Honoring our Immigrant Herritage Survey

Attended St Michael's Grade School.

Attended Collyer High School.  In senior year, our basketball team was undefeated for the season and had one of the best school basketball records. 

They settled first in South Dakota in 1901 and then came to Collyer in 1902 because Johanna's parents, Mr/Mrs Theodore Ziegler, were living in Collyer.

Before leaving Ukraine, both Johann Malsam and Johanna (Ziegler) Weisgerber lost their spouses and married each other.  Johanna had (a son) Ted Weisberber by her first marriage.  Johann had (a daughter) Barbara, (and three sons) Sebastian, Anthony and Fred Malsam by his first marriage.  They brought these five children and their son, George, to the U.S.  Their son, Lawrence, was born in South Dakota. 

My parents (owned) the Collyer Telephone Company.

My mother and my sisters operated the switchboard from the phone room office in our home.  This was a 7-day a week job.  My father, my brothers and I worked on the lines.  After an ice storm, many of the lines ould be down and we had to fix them.  I remember that after World War II, plastic wall phones were introduced.  Our customers wanted the new phones so we installed them after taking out the old crank wooden phones and destroyed most of them.  Luckily, my father kept a few wooden phones which have been handed down to family members.

My father continued farming near Castle Rock in addition to running the phone business.  Often he would find arrowheads after a hard rain in the Castle Rock area.  

Milking a cow every day was one of my chores as a young boy.  Earlier my brothers also did this.  We owned a lot south of the railroad tracks where we had a barn and a cow grazing in the pasture.  I would walk down to milk  the cow early in the morning, then walk back to our house, have breakfast and then go to school.

During the war, I remember my father had a Victory Garden with potatoes and vegetables on the lot.  It did not raise many vegetables, however, because there was no way to water the plot.  Later, my father had a garden behind his shop. 

I remember the men always found a place to play cards together during their free time.  Solo was their favorite card game, which they played for pennies.  I also remember the men gathering around the pot-bellied stove to visit in my father's shop on Main Street.  The men would often discuss the "old country," and this sparked my curiosity about the "old country."

After I retired from teaching high school in Westminster, Colorado, my wife and I had the privilege of traveling to several foreign countries.  This gave us the courage and desire to search out my roots in Ukraine and also Germany.  My wife, Margaret, and I traveled to Ukraine and also Germany with my cousin, Larry, and his wife, Kathy.  One of the surprises was discovering that the village where my parents were raised was near the Black Sea and a long ways from the Volga River. 

I remember when bowling alleys and pool tables were installed in the basement of Zeman Hall.  I often was hired to set pins for local bowling games.  This is where I learned to bowl and play pool. 

On Saturday nights, I remember hearing dance band music through my bedroom window from the outside dance pavillion on the north side of Zeman Hall.  I also recall how the ladies would park their cars near the Zeman Hall early on Saturday nights so they could sit in their cars and watch the dancers come and go.