Veterans Day began as Armistice Day, the anniversary of the morning in 1918 when the guns stopped on the Western Front. In the local papers digitized so far, Monument, Palmer Lake and Black Forest kept it with a front-page letter from Vietnam, a Medal of Honor recipient who lived by the lake, and a Black Forest VFW post that raced outhouses for charity.
The First World War stopped at 11 o’clock in the morning on Nov. 11, 1918, French time. Allied and German delegates had agreed to an armistice at 5 a.m. in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne, and Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allied commander, sent word that hostilities would stop “beginning at 11 o’clock, November 11th (French hour),” according to the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month came at 4 a.m. in Colorado. The Rocky Mountain News of that morning ran the headline “THE WAR IS OVER” across its front page, over a deck reporting that the battles had “Ceased at 4 o’Clock This Morning, Denver Time.” The war did not formally end until the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, but the November date is the one that stuck, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs notes.
The holiday arrived in stages. In November 1919 President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day, to be marked with parades, public meetings and a brief pause in business at 11 a.m. By June 1926, when Congress asked the president to proclaim the day every year, 27 states had already made it a legal holiday. A federal law of May 13, 1938, made Nov. 11 a national legal holiday, “dedicated to the cause of world peace,” under the name Armistice Day.
The name changed after a second world war and a war in Korea. At the urging of veterans’ groups, Congress struck “Armistice” from the 1938 law and wrote in “Veterans,” and the change became law on June 1, 1954. From then on the day honored American veterans of all wars. President Dwight Eisenhower issued the first Veterans Day proclamation that October.
There was one detour. The Uniform Holiday Bill of 1968, meant to give federal workers more three-day weekends and to encourage travel, moved Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. The first Monday version, on Oct. 25, 1971, was observed “with much confusion,” in the VA’s own phrase, and many states kept Nov. 11 regardless. President Gerald Ford signed a law in 1975 that returned the holiday to Nov. 11 from 1978 on, whatever the day of the week.
What the local papers kept
The Tri-Lakes papers digitized by the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection begin in 1956, two years after the name changed (apart from a single 1879 issue of the Monument Mentor). So the Armistice Day years here are a blank in the online record, and the story picks up with The Columbine Herald, a Colorado Springs paper with columns from Palmer Lake, Monument and Black Forest.
Its Nov. 9, 1956, issue carried on its front page the headline “November 11th, Veterans’ Day Celebrated the 12th”; the 11th fell on a Sunday. Below it ran the history of the Unknown Soldier, chosen in France by a wounded and decorated sergeant who laid a spray of white roses on one of four caskets, and buried at Arlington on Nov. 11, 1921, which gives the date its second anniversary.
A year later the Palmer Lake column put the holiday in practical terms: “Did you remember that Nov. 11th is Veteran’s Day? Better get your mail in the Post Office before noon on Saturday.” Monday, it explained, was a holiday, “and the mail will not go out.” A few items further down, the same column reported that the W. J. Crawfords had driven to Cañon City to pick up cider pressed from their own apples.
Palmer Lake’s Medal of Honor
The Crawford of the cider was William J. “Bill” Crawford, and the American Legion’s Tri-Lakes post set its Veterans Day ceremony for 10 a.m. today at his memorial on the north end of the lake.
Crawford was born in Pueblo in 1918. On Sept. 13, 1943, near Altavilla, Italy, the 25-year-old private moved “without orders and on his own initiative” against German machine-gun positions on Hill 424 so that his platoon could advance, according to his Medal of Honor citation as the Palmer Lake Historical Society reproduces it. Days later he was captured. The Army presumed him dead, and his father accepted the medal in his place. Crawford survived a 52-day, 500-mile winter march as a prisoner and was liberated on April 13, 1945, the society’s newsletter recounts.
He married Eileen Bruce in January 1946, and the couple made their home in Palmer Lake. There he directed the Lucretia Vaile Museum, presided over the historical society, lit the Yule Log, worked as an election judge and ran the Sunday school at the Little Log Church. The local papers followed his veterans’ work too: the Herald and the Palmer Lake-Monument News reported four appointments between 1957 and 1969 by four different commanders-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, each naming him a national aide-de-camp in the Medal of Honor class.
He retired from the Army as a master sergeant in 1967 and in 1970 went to work at the Air Force Academy, where he was a janitor. The cadets decided that the medal was overdue for a proper presentation, and on May 31, 1984, President Ronald Reagan hung it around his neck at the Academy’s commencement. Asked by a cadet why he had never told them, Crawford said, “That was one day in my life and it happened a long time ago,” as the society’s newsletter tells it.
He died on March 15, 2000, and is buried at the Academy. The historical society and the Town of Palmer Lake dedicated his memorial by the lake on May 26, 2001. After a volunteer committee rebuilt it, the memorial was dedicated again on Veterans Day 2017, in a frigid wind, with Air Force Academy cadets as the honor guard and the Tri-Lakes Legion and VFW posts presenting the flag, Our Community News reported. A stretch of Highway 105 has carried his name since 2011.
A letter from Vietnam
The Palmer Lake-Monument News, whose 1965 to 1971 run is online, ran the headline “Veteran’s Day 1965” on its front page on Nov. 11, 1965, over a letter. Carl Shipman of Monument and his wife had shared what their son Larry, a Marine in Vietnam, wrote home in September. “I know now what it is like to have someone shooting at me,” it begins. Much of it is about patrols, the rain and the mosquitoes. Then comes a list of what he would like from home: “Cookies (2 doz.), Kool Aid, Instant Soup, Pepper, Sheets,” and two magazines, True and Sports Afield. “I need the sheets because I can’t sleep on these wool blankets.”
Two years later the paper marked the day with a short note that began “Lest we forget” and spoke of “memories of gallantry” and “sorrow for loved ones killed in battle.” In 1969 the VFW asked residents to join a national day of prayer on Nov. 16, the first Sunday after Veterans Day, for peace and for the safety of servicemen in Vietnam. The paper kept a local roll at Memorial Day as well: in 1968 and again in 1970 it printed the names of the veterans buried at Monument Cemetery, from the Civil War to the Second World War.
The Monday years
The Uniform Holiday Bill reached the Tri-Lakes in 1971. Lewis-Palmer’s school calendar that August listed Oct. 25 as Veterans Day, with no school. In October the News told contributors to send their copy early, because “Monday, Veterans Day, October 25th, (formerly Armistice Day, November 11th) is a U. S. Postal Service Holiday.” Congress had moved the holiday to encourage travel. At the News, it moved the deadline.
The old date was not forgotten. The same issue carried a notice from the new Monument Community Club, organized at the Town Hall on Oct. 14, whose regular second-Thursday meeting fell on Nov. 11: “the original Armistice Day – do you remember 1918?”
When the holiday went back to Nov. 11 in 1978, the date fell on a Saturday. The school menus in the Black Forest News show both districts closed on Friday, Nov. 10. District 20’s menu marked it “Veteran’s Day holiday”; Lewis-Palmer’s listed no school.
The post that raced outhouses
Black Forest had its own VFW post in the late 1970s, Post 8103, which met at the Community Hall, the log building at Black Forest and Shoup roads. It also started a race. The Black Forest News traced the Black Forest Outhouse Race to the bicentennial year, 1976, when it began “as competition between the VFW Post 8103 and the ‘Black Forest Bummers,’ non-VFW members.”
The paper set out the rules in 1978. Relay teams pushed an outhouse on wheels over a hilly one-mile course, from near Shoup and Black Forest roads to near Black Forest and Burgess roads, while a teammate, helmeted and strapped in, rode the seat. The first year’s record was 8:46; in 1977 the time came down to 6:11, and the 1978 teams hoped to break six minutes. The first two years’ takings went to cancer research, and the 1978 goal was $5,000 for a Special Olympics bus. The Black Forest fire district gave the post a trophy on which to keep the winners’ names.
The post did quieter work as well. With its auxiliary, it entered Air Academy High School students in the VFW’s Voice of Democracy scriptwriting contest. It organized a Forest clean-up on Sept. 30, 1978, which by the News‘s account left four miles each of Black Forest, Shoup and Burgess roads cleaner. And on Nov. 9, 1978, two days before the first Veterans Day back on the 11th, the paper ran a photograph of the post’s commander and a Scout from Troop 70 starting on a winter woodpile for a Forest resident.
Its plans for a post home were less smooth. The county commissioners denied the post a club liquor license in 1977 after neighbors objected; the post went to court, won a new hearing, and withdrew the application in July 1978, saying it still meant to build its post home and a youth activities center.
The Star on Sundance Mountain
Palmer Lake has its own way of marking the day. The Star on Sundance Mountain was built by residents in the 1930s and, by the account Our Community News published in 2002, went dark only during the Second World War. It had been lit for the release of the American hostages in Iran and the end of Desert Storm, but its regular season was December.
In October 2006 a town trustee, Trish Flake, suggested adding Veterans Day, saying, “We are at war.” The paper’s report noted the council’s discussion of “the strong emotions of Palmer Lake residents against adding days of illumination in the past.” On Oct. 12 the council voted unanimously to light the Star every Veterans Day, though lightning had recently destroyed its control box and several lights, and the fire chief said he would try to have it repaired in time. He did: the fire department turned the Star on for Veterans Day for the first time on Nov. 11, 2006, Our Community News reported. In 2014 the department held a “Salute and Shine for Veterans” lighting on the 11th, with guests from the Legion post.
Today
Monument’s veterans’ posts today are VFW Post 7829, which carries the name of MSG William J. Crawford, and American Legion Post 9-11, which received its permanent charter on Sept. 11, 2007, with 48 charter members, according to Our Community News. The VFW post runs Voice of Democracy for local students, as Post 8103 did in Black Forest. Its Buddy Poppy drive was scheduled outside the King Soopers on Baptist Road today, and the Legion post’s ceremony at the Crawford Memorial was set for 10 a.m.
The schools keep the day too. Monument Academy’s Veterans Day assembly in 2019 was its 25th, the Gazette reported, and in 2014 Lewis-Palmer Middle School was recruiting veterans for its yearly contribution to the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project, which began each year on Veterans Day. The historical society marked the armistice’s centennial in 2018 with an exhibit at the Vaile Museum, which it extended through June 2019.
On Saturday, Boy Scout Troop 70 retires worn flags at the Black Forest Community Club’s Veterans Day celebration, in the club’s log hall at Black Forest and Shoup roads, where Post 8103 used to meet. The club was already sponsoring the troop in 1977, and had been for 30 years. The Scouts inspect each flag, fold it and burn it on a small wood fire, then bury the ashes.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Veterans Day in the Tri-Lakes: A Ceremony at Palmer Lake, a Flag Retirement in Black Forest and Free Meals, this week’s events and offers · Black Forest Community Club Will Retire Worn Flags at Its Veterans Day Celebration on November 14, on the club’s November newsletter.
National history: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, History of Veterans Day · National WWI Museum and Memorial, Armistice.
Bill Crawford: Palmer Lake Historical Society, William John Crawford, with the Medal of Honor citation · the society’s newsletter, April 2018 (“Honoring a Hero”) and April 2019 (the armistice centennial exhibit).
Since 2001: Our Community News, the Palmer Lake Star (Nov. 2002), the council’s Veterans Day vote (Nov. 2006), the first Veterans Day lighting (Jan. 2007), Post 9-11’s charter (Oct. 2007), the Veterans History Project notice (Nov. 2014), “Salute and Shine for Veterans” (Dec. 2014), the Crawford Memorial dedication (Dec. 2017) · The Gazette, Monument Academy’s 25th Veterans Day assembly (Nov. 18, 2019).
Colorado papers, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection: The Rocky Mountain News, Nov. 11, 1918 · The Columbine Herald, Nov. 9, 1956, Nov. 8, 1957, Nov. 15, 1957 · Palmer Lake-Monument News, Nov. 11, 1965, Nov. 9, 1967, Dec. 21, 1967, Jan. 23, 1969, Nov. 13, 1969, Dec. 18, 1969, Aug. 19, 1971, Oct. 21, 1971 · Black Forest News, Dec. 15, 1977, Jan. 5, 1978, May 4, 1978, July 13, 1978, Oct. 5, 1978, Nov. 2, 1978, Nov. 9, 1978.
Images: The Rocky Mountain News, Nov. 11, 1918, and the Palmer Lake-Monument News, Nov. 11, 1965, from the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, which marks both titles as free of known U.S. copyright.
Methodology
The local record comes from the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, which holds The Columbine Herald for 1956 to 1959, the Palmer Lake-Monument News for 1965 to 1971 and the Black Forest News for 1960 to 1979, with gaps. The Independent searched each title for “Veterans Day,” “Armistice,” “veterans,” “Legion” and “VFW,” read the November issues’ contents for 1956 to 1958 and 1965 to 1971, and read every article cited here in full. The collection’s text is produced by optical character recognition, which misreads names and figures, so each quotation in this article from those papers was checked against the page image. One check changed the story: the 1967 “Lest we forget” note is a separate box on the page, though the machine text runs it into the editorial beside it.
For the years since 2001 the Independent searched the online archive of Our Community News, which begins in June 2001, and the Gazette’s archive, which yields little before 2004; neither source covered the 1980s and 1990s, which this article therefore leaves out. The 4 a.m. Colorado time is the Rocky Mountain News‘s own. Days of the week were checked against the calendar.
Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/news/veterans-day-history-tri-lakes-black-forest/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.
