Vagneur: The Martin Cerise legacy

He was born up Little Woody Creek, 1925, back in the early ranching days, the son of French Italian immigrants who came to this area in the 1880s. He grew to be a tall man, 6’2″, weighing in at a tough, wiry 170 pounds. Ranch life is good at keeping your weight and cholesterol level down.

It was the quiet years in Woody Creek, long before taverns, asphalt roads, trailer parks, mumbling writers, and people who no longer make their living off the land. It was not uncommon to see horse-drawn sleighs pulled up to the Woody Creek Store and post office, outnumbering cars and trucks.

Ranchers were making a reasonably prosperous living, enabled by the D&RG railroad, which had never discontinued service to the Roaring Fork Valley, even though silver mining had severely decreased after 1893. Cattle were becoming big commodities in the 1920s, and sometimes one year’s potato crop could pay off a ranch mortgage. Chickens, ducks, pigs, milk cows, all contributed to the well-being of the family.

It wasn’t entirely quiet and idyllic; a lot of fighting and arguing went on over water rights and the available water to share. His family owned, when they finally got settled, all of Little Woody Creek including the land that encompasses the Community School. Some of their irrigation water came out of Little Woody, but it had to be shared by others, such as the Hang Ranch.

They were fortunate for they were alongside the Salvation Ditch, their shares usually providing a reliable stream of water through the summer, but even at that, there always were water thieves in the night which bore watching. The Vagneur brothers (from French Italian heritage, as well), who owned much of the water, often patrolled their ditches day and night with guns, and occasional gunshots could be heard in the valley. Somebody got caught stealing water. No one ever got killed, or shot, it seems, but a few people might have had the hell scared out of them.

He was the only surviving son of Albert and Onorina Milanesio Cerise, his older brother having died at a very young age. His sister Amelia lived there, as well, along with their uncle, Albert’s brother Flavian. They were our neighbors, about two miles down the road and unlike some of the other French-Italian folks in the valley, including Vagneurs, we got along well with them.

Martin Cerise married a lovely blonde lass, Virginia Wagner of Missouri Heights, in 1952. They had two children, a boy and girl, known to most everyone of any longevity in Aspen. Carolyn Cerise Barabe, was for many years the head duck of Guest Services at Aspen Mountain. She also was in charge of keeping the ambassadors in line, a job no doubt likened more to that of herding cats than supervising goodwill folks on skis. One of the best bosses I ever had and, trust me, she can ski your socks off.

Her brother, Jim, was a fellow patroller with me back in the 70s, only he made a career out of it, retiring several years ago. He was good at catching air, could fly through the trees in knee-deep powder, was strong like a bull, and is perhaps the only man in history to survive a head-on with a snowcat, limping away with a severely broken leg. You want to know about tough, talk to Jimmy Cerise, a man with a keen eye for trouble and a distinctive, infectious laugh.

It might seem odd to some, but Martin, a generation older, and I became friends in the early 1970s. He was a successful businessman in town, I was driving an ambulance during the ski patrol strike, and it just seemed like our paths consistently crossed. He’d sold the family ranch in Woody Creek, my dad had sold the ranch I grew up on, and deep within each of us was a love for agriculture, and besides that, we missed the cows. We’d talk ranching and people, our common ties to northern Italy, Martin in his 40s, me in my 20s.

Martin and my dad, like so many of their generation, had been tragically blessed with certain heart conditions, initially caused by strep throats when they were children.  Unfortunately, we also talked a lot about such things, and that’s what probably brought us together in the first place.

I’ll never forget him, spotting me somewhere in town, walking across the street toward my position, tall, good-looking man, distinctively wearing a cowboy hat cocked just a bit off to one side, a serious look with a sliver of a smile on his face. It always made my day.