Norman Franklin "Norm" Meyer Sr.

Norman Franklin Meyer was born Jan. 15, 1917, in Trinidad. He passed away on Nov. 21, 2014, in the early-morning hours at Balfour skilled care in Louisville of natural causes at age 97.
Norm's paternal grandfather emigrated from Ansbach, Germany, in the 1860s, and his mother's parents from the British Isles. Johann Meyer, his grandfather, came to work in the meat shops of Central City in the 1860s, then decided to try his own hand at meat marketing by filing a homestead in Gardner, Colo. This is where Norm spent most of his childhood, after his family had spent a short time in the Wheat Ridge area raising apples.
Norm's father, Gustavus Meyer, took over managing the JM Ranch with his brother Albert, when it had grown to 6,000 acres with a herd of 1,000 Herefords and a small herd of sheep. Norm remembered driving their cattle herd over Pass Creek Pass to the Trinchera Grant for summer grazing in the San Luis Valley. Norm had photos of the fall roundup with about 30 cowboys from 10 ranches, sorting their cows by their individual brands. At about age 16, he asked his mother for a camera instead of a new suit of clothes and began photographing his ranch life and the Sangre de Cristo peaks. He later published some of these photos in the Denver Post rotogravure section.
Norm attended a one-room adobe brick school, riding with his brothers and some Mexican-American neighbors in a springboard wagon, but sometimes they rode their horses the 3 miles to school. He attended Gardner High School for three years, then paid room and board in Walsenburg to finish his fourth year. He was accepted to the University of Colorado, where he chose to study journalism, having a natural knack with words. There he climbed all three Flatirons and other peaks. He decided one weekend to take a $1 plane ride out of the Boulder airport, then a dirt strip in the 1930s, and that day found his calling to aviation. He decided to pursue a career flying professionally instead of writing for a living.
Norm financed his own flying by giving flying lessons at the Park Hill airport in east Denver and later trained U.S. Army Air Corps cadets in Oklahoma. He flew cargo domestically during World War II. He was among the first pilots hired by Continental Airlines, based out of Denver. He took Robert Six on a private plane ride in the DC-3 to southern Colorado to go elk hunting in those early days.
In 1941, he met and married Ethel Peterson, who was an elementary school teacher. They lived in east Denver before moving to their permanent home in Conifer on Highway 285 in 1950 on 350 acres. Norm wanted to have some land to run cows and horses as he had in his childhood and to have his own airstrip. Denver was an easy commute to his job as a captain on Continental Airlines, until CAL moved its base to L.A. in 1960. His career spanned 35 years, with the early routes between Denver and El Paso and east to Wichita in the Lockheed Loadstar (daily capacity during WWII was as low as 56 passengers, since some airplanes went to war causes). Norm retired in 1976 flying the Boeing 747 in the South Pacific.
In the 1960s he bought a Piper Super Cub to fly out of his hay meadow at Conifer and then upgraded to a Cessna 180 (both tail-wheel airplanes) in 1970. He flew this plane out of the meadow until he was 92 years old; he called her his "baby."
Norm and "Blondie" upgraded the historic Midway House, named for its position on the stagecoach route to Fairplay on the old Bradford Toll Road from Denver. They had a big garden visible from the highway. Norm added brick and stone fireplaces in his time off. The post-and-beam barn remains original from 1883.
In 2010 Norm was inducted into the Colorado Aviation Historical Society Hall of Fame. He was active in the local Kiwanis, the Aviation OX5 Pioneers, the Continental Airlines Retired Pilots, the Conifer Historical Society, the Mountain Area Land Trust, the Westerners, and Silver Wings.
He is survived by his four children, Sharon Meyer Rouse and Cara Meyer Anderson, both of Boulder, Norman Meyer II of Conifer, and Erik Meyer of Fort Collins; four grandchildren, Roanne Houck, Damon Rouse, Britt Barrett and Teague Anderson; and four great-grandchildren, Iris Houck, Porter Houck of Gunnison, Oscar Rouse and Alma Rouse of Asheville, N.C. Ethel passed away in 2007.
A community picnic in memory of Norm will be planned for Conifer residents in the early summer of 2015 at the Yellow House.
Memorial donations may be made to the Mountain Area Land Trust, P.O. Box 4063, Evergreen, CO 80437; or to the Conifer Historical Society and Museum, P.O. Box 295, Conifer, CO 80433.