Alice Lemaster was four years old when her parents moved to Windsor, Colorado where her mother, who suffered from asthma, improved in the dry climate. The family later moved to Keenesburg.

Alice attended a one-room school. "There was another girl and me in my class," she says. "She'd get ahead of me for awhile, then I'd get ahead of her." There were 30 pupils in the entire school.

Alice loved to read. "I can't remember a time I wasn't reading," she states. "Little Women was the first novel I read. I wanted a library ticket so bad, they were $1.50. Money was always hard. I kept hoping someone would give me a library ticket for Christmas, but I got a baby doll instead. It was a beautiful doll with handmade clothes. I could have cared less."

"We had programs and I learned everybody's part," Alice recalls. "I had a good memory." She still has a good memory and a wonderful sense of humor. Alice is 93 years old; her ready smile makes her look much younger.

When she got out of the one room schoolhouse there was no high school but the next year the Districts were consolidated so Alice was able to go to high school. "They brought kids in from out aways," she relates. "There were several girls taking courses to be teachers. It was nice knowing them. All of them got schools."

Alice remembers getting a pair of scissors for the Domestic Science class, a class where they learned to cook and sew. "You had to make black satin bloomers," she laughs. "When I took them home my mother just laughed and laughed, she said 'Them will fit me.' She was a big woman. I learned to make tomato soup and two or three things."

Alice met her husband Everett, in Keenesburg, where he was building an alfalfa plant. "Grinding alfalfa up for feed," she explains. "He was working on construction of it." Alice and Everett got acquainted and fell in love.

"We went and got married," Alice says. "We eloped and landed in jail. As soon as I was missing my folks were hunting for us. We got married before they caught us. It lasted for 36 years."

Everett's mother lived in Ohio; he went to visit her and then sent for Alice. The Lemasters lived in Ohio, then Michigan where they stayed until the depression hit. "My husband couldn't find work," Alice remembers. "The first winter he put his shovel on his shoulder and went out and shoveled snow. That kept us in bread." She recalls an article in the paper that said that Ford was putting people to work. "Every able bodied man would show up at the gates." Everett wasn't one of them. "They turned the fire hose on them."

"That's the year I turned Democrat," Alice laughs.

The last of May Everett sat down with a cup of coffee, "I'd like to leave this place," he said. Alice gave him the last nickel she had so they could move.

"By Wednesday we were on our way, in a Model-T Ford," she declares. "I had four children and we took a friend with us." When the Lemasters got into Iowa the wind blew the top of the car off and they traveled the rest of the way in a topless car. "I was trying to shield my seven month old baby," Alice says.

When they finally got to Keenesburg the family stayed with her mother for a couple of weeks. "Everett harvested beets, beans and all sorts of things," she says. "We finally found a house and moved into it."

When he was 17 years old Everett had worked at Armours Packing House in Denver and because he had a rosy complexion they called him peaches. One day Everett was walking by the packing house and the old hiring boss recognized him. The boss asked, "Are you working?" Everett said "No."

"Have you still got your apron and boots?" The boss asked and Everett said he did.

"Of course he didn't have them," Alice laughs, "But the boss said, 'Come in tomorrow morning." Everett worked there for 25 years. The Lemasters moved to Denver in 1930 and to the Derby area in 1935. At that time it was hard to find a house for rent. "We saw an ad in the paper," she relates. "Somebody was offering an acre of land and Everett said 'Let's go find out about that,' so we bought an acre of land for $225, on 65th place in Derby. There were chicken farms and hog ranches around there. There was a well on the land. We put up a sort of one room chicken house and took our furniture, sat it around to make divisions and we lived in that one room for that year. My husband started to build a house of adobe and we had two rooms finished on the other house by the next year. The kids came down with the mumps, then whooping cough, we were quarantined in."

Everett and Alice had seven boys and four girls. Eight children are still living. "We had the process turned on and we couldn't get it turned off," she laughs. "Jim and Dick were both in World War II. "

The Lemaster family attended Derby Community Church. "We always went to church," Alice states. "My father taught the adult Sunday school class and I taught Sunday School for awhile."

Alice started a group called "The Work Basket." The club was limited to 12 members. "We would meet at each others' houses," Alice explains, "and do mending. The hostess would put out something she needed mending or dish towels to be hemmed. We'd have lunch. That went on for a lot of years. I'm still friends with some of them."

The family lived in the house on 65th Place until Everett died in 1955. "The roof was leaking pretty bad," she relates. "The boys were grown now and they said 'Mother you're going to have to move out and let us do something to this house. Do you want to rent a place or look around to find a house and move it in here?' We found a house and moved it in."

After her husband's death Alice had two children still at home. She was 51 years old and had never worked. She didn't know what to do. "I worried and prayed about it," she remembers. "One Saturday night I was watching television when they told about a class for practical nursing." Alice applied, took the test and enrolled in the class. She worked at St. Luke's Hospital until she was 65, then worked part time at Adams Manor, a nursing home in Commerce City until she was 72 years old. "It's gone now," she says. "After I quit I went to Arizona in the '70's. My youngest daughter lived in Mesa and I had gone to visit her. I decided I wanted to live down there. I found a mobile home and put a down payment on it. My sons hired a U-haul, put everything I had in that U-Haul and I lived down there for 14 years."

One day as she was going through a mall she saw a sign that said, "Paint along with Patty." "I thought, that sounds like fun," Alice recalls and at the age of 80 she learned to paint. Alice has done over 100 oil paintings and the walls of her room display a fine artistic talent. "I hurt my back," she explains "Now my hands won't work together."

Alice has 40 grandchildren. "I had 41," she says, "but one was killed." Alice Lemaster has lived a full and rich life.

(Note: Alice Lemaster passed away in 1998)