CALF_News_June_July_2018

44 CALF News • June | July 2018 • www.calfnews.net R ecollections BY BETTY JO GIGOT PUBLISHER ONE OF THE HONORS OF MY LIFEWAS TO CALLW.D. FARR A CLOSE FRIEND. The opportunity to spend countless hours in his company was truly a privilege. I know I share that feeling with the hundreds of you who had the opportunity to interact with W.D. He was one of the treasures of that generation’s pioneers and a true renais- sance man. the office, a tall, stooped gentleman with his hands behind his back, came stroll- ing by and stopped to introduce himself. When I realized he was Mr. Farr, I of course asked if he would let me inter- view him, not realizing at the time who he was in the industry. Kindly, W.D. invited me back to his office to visit, but I was the one who got interviewed. Before I left, he knew more about me than I did, but I had a promise that he would call me if he decided to do a story. He called. I drove to Greeley and the rest, as they say, is history. With eight hours of tapes to work with and countless visits through the years, I had the privilege of recording a lot of his life while I began a career of writing about the men who founded and advanced the cattle feeding indus- try. The first of my 14-part story about W.D. was printed in CALF News in February 1990. Here is a sample from that first segment: “This is kind of an interesting story about my grandfather. He grew up in Canada. His parents had come from England. He was an apprentice blacksmith from the time he was 16 years old to 19 years old in St. Thomas, Ontario, which is just north of Detroit not too far. In those days I guess that’s the way you learned any trade – spend three years as an apprentice. As he finished that three years, the transcontinental railways had just been completed before that and the West appealed to him. So, he went to the depot and said, ‘here’s all the money I’ve got in the world and I want a ticket as far west as it will go.’ They sold him a ticket to Cheyenne. He got to Cheyenne and got off and went to work for a blacksmith there for six or eight months. The blacksmith was pretty rough and a big man. He would get drunk and take after you with an axe and so forth. He decided he better get out of there. He got down to Loveland, Colo., and worked in the blacksmith shop there. The stage driver between Greeley and Loveland told him they needed a blacksmith in Greeley and he could start his own shop. He hadn’t been able to do any more than just barely exist; didn’t have money enough to buy a ticket from Loveland to Greeley, but the stage driver told him he could pay him later. This was in 1876, and it appar- ently worked. Eventually, in 1910, he took the stage driver to Paris to the World’s Fair.” That grandfather, William Bennett Farr, eventually homesteaded in Gree- ley and only went back to Canada to marry his childhood sweetheart. “Then over time, about every three years or so, the next oldest brother would come here, because he was missing so much opportunity staying in Canada. The next oldest brother came and then the next oldest until finally all four brothers came. All four of them also went back and married Canadian girls and brought them here.” NEXT TIME: A FEW MORE W.D. STORIES.  I was a little over age to be a cub reporter in 1989 when I went to work for CALF News, but I made up for it with enthusiasm, bounding around the country and soaking up the atmosphere of a vibrant and growing industry. Every day was an adventure, meeting people, taking pictures and learning. A trip to Greeley, Colo., in early 1990 took me to Farr Feeders to take a picture for our Cameo column. While visiting in