The Black Forest Community Club will honor veterans on Saturday, Nov. 14, with a flag retirement ceremony by Boy Scout Troop 70, a potluck and a live band. Its November newsletter also sets Christmas in the Forest for Dec. 5 and reports that Dorothie Munson-Ingram’s History of Black Forest is being republished.
The ceremony runs from 3 to 4 p.m. at the hall of the Black Forest Community Club, 12530 Black Forest Road, and the potluck and music from 4 to 9 p.m.; guests are asked to bring a dish. The scouts, a troop the club sponsors, inspect each flag, fold it and burn it on a small wood fire, then bury the ashes, following the U.S. Flag Code, the club’s November newsletter explains. Worn flags can be left at the back of the hall on Tuesday, Nov. 3, from 2 to 6 p.m., brought to the troop’s meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 10, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., or carried to the ceremony itself.
Christmas in the Forest follows on Saturday, Dec. 5, from 2 to 7 p.m., with local vendors, food and drink, Santa and Mrs. Claus for photos from 2 to 4 p.m. and the tree lighting at 5. Vendor booths cost $50, according to the club’s website.
The newsletter’s lead story is the plaque the club presented to the Munson family on Oct. 17. The club first ordered a bronze plaque for the family in 2010; it disappeared, and the idea waited until the current leadership ordered a new one. It reads “Munson Memorial Terrace” and hangs on the hall’s front outside wall. Dorothie Munson-Ingram lived in the Black Forest for 60 years before her death in 2015, the newsletter says, and her History of Black Forest should be available again by mid-December. Readers can ask to be told when it is out by emailing [email protected], the address the newsletter gives.
The family’s help to the club continues. Picker, one of the family members at the presentation, had his crew build a retaining wall when the hall’s new portico went in, and his company’s equipment has contoured and drained the Backyard, the club’s outdoor grounds, at no charge, according to the newsletter. The Independent’s October brief traced the Munsons through the Black Forest papers to the mid-1950s.
Terry Stokka, who chairs the Black Forest Land Use Committee, now also chairs the club’s Keepers Committee, which runs the yearly vote for the Keeper of the Keys to the Forest. He takes over from Barbara Hosmer, who organized the nominations, the dinner and the presentation for years and has moved into town. Stokka has updated the hall’s plaque of past Keepers and added one for the current Keepers, Chuck and Sherrie Lidderdale. Chuck Lidderdale has built and hosted websites for Black Forest groups, the club’s among them, and both have served many times as officers and board members.
The honor began in 1960 with Wayne Rusk, and Keepers are chosen from residents of ten years or more who have contributed to the forest’s improvement, the newsletter says. Each year’s Keeper is the grand marshal of the festival parade in August, according to the sign in the hall, and the keys, it says, stand for things like “the birdsong and music of the waters” and “the spirit of neighborliness in the Forest.”
Stokka also writes in the newsletter about tree clearing under the power lines. At a Sept. 29 meeting in Black Forest, he reports, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Mountain View Electric Association outlined plans to clear trees and brush under their lines. The route runs from west of Hodgen and Highway 83 east along Hodgen to Vollmer, south to Shoup, then east across Meridian and south along Raygor. He writes that Tri-State has confirmed some of its rights-of-way along the route are in the wrong place, because the original crews did not follow the plans, and that it is resurveying and acquiring corrected easements. Some residents, he writes, may lose tall trees outside the cleared strip.
The club’s fall events drew crowds, by the newsletter’s account: Octoberfest brought “many new faces,” and Trunk or Treat on Oct. 31 welcomed about 300 trick-or-treaters and 20 decorated trunks.
Dues are $20 a household a year. Under the bylaws the newsletter quotes, renewals for 2027 are payable from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, and renewing by then keeps a member eligible to vote in the club’s annual election. A new membership taken out after Aug. 1 runs through the end of the following year. Voting membership is for households inside the boundaries of the Black Forest Preservation Plan, and households beyond them can join as associates for the same $20. Dues can be paid online, by check to P.O. Box 88034, Black Forest, CO 80908-8034, or left in the box on the kitchen wall at the hall.
On the club’s calendar
Saturday, Dec. 5, 2 to 7 p.m.: Christmas in the Forest, with Santa and Mrs. Claus from 2 to 4 p.m. and the tree lighting at 5 p.m.
November: no board and officers meeting this month
Where: 12530 Black Forest Road, Colorado Springs
More: classes at the hall, from strength training to karate, are on the club’s calendar
The November newsletter and back issues are on the club’s newsletters page.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Black Forest Community Club Will Honor the Munson Family on October 17, on the October newsletter and the family in the Black Forest papers · Black Forest Arts & Crafts Guild Holds Its Fall Show November 4 to 8, at the same hall this week · Who Keeps the Lights On in the Tri-Lakes, on Mountain View Electric Association and its wholesale supplier, Tri-State.
The club: November 2026 newsletter, edited by Carolyn Brown · Veterans Day Celebration · Christmas in the Forest · Club website, for vendor booths and Troop 70 · BFCC Annual Membership, the club’s online store. All read Nov. 3, 2026.
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