People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- Josephine (Schneible) Rader
- She was an early Palisade resident and a registered nurse. She had her first nursing experience administering to victims of the Spanish Flu in 1918, at an emergency hospital where her mother worked in Palisade. She was later a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction.
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- Josephine Busby
- Josephine "Jody" Busby was the superintendent of Garfield County Schools beginning in 1952. She was a member of the Education Committee of the Glenwood Springs Chamber of Commerce which helped developed Colorado Mountain College. Image cropped from Denver Post Archives
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- Josephine Elizabeth (Taylor) Dickey
- She was born in Grand Junction, Colorado to William Wesley Taylor and Helen (Booker) Taylor. Her father was one of the main caretakers and officials of the Handy Chapel, Grand Junction's historically Black church. Her mother was a homemaker. 1930 US Census records indicate that they lived at 817 Kimball Avenue in the Las Colonias neighborhood, when she was six. The same census shows her father working as a porter in a barber shop. Josephine attended local schools through the 8th Grade. When Josephine was a teenager, her mother became ill. Josephine cared for her until she passed away. She dropped out of school at the age of fifteen in order to care for her siblings. She worked as a teacher's aide in Mesa County schools. An award offered to educators by the Black Citizens and Friends organization is named for her. She also served as a caretaker of the Handy Chapel. Her great-grandfather, William Austin, helped to build the Handy Chapel in 1892. It was Dickey's dream to create a museum of local African-American history in the house located next door to the Handy Chapel. She married John R. Dickey in Grand Junction on August 12, 1939. She had two daughters, Barbara and Helen, and two sons, Vernon and Irving. Oral history interviewee Shannon Robinson, who when she was young knew Miss Dickey personally, recalls her as the "Black elder of Grand Junction." According to Robinson, who calls her "Grandma Dickey," Dickey helped restore the Handy Chapel, was an activist and the civil rights elder of the town, and was everyone's grandma, no matter their race. According to oral history interviewee Janielle Westermire, Dickey was energetic and charismatic and cared deeply about the community. Dickey was the step-sister of Westermire’s grandmother.
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- Josephine Kate (Ramsay) Biggs
- She was born in Oklahoma to Robert W. Ramsay from Scotland and Mary E. Ramsay from Illinois. Her father was in the dry goods business. She attended Smith College in New England. Josephine came to the Grand Junction area in November of 1920. She had been working as the YWCA national secretary (Young Woman’s Christian Association) in Denver and was sent to Grand Junction to found a local YWCA. When interest in founding a local chapter fell through, she left town, but ended up returning. She was a friend of Walter B. Cross, owner of the Red Cross Land and Fruit Company, operator of Cross Orchards. They met while the two of them lived in the LaCourt Hotel and Cross often let her ride his Arabian horse up First Street, and also invited she and her fiance to dinner at his house in Cross Orchards. According to William Hartman, she had a role in helping Mesa College purchase land along North Avenue for a future home. She was an artist and contemporary of Mesa County artist Harold Bryant. During the 1920's, they met at meetings of the Beaux Arts Club in the Manhattan Cafe in Grand Junction.