Bio - Ding, Thelma, Edwards, Eagle County, Colorado By: Jean Winthers Thelma Ding Printed in Vail Daily, Local's Corner, May 23, 1998 Thelma Ding no longer lives in Edwards but some of her best memories and friends are still there. Ding was Postmaster in Edwards from 1957 to 1966, in the days when the post office was housed in the old Edwards Store, still standing beside the Gas House on Highway Six in Edwards. The black painted letters that spelled out "Post Office" and "Edwards Store" on the building's false front, and the original log color, are hidden under several coats of green paint and the sign now reads Kemp & Co. The 70-year-old building, only a bit lopsided, houses supplies for Jim Kemp's pipe company. Once it was the community gathering place for Edwards' locals, dispensing mail and general store necessities. Built in 1929 by Cliff and Mary Thomas, out of logs milled by Carl Eaton from his sawmill located by the Eagle River, the building had been in use continuously as a store and post office. Thelma and Herbert Ding purchased the store from Frank and Marian Brock, and arrived in the Eagle Valley in 1957, with their young son, Dennis, and baby daughter, Jeanine. The Ding family had moved from eastern Kansas to live in Denver while Herbert Ding was in the military. When they bought a small general store and post office in the remote Eagle Valley "the relatives thought we were out of our heads," Thelma Ding said. Nevertheless, the Dings settled in the living quarters on the second floor of the store and Thelma Ding became postmaster and general store manager. "The building was terribly run down when we came. My husband did a lot of work on it before he died," Ding said. "We did have plumbing in the store, and there was an outhouse out back. I told my husband that I wouldn't move where there were outhouses and woodstoves." When her husband died of cancer in 1959 , Ding carried on for seven more years before selling the business to Bill and Sue Aston. They were the last people to operate the store, although the Post Office continued in the building until the early 1970s, when it was moved into the Edwards Business Center. Ding and her family moved to Gypsum, and then to Glenwood Springs where she taught elementary school for many years. Now retired, she remembers those early days in Edwards fondly. "My son belonged to 4-H and ran his sheep across the road where Edwards Village Center is today," Ding said. "There was just nothing there then. I-70 wasn't built. Highway Six was built when the store was, in 1929. The Koprinickers, two bachelors and an old maid sister, lived over near where the I-70 interchange is now. When I-70 was built it took the ranch buildings.The first store building was also built near the interchange." A man named Cully Thomas owned the property, with nothing but the store on it, Ding said. "Cully Jacobs subdivided it and built the filling station and sold it. When we were there Chet and Wanda Ruminski ran it as a Conoco station and hamburger place. That later became the Gas House." As postmaster with 35 boxes, Ding knew everyone in the community. The locals included Ellis "Bearcat" Beardon and Billy Williams, Squaw Creek pioneers, Mary Shields, who lived on a ranch in Lake Creek, the Millers who owned the Miller Ranch, Sammy and Betty Carter and Bruce Eaton, all still familiar names in the valley. Although the boxes had combination locks on the boxes, people liked having Ding hand them their mail as they caught up on the latest community news. "The mail came in on the train and Esther Clatt's father would get it off the train and deliver it to the store," Ding said. "They would just throw the one bag of mail off the train, as there was no station there." Ding sorted the mail on a zinc counter and did her paper work sitting at a roll-top desk. Groceries were weighed on glass scales, and rang up in a metal cash register. Customers would drink Coke from an old-style Coke machine, sipping it while sitting in "the chair" provided for customers. Ding's daughter, Jeanine Kastner, now a senior systems analyst for a large software development company in Kansas City, recalls how her mother limited the use of the chair by hiding the cushion in her office. "Ellis Bearden was the greatest patron of the chair," Kastner wrote in a memoir for her mother. "He was a good friend of the family, and provided us with picnics and horseback rides on his Squaw Creek ranch that is now occupied by a golf course and mansions." The crank telephone in the store was the only one in the area at the time. Ding recalls how some officials scouting out Vail had to come down to the Edwards Store to contact the outside world. Ding's only method of transportation was a 1959 Chevy station wagon, which she drove on Highway Six and the unpaved ranch roads in the area.. When she had to make the trip to Denver it was over Loveland Pass, as I-70 would not be in existence until much later. Ding maintains contacts with friends in the Edwards area and keeps up on local developments. Although Edwards has changed so fast she "hardly knows where anything is anymore," she feels it is important that the history of the area be preserved. The Edwards Store and Post Office building is an important part of that history. =================================================== Contributed for use by the USGenWeb Archive Project (http://www.usgenweb.org) and by the COGenWeb Archive Project USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. 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