People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- Dalton Trumbo
- Dalton Trumbo was born in Montrose, Colorado to Orus Bonham Trumbo of Indiana and Maude Tillery of Kentucky. According to information presented by David Sundal, who had conversations with Trumbo, his Great Grandfather Tillery was an early day Montrose sheriff. His family moved to Grand Junction in 1908, when Trumbo was four. He grew up in a house at 1124 Gunnison Avenue that was torn down and replaced by a newer home in 1929. He grew up attending the First Church of Christ, Scientist, of which his mom was an adherent. He valued the education he received in Mesa County, saying it helped prepare him for his college days at the University of Colorado. In high school he was president of a prize-winning oratorical and debate team, president of the Booster Club, and worked at the Daily Sentinel with Walter Walker. Rufus Hirons, who went to school with Trumbo, recalled that he "walked real fast and he combed his hair kind of pompadour style," and that Trumbo was not someone who stopped to engage much in small talk. When he did talk, Trumbo apparently spoke quickly and was positive in his remarks. Oral history interviewee Jennie Dixon recalls that Trumbo was a bit of a "rebel" in school, and a loner who would rather be "out in the hills" where he could be alone with his own thoughts. Ellen (Page) Lannon, also a classmate of Trumbo's, felt that he did hold some animosity toward Grand Junction. She attributed this animosity to his family's poor financial situation. In an interview given when Trumbo was in his sixties, he told David Sundal that he harbored no ill will toward Grand Junction or its people. Trumbo also maintained that he had had positive thoughts about William Moyer. He did not have much money growing up and was raised in a very small home, which sparked rumors that his difficult situation created resentment towards the town. He spent one year at the University of Colorado at Boulder, but had to leave college because of his family’s financial difficulties (his father lost his job at Benge's shoe store). He moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1925, never to return. He got a job in a bakery. He kept the job for eight years, writing all the while and trying to sell his writing to magazines. He published several popular books, most detailing Grand Junction in one way or another. His greatest success, however, came as a writer of screenplays. Trumbo's first novel, Eclipse, written after the family's move to Los Angeles, excoriated several members of Grand Junction society, and featured a thinly veiled portrait of local businessman and philanthropist William J. Moyer. For this book, Trumbo was seen as a villain by many in Grand Junction, despite his more positive portrait of the Grand Valley in his novel Johnny Gets His Gun, an anti-war novel that was published to great acclaim, and which received a National Book Award. Trumbo went on to receive Oscar awards for his writing on such films as Spartacus and The Brave One. He was one of the Hollywood Ten, a suspected member of the Communist Party who refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Subsequent to his committee hearing, he was imprisoned for one year, then blacklisted from Hollywood. Because of his blacklisting, he was forced to look to Hollywood's black market in order to find work, and wrote under the pseudonym Robert Rich. He is presently honored with a statue on Main Street in Grand Junction. *Photograph from the 1923 Grand Junction High School yearbook
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- Damian Radice
- An artist who had artwork displayed in the Art on the Corner (AOTC) exhibit in Downtown Grand Junction.
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- Damien Stonequist
- Contributor to "Out of the Blue and Into the Sun," (source: Out of the Blue and Into the Sun: A Gunnison Valley Journal)
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- Dan Caseman
- Polo horse breeder who owned a ranch in Unaweep Canyon. He bred quarter horses to play polo at the polo grounds in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.