build a house. So, his daughter knew of me. She’d lived in Salida.

PW: That was in the 1300 block of “F” Street.

FB: Yeah. Uh huh. And we built a nice brick house for him. And then after that, we built several, several more, quite a few more houses around, all through my construction career. In about 1954 is when I bid on and got the job to build the first section of what is now Longfellow School. It was the first six rooms that was built for first, kindergarten and first grade. And in 1957 I built the original sewer plant. And then in, also in 1957, later in 1957 I built the Larimer Gymnasium for the school district. 1958, the Salida High School had burned down and in 1960 we got the job for building, well let’s see, 1958 I guess, we got the job to build the new High School, shops, cafeteria and library. In 1960 we built the annex to the existing courthouse. Also the jail and judicial rooms in that building. And 1960 we also built the Post Office building in Salida and the bowling alley in Salida. Toward the end of 1960 we started building the Spa Restaurant which is now called the Country Bounty. Ah, there was a skeleton of a building with numerous businesses in there. There was a restaurant in there, and there was a dinning room and a liquor store and a one bay garage for the station there. It was called the Skelly Inn. We took all of that stuff out and re-did the building, remodeled the building into what was known as the Spa at that time. And, I want to say 1959, late 1959, we got the job to build two lifts in Sun Valley Idaho. The……..

PW: Ski lifts.

FB: Ski lifts, yes. Ok. Then ah, I made an error on the High School. We started the High School in 1962 rather than 1960. Ok. We, in 1965 we built the Monarch, started the Monarch Inn, or ski area, excuse me, Ski Area and two new lifts. Ah……

PW: And two more.

FB: And then in 1968 we built two additional lifts and re-done, or rebuilt the parking lot and a shop building and two lifts. We also built two lifts at Westcliffe in 1968. No,…yes, that don’t sound right. It would have been 1970 on the two lifts at Westcliffe.

PW: Ok.

FB: We built two lifts at ……

PW: Geneva?

FB: Geneva Basin and then ……

PW: In 1984.

FB: Yeah, oh wait a minute…yeah. In 1984 we also built the Headquarters Building in Salida, on……

PW: Arkansas Headwaters.

FB: Arkansas Headwaters Building.

PW: Uh huh.

FB: The Original Ark, Arkansas Headwaters.

PW: During that time we put the last two lift in, and remodeled, enlarged the day lodge at the ski area, also added ah, handball courts at the Monarch Inn. Ownership had transferred to Jerry Rogers. He had a Manager that was named Clifford, James Cleary. And Cleary wanted to build up business and this was at the same time that the United States was trying to promote the Susan B. Anthony silver dollars and J. Cleary thought it would be a good idea to get a whole bunch of silver dollars and pay us in silver dollars and we in turn paid the subs that was working with us. They sent a truck, a heavy duty van to Denver to the bank to pick up all these silver dollars and brought ‘em back to Salida. And on the day that we were paid, we received probably 60 or 70 thousand dollars for the work and paying the subs. So we, he paid us in the silver dollars, and they was in bags, a thousand dollars in a bag. Ah, one of the subs that I had workin’ was re-modeling, was re-doing the parking lot and putting in drain pipies and so-forth and had a large force of men up there, at the ski area. And he had approximately 30 thousand dollars coming for that months work. So, I put ‘em in my pick-up, plus silver dollars for the electrical work and the plumbing work and all of that kind of stuff. And I had put ‘em in the front seat of my pick-up on the passenger side and it was so heavy that I had, could only go about 5 miles an hour from the lodge up to the ski area, because it almost turned the truck over. And I paid the sub-contractors in silver dollars, and then, let’s see how do I say that…….

FB: And the Sheriff’s Posse rode along didn’t they?

PW: Yes, we had ah, no he didn’t, he wasn’t with me. they had the Sheriffs posse ride with the van to Denver so that on the way back they would have protection with all this money, cause they, they probably picked up between 70 and 80 thousand dollars to pay us for our work and for the subs. And ah, when they were at the bank, they had just got the money and gettin’ ready to leave and my son Tim was livin’ in Denver, and just kinda’ livin’ on the streets and he happened to see the license plate and recognized the van from the ski area, so he walked over to that van and stuck his hand in and said “Hi, I’m Tim Butala,” and the Sheriff pointed a double barrel shotgun right, right at him, thinking that he was goin’ to try to rob ‘em and he just wanted to tell ‘em who he was. And , it was quite a comical deal. When they found out it was my son, step-son they let it go and come back to Salida. Ok.

FB: Ok.

PW: Ok? In 1984 I had bought some mining claims from Elmo Bevington on Missouri Mountain, which is adjacent to Taylor Mountain. It was a white lime rock quarry; calcium carbonate rally. And we developed the query and build five miles of road; improved five miles of road I should put it I guess; improved five miles of road so we could get to the quarry easier. We brought the marble down to the site that I own, which is known as the old smelter plant and creosote plant. I have a, I had a gravel operation there, crushing equipment and so forth. We crushed the marble; it was all in large chunks. We crushed the marble down to many different sizes and had a bagging plant to bag the rock. And it was mostly sold for decorative landscape work. We had a very large customer at Antonito, Colorado, and we sold mostly to them. However, we did have some sales in Denver and different cities in Colorado. Ah, let’s see what was I going to say then?

FB: Alright.

PW: Some of the material of the white query was used for the facing of the former May D & F in Colorado Springs, which is now Foley’s. And also another May D & F in Denver, I don’t remember where it was. But, and then Neiman Marcus building and Lord & Taylor’s, that was the other one, on 6th Ave.

FB: On Cherry Creek?

PW: Yeah, in Cherry Creek Shopping Center. They liked it for two reasons, that the material had a, was sort of a glitter and being white. They wanted white buildings without having to paint ‘em, all the time. So this material was very white. And now I haven’t run the query in several years. And we been just operating our gavel pit for concrete production. We have ah, concrete fleet of trucks. And also landscape material that we sell through brokers in Denver and other parts of the country. And then basically, I’m semi-retired and trying to turn it over to my children. Goodby.

FB: Alright Frank, thank you so much.