Wayne Longaker was born in Denver and he moved to this area where he lived with his parents at 108th and Chambers Road. Wayne started to school at Cactus Ridge School, north and east of Commerce City in 1938 and attended the school for eight years. Betty Carlson was the lower grade teacher.

"The things that Mrs. Carlson taught me came back to my mind after I was grown and working," Wayne says.

Mr. Lucke taught the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. At that time there were two rooms in the school. The south side was for the lower grades and the north side was for the upper grades.

There were no buses so many students rode horses, walked or rode a bicycle. There was a horse stable behind the school. Wayne walked two miles to get to school.

Meals at that time were a government project. The women from the P.T.A. came in and served food during lunch period in the basement of the school where there was a kitchen. Wayne didn't think the food was the best, especially the Spanish rice that they had every Thursday. People in the neighborhood brought in fruit and vegetables.

Wayne very seldom missed a day of school. If storms were too heavy the teacher took them home. Most parents realized if the weather was bad they had to come to the open prairie school to pick up their children but Wayne's parents couldn't come because his Dad worked. Once in awhile Mrs. Carlson took him home.

In 1942 when he was 12 years old, Wayne's brothers went to war. His Dad worked in town so Wayne did the farming but still stayed in school. The teacher, Mr. Lucke went into the service and was killed the first year he was overseas. Mr. Roach was the next teacher.

When Wayne was in the sixth and seventh grades another boy and he ramrodded a baseball team. There were four girls on the team and the Cactus Ridge baseball team beat every school in the area. When Cactus Ridge played against Adams City and beat the high school team Adams City was embarrassed because it was such a small school. Hazeltine school played at Cactus Ridge and often knocked the ball on top of the schoolhouse.

Although Arithmetic was Wayne's favorite class he did poorly until the last year he was in the school. Then it was discovered that he had bad eyesight. After he got glasses Wayne's grade jumped from an F to an A. "We didn't have a calculator," he relates. "I was good at memorizing time tables."

Wayne remembers that one day when Mr. Roach's wife went after the mail, the car rolled on top of her but she managed to get back in the car and drive to the hospital. She got her complaints fixed and came back to the school where she stayed for two years.

Wayne graduated from the eighth grade from Cactus Ridge in 1945. He and Gertrude Land were the only two in that graduating class that year.

Wayne was in the dairy business from 1950 until 1966. Mrs. Eichner taught Wayne's children. He has worked in town as a service manager doing maintenance. He went back to farming for a couple of years, and then opened his own business, a laundry and dry cleaning.

Wayne and his wife Carol were married in 1971. She has three children and he has five. They have one child and 12 grandchildren. The Longakers live in Commerce City and operate the C & W Enterprises.

Wayne broke his knee cap in September and the doctors are in the process of putting in a new knee. He also had a heart attack and spent five months in the hospital. He is doing good now.