An 1880s Victorian Mansion in the Colorado Rockies: The Estemere Estate at Palmer Lake

by Edwards, Daniel

  Hiram Boaz was born in Kentucky in 1866 and moved to Texas as a young boy. After his graduation from Sam Houston Normal Institute (now Sam Houston State University), he taught in Fort Worth. Boaz received his BS and MA degrees from Southwestern University and was an ordained Methodist minister. He became president of Texas Women’s College (now Texas Wesleyan University) in Fort Worth, and was affiliated with that university for 14 years. Boaz played an important role in the founding of Southern Methodist University, of which he was vice-president and later president for two and one-half years, until his election as bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1922. He then received an overseas assignment and spent four years as a bishop in the Far East, preaching in Japan, Korea, Siberia, and China. Returning to America, Boaz served churches in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Houston and Fort Worth, Texas. He was given honorary degrees by several institutions and was a trustee of SMU. Hiram Boaz published his autobiography in 1951 and died in Dallas in 1962 at the age of 95.

  Dr. Larkin B. Bowers

  Larkin Bowers was born in West Virginia in 1877, received his BA degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, and attended Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He was licensed to preach by the Methodist Conference in 1896 and served churches in West Virginia, Ohio, and Buena Vista, Colorado, before becoming district superintendent of the West Virginia Conference in 1914. Bowers was appointed president of Kansas Wesleyan University in 1919, a position he held until his death in an automobile accident in 1937. Bowers received DD degrees from West Virginia Wesleyan University, Ohio Wesleyan University, and Oklahoma City University. He and his two brothers, also educators, all appeared in the same edition of Who’s Who in America, probably the first instance where three members of the same family were so honored. Larkin’s younger brother, Dr. William Bowers, was a professor at the University of Denver from 1934 until his retirement.

  Dr. Joseph M. M. Gray

  Joseph Gray was born in Pennsylvania in 1877, and received his AB degree from Dickinson Seminary and divinity degrees from Drew Theological Seminary and Baker University in Kansas. He was ordained a Methodist Episcopal minister in 1901. Gray was pastor in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., churches from 1901-1913. He lectured on history and religious subjects in Army camps in England and France in 1918. Gray served churches in Kansas City; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Detroit until 1934. In that year he was appointed chancellor of the American University in Washington, D.C., where he helped found the school of Social Sciences and Public Affairs and brought many distinguished professors to the university. He published several books and was nationally known as a speaker and writer. Gray left American University in 1940 and became pastor of a Methodist church in Columbus, Ohio. In all he spent 33 years in the Methodist ministry, was a member of five of its quadrennial General Conferences, and for 15 years was a member of the commission which had oversight of all the missionary and other benevolence work of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Dr. Gray specialized in English and American history and spoke at many of the universities in Europe. He died in New York in 1956.

  Dr. Earl E. Harper

  Earl Harper was born in Kansas in 1895 and was graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University and the Boston University School of Theology. He was a minister at a Methodist church in Massachusetts for six years before assuming the presidency of Indiana’s Evansville College (now Evansville University) in 1927. At the age of 32, Harper became one of the youngest college presidents in the country. He had no business training or college administrative experience, and while he was successful in getting the college accredited, Harper had to struggle mightily during the years of the Depression to keep the institution financially solvent. Harper left Evansville in 1936 to become president of Iowa’s Simpson College, and in 1940 accepted the position of director of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa, where he stayed for 25 years. Harper had a great interest in music, and organized and directed a cappella choir and civic chorus at Iowa. For a former Methodist minister, Harper apparently held decidedly liberal views, for he implemented a program of social events at the University of Iowa that included dances on Sunday afternoons to the accompaniment of juke boxes. Earl Harper died in 1967.

  Bishop Charles L. Mead

  Charles Mead was born in New Jersey in 1868 and received his AB degree from New York University. He was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal ministry in 1895 and from 1895 to 1914 was pastor at churches in Rutherford, Hoboken, and Newark, New Jersey; Baltimore, and New York City. He was the minister at Denver’s Trinity Church from 1914 to 1920, when he was elected bishop. During World War I, Mead worked with the YMCA for six months on the front lines in France. Mead served as bishop of the Denver area from 1920 to 1932, and was the presiding bishop in Kansas City from 1932 to 1941. Not regarded as an intellectual, Bishop Mead instead was a “pastoral bishop.” Called a “silver tongued orator of the ministry,” his sermons spoke directly to the hearts of his parishioners, and the pastors he supervised regarded him as a counselor and friend as well as their bishop. Bishop Mead received honorary degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Denver. Mead was no stranger to Palmer Lake, for he owned a summer cottage in Glen Park. He died in 1941 and is buried in Denver.

  Japanese-American Youth and Estemere

  As noted above, some Japanese-American teenagers, American citizens by right of birth, but then under detention by the U.S. Government at Camp Amache in southeastern Colorado, attended a Methodist youth camp at Pine Crest in August 1943 and possibly in 1944 as well. Many Pine Crest campers that year stayed at Estemere, or went there to see their friends, or attended a camp social event at the mansion. Two of those who attended Pine Crest, asked recently about their one and only visit to Palmer Lake for one week nearly 70 years ago, understandably could recall little about that brief episode in their lives, although they all had vivid memories of Camp Amache.

  Some Japanese-Americans attending Pine Crest undoubtedly stayed at Estemere, and the three men identified below can represent the group. What those young people did with their lives after World War II ended showed their determination to succeed in America and not be deterred by their experience of involuntary internment as teenagers. Released from Camp Amache, the three young men completed their education and successfully pursued professional careers in the land of their birth. The events of 1942-43 that brought Japanese American youth to Palmer Lake further supports the thesis of this book that Estemere has never stood as “an island unto itself,” but has had a connection with significant developments in American social history through the people who had visited the mansion.

  George Hinoki

  George was born at Colusa, California, on 23 February 1927. His parents emigrated from Hiroshima, Japan, in the early 1900s, and his father worked as a farm hand in Colusa. After he was able to secure a loan from the Bank of America, his father Frank established a dry cleaning business in the town and joined the Colusa Rotary Club. Frank Hinoki became recognized as the de facto mayor of the Japanese farming community in the area. When the operation to round up the Japanese began in 1942, Frank Hinoki was immediately taken into custody by the FBI and sent to a high security detention center at Bismarck, North Dakota. Later, the story goes, members of the Colusa Rotary Club signed a letter vouching for the character and loyalty of the senior Hinoki. This resulted in his being transferred to Colorado’s Camp Amache to be with his family.

  George remembers Rev. Lester Suzuki, formerly a Methodist minister in Berkeley, who held church services at Camp Amache and provided spiritual counseling to its detainees. Suzuki was also at the Methodist youth camp held at Pine Crest in August 1943. George recalls how cold he felt at Palmer Lake, since summer temperatures at Camp Amache often reached more than 100 degrees. He has a memory of hiking [up Chautauqua?] with Joe Kamiya, who at the age of 18 displayed a remarkable knowledge about any subject George would bring up. George was president of his sophomore class at Amache High School in 1942 and vice pres
ident of his junior class in 1943. He left Camp Amache in 1944 and went to Columbus, Ohio, where his sister was employed as a secretary to an executive director of the War Relocation Authority.

  George graduated from University High School in Columbus in May 1945 and volunteered for the U.S. Army the same year. He was stationed briefly in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Monterey, California, being honorably discharged in November 1946. After studying at Ohio State University for two years, George transferred to the University of California at Berkeley where he graduated in 1952. He received a law degree from the U.C. Hastings College of Law at San Francisco and began the practice of law in Oakland in 1958. George later specialized in estate planning, moved to San Jose, and retired in 2006. He served for 11 years on the Santa Clara County Planning Commission and eight years on the Parks and Recreation Commission.

  George returned to the site of Camp Amache (where all the original buildings had been torn down, but historical monuments erected) in the summer of 2002. High school students from Granada High School and students from the University of Denver’s anthropology department are working on projects to research and preserve the site of Camp Amache and establish a visitor’s center.

  Although now formally retired, George still goes to his law office in San Jose. He looks back on his time at Camp Amache and says that his forced internment put him in an entirely new environment that, ironically, facilitated his break with the introspective Japanese community in which he was raised and led him to pursue opportunities available in the wider national society. His father adopted a very positive attitude in the Camp, urging his family to make something good out of their unfortunate situation, and not to dwell on the past but focus on the future.

  Dr. Joe Kamiya

  Joe Kamiya’s parents emigrated from Japan in 1918, lived briefly near Seattle, and settled in a small farming community near Delhi, Merced County, California, where Joe was born on 09 August 1925. His father was well-educated and came to America for an opportunity to pursue dairy farming. Mr. Kamiya acquired 20 acres of land, although title to the land was held by a white-owned co-op, since Japanese could not own land in California. Joe’s father died when he was six, and his mother developed tuberculosis, so he lived with her in a sanitarium for a few years. In the spring of 1942, Joe’s family had to leave its home carrying only a few specified personal belongings in suitcases and report to an Assembly Center in Merced, where they waited with other Japanese-Americans until Camp Amache and other resettlement camps were constructed by the U.S military. The Kamiyas were transported by train to Colorado in late August where they settled in one room of a six-room apartment barrack measuring 120 feet x 20 feet at Camp Amache.

  Joe was president of his senior class at Camp Amache, and he remembers a teacher in the camp from Colorado Springs, Katharine Stegner Odom, who encouraged her students to study hard and apply for college admission. Joe graduated from the high school run at Camp Amache as a member of the National Honor Society. Katherine Odom kept in touch the rest of her life with Joe and other Japanese-American students at Amache until her death at Fort Collins, Colorado, in 2005 at the age of 99. Joe came to regard Katharine as a “substitute mother,” who, by her kindness and support, “restored his faith in America.”

  He volunteered for the U.S. Army, but was rejected due to a medical condition. Joe then enrolled at Colorado A&M [now CSU] in Fort Collins for a year, but when the War ended, he entered the University of California at Berkeley and received a bachelor’s degree and a PhD in philosophy and psychology. He first taught at the University of Chicago where he became interested in sleep research. Beginning in 1954, he conducted lab experiments using EEG tests to measure brain wave rhythms during sleep, and then began to train subjects, who were conscious, to recognize and control their brain wave patterns. This research led Joe to found the discipline of bio-feedback, and he remained an authority in this field as a professor of medical psychology at the University of California at San Francisco until his retirement in 1992.

  Dr. Kamiya notes that he and other surviving Japanese-American internees received $20,000 each in compensation from the U.S. Government for the losses they suffered and the injustice of their internment. President Reagan signed legislation in 1988 that apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. Government and provided a measure of financial compensation. Now 86, Dr. Joe Kamiya lives in San Francisco.

  Akira “Sam” Sameshima

  Akira Sameshima was born 25 April 1925 in Los Angeles County. His parents had come to the United States in 1920 and settled in Long Beach, California, where they ran a grocery store. At Camp Amache’s high school, Sam was elected student body president, was a member of the National Honor Society, and participated in baseball, basketball, and track. Sameshima now reportedly lives in Honolulu.

  Akira Sameshima handing out award at Camp Amache, May 1943.

  Joe Kamiya, sitting in chair, second from right.

  [Tillie McCarty rented the east wing of Estemere from Blietz for a while. She provided a few photos that are on the DVD.]

  There are more items related to this chapter on the DVD.

  Chapter 8

  Estemere Deteriorates Under Multiple Owners

  (1950-1964)

  During the 15 years from 1950 to 1964, Estemere had four different owners, three of whom probably never lived in the house; another man who claimed publicly he owned Estemere but did not; and a woman who was ready to buy Estemere, but then changed her mind. By late 1962, the mansion had fallen into a woeful state of disrepair and had been stripped of most of its furnishings.

  Helen T. Dees: Texas “Widow” (1950-1956)

  It has been commonly believed that William Blietz and Helen Dees swapped properties: Dees getting Estemere in exchange for trading her spa in Florence, Colorado, to Blietz. Documents that Helen Dees executed at that time, however, raise questions about this account. On the same day she acquired Estemere, Dees signed a promissory note to one Mary Rankin of Florence for $5,859 using the Estemere property as collateral.[132] Payment of the principal was due 01 September 1951. The following day Dees signed another promissory note to B. F. Jody and M. I. Miller of Colorado Springs for $550.[133] It is possible that the money Helen borrowed from Mary Rankin ended up either in the pocket of Blietz, or was used to pay off the rest of her mortgage on the spa, while the money she received the next day may have been used to make any needed repairs to Estemere, so she could take up residence in Palmer Lake. By May 1950, Helen was advertising “Estamere Lodge” (note the use of its original spelling) as a place for camps, conferences, family reunions, and vacations.[134]

  Helen Dees’ 1950 Newspaper Ad for “Estamere Lodge.”

  Undated photos of Helen Dees.

  Two snapshots dated 1954—Helen Dees standing by the car?

  Dees borrowed another $7,500 from one Joe Cucharras of Colorado Springs in December 1951 and put up Estemere as collateral.[135] Two months later, she signed a promissory note for $2,500, and again pledged Estemere as security.[136]

  Helen Dees filed a complaint in the El Paso County District Court on 15 March 1952. She named as defendants W. Finley and Ada Thompson, and a long list of Emily and Eben Smith’s relatives. Apparently something had happened to raise doubts in her mind about her title to the property, and she wanted a court ruling that she was the sole legal owner of Estemere. No defendant filed a reply, and the Court issued a ruling in Dees’ favor on 02 June 1952.[137]

  By December 1952, Helen had not paid any of the $7,500 she had borrowed a year earlier, so she extended the loan for another two years with Cucharras and J.H. Smith, holder of a second deed of trust.[138] Only two weeks later, Dees announced that she would sell Estemere, its furnishings and the grounds, because she was living alone there and “did not care to occupy the valuable property [any] longer.”[139]

  Both as a place to live and as a business opportunity, Estemere must not have lived up to Helen’s expectations, and she may have needed cash to pay off her debts. A G
azette article saying that Estemere was for sale presented a picture of the house and its history. It was full of exaggeration, popular rumors, and factual errors. According to the article, Dr. W. Finley Thompson, who had finished building Estemere in 1884 and lived there for 22 years (i.e., until 1906), was a founder of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Thompson had spent $176,000 in building Estemere and $146,000 in furnishing it. Besides entertaining members of Denver’s high society, Thompson had invited distinguished visitors from Europe, including the King and Queen of Romania, to be his guests at Estemere. Dees opined that if no one wanted to buy Estemere for a private residence, the building could be used as a sanatorium, an educational institution, or a rest home. An advertisement for “Estamere…[a] Beautiful Old English Estate” sounded a hint of desperation.[140] The owner, a widow, needed to sell within two weeks, as she could not carry on alone, and her son was stationed in Korea. However, no owner was found, and Dees continued living in the house.

  Helen Dees was the third of four women who have held sole ownership of Estemere. Although Dees described herself as a widow from Texas, her divorced husband was probably still alive when she lived in Estemere. Dees continued using the name “Estamere Lodge,” and while she rented rooms in the cottage to local teachers, it is doubtful that she had overnight or weekend paying guests staying in the mansion. She had no permanent help at Estemere, but some of the local Krueger boys did odd jobs around the mansion.[141]