Life At A Century Plus Five

Reminiscing With Jocelyn Fisher, Matriarch of Montview

Story by Jack Farrar
Photos courtesy of the Fishers

Special to the GPHN

“I didn’t know I was going to live so damn long,” says Jocelyn May Koch Fisher, the presiding matriarch of one of Park Hill’s handsome Denver Squares along Montview Boulevard.

On May 29, Fisher marked her 105th year on the planet. She did so with some ambivalence, certainly a mixture of fatigue and stoic resignation. But not regret. She shared her memories with me recently, with the assistance of two of her four daughters, Beth and Joan. Fisher was politely corrected a few times on certain details, but her memory is sharp.

To apply some historical perspective: When Fisher was born in 1911 in Calcutta, India, William Howard Taft was president of the United States, Pancho Villa was leading attacks against the government of Mexico, and the hull of the Titanic was launched in Belfast.

That year the Lincoln Memorial Commission was established to find an ideal site for the proposed monument in Washington. International Women’s Day was celebrated for the first time – though women still did not have the right to vote in this country. That didn’t happen until 1920 – when Fisher was nine years old.

Famous folks born in 1911 include Babe Didrikson Zaharias (arguably the best female athlete of her era and a part-time resident of Denver), Ginger Rogers, George Liberace, Roy Rogers and Bob Hope (one of Fisher’s favorite celebrities).

Here in Denver, Mayor Robert Speer was implementing his ambitious plan to give the city of less than 214,000 people a world-class parks system, featuring parkways such as 17th Avenue. In 1911 the Cathedral of the Basilica on Colfax was completed, Mountain States Telephone (Ma Bell) opened its offices, and the Daniels & Fisher Tower and Department Store was built downtown.

Riding elephants

Fisher grew up in Calcutta, one of nine children of Clinton Koch, a teacher at a Methodist mission. She has fond memories of India, which included watching the servants at work and home, going to a boarding school from age 7, watching Hindi ceremonies and an occasional ride on an elephant.

She learned Bengali from the servants and still remembers some poems and rhymes – one which she recited to me without hesitation – Little Jack Horner in Bengali.

She also learned a good deal about religious and ethnic tensions. Education was highly revered in the Koch household; Fisher was a prolific reader.

“I so loved Little Women that I wrote a letter to Jo,” says Fisher. “You know, I think that letter went all around the world, before it came back to me undeliverable.”

When she was 11, Fisher and her family returned to the United States. They soon found themselves at the Sanitarium for Tuberculosis in Silver City, New Mexico. Her father had been diagnosed with TB.

Because the doctors advised her father not to return to India he took a position at the Iliff School of Theology at the University of Denver. The family settled down, expecting to live here forever. In 1926, Fisher graduated from South High School.

But because of the downturn in the economy, the family of 10 followed their father to the tiny town of Clayton. Eventually they moved to Albuquerque, where her father became a professor of German and French at the University of New Mexico. Most of the children attended and graduated from there.

Before their ordeal was over Fisher, her older brother and a five-year-old sister had all been diagnosed with TB. Jocelyn recovered, but both her siblings eventually died. It took a terrible toll on the family.

‘I wasn’t the kind to go steady’

Fisher met her husband, G. Robert Fisher, in the late 20s, at the University of New Mexico, when they were undergraduates. “I wasn’t the kind to go steady,” she says with a slightly wicked grin. “I wanted to play the field, but he was pretty much focused on me.”

When Bob went to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he didn’t like to think about his sweetheart being out and about. He came home at Christmas in 1930, his second year of medical school, and convinced her to elope. They kept their secret even from their parents until a story appeared in the gossip column saying a girl in her sorority had eloped.

The marriage carried the Fishers from Baltimore during the Depression, to Denver, where Bob was a resident at Children’s Hospital, and then to Albuquerque for his first job as a fully certified pediatrician.

They spent time in Colorado Springs, where Bob was the only pediatrician between the New Mexico border and Denver, and then finally back to Denver where he opened a private practice and was the head of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Medical School during World War II.

In each city they added a new baby girl to the family. With three girls in tow, the Fishers purchased their home in 1943 for the princely sum of $14,000. It was designed by the architectural firm of Fisher & Fisher (no relation).

“I was a little nervous about buying the house,” says Jocelyn Fisher. “We had to scrape together every dollar we had to make the down payment. I also thought the corner would be too noisy, because the bus ran down Montview and turned at Clermont at that time.”

Kissing in the back seat

The Fisher’s Park Hill home has been the site of antics and arts. The four daughters who grew up there – Beth, Joan, Gail and Lynn – were all talented ballet dancers, and skilled actors, which often led to creative shenanigans.

Having heard the myth that a murder had once been committed in their garage, they charged kids in the neighborhood a dime each to see the “blood stains at the murder scene.” They once convinced their mother that a horrible crime had been committed in the garage, and produced a “corpse,” fake blood and other props to enhance the effect.

“One year we had a Halloween party to end all Halloween parties,” Fisher says. “We used real skeletons from the University of Colorado Medical School and set up a couple of them kissing in the back seat of our car.”

The three oldest girls came to Denver with their eyes on competitive ice-skating. Every winter (“when Denver had really cold winters”) their dad sprayed and surfaced their backyard into a homemade rink, so they could practice their figures. When the City Park Lake was frozen Joan Fisher would go to practice her free skating.

At one time or another, three different spaces in the house were dance rehearsal studios. The most impressive was a studio on the third floor (intended originally to be a ballroom), including barre and mirrors.

Living five lives

Although Jocelyn Fisher was not a prominent figure on the Denver social scene, she was involved in a broad range of organizations. She was an active member of St. Thomas Episcopal Church for many years. Fisher never held a 9-to-5 job, but she worked 24-7 as the mother of four mischievous daughters.

She sewed all of her daughters’ dance costumes, sewed many items for the gift shop at Children’s Hospital and made doll clothes for the Salvation Army. She helped embroider “Women of Colorado,” a tapestry that now hangs in the State Capitol Building. She also made costumes for many years for the Bonfils Theater.

“I remember making a suit in the 1930s for a woman who paid me 25 cents an hour,” Fisher said. “The total tab came to $2.50, but she gave me another $2.50 for a tip.”

Many businesses at the nearby business block of 23rd and Dexter have come and gone during Fisher’s time, including a butcher, a “notions” shop, a pharmacy, a barber, a baker, an antique store and a clock repair shop.

Fisher says she has lived four lives – her childhood in India, teens in the U.S., marriage and children, and widowhood (Bob Fisher died in 1984). A fifth life began for her when she reached the century milestone.

Jack Farrar is a longtime Park Hill resident and board member of the nonprofit Park Hill Community Bookstore, at 23rd and Dexter.

Around The World And Back Again

The Dancing Fisher Girls Of Park Hill

By Beth Fisher Colwell

Special to the GPHN

We moved to Denver in 1942. At that time there were three of us, my two older sisters, Joan and Gail, and me, Beth. We lived on 1st and Albion for the first year while our parents looked for a permanent home.

By 1943 we had found the perfect home in Park Hill. We had been ice-skating regularly at the new rink at The Broadmoor before we moved to Denver, and we continued to drive to Colorado Springs every weekend. At age 8, Joan, was becoming serious about competing on the ice, so my dad froze the north side of the house so she could practice her figures. After Joan’s early-morning practice all of us could slip and slide to our hearts content.

My mother suggested to my dad – we called him Bob – that we ought to find some way to keep fit in the winter if we wanted to keep up skating. So ballet was it! In no time Joan and I were absolutely in love with ballet. We laughed later when we realized that being warm in studio was much more appealing than freezing on the ice. Gail was not as enthusiastic, but she went along. She also devoted much of her time to studying piano.

Park Hill was such a safe place during the 40s and 50s. We could walk to City Park in the morning and tell our parents we would be home for lunch. The museum and the zoo could entertain us for hours – both were free back then.

After my little sister Lynn was born in 1947, life was filled with more fun. She too went to ballet classes as soon as she was old enough.

About the same time as we decided not to skate, we were invited to tour New Mexico as the Fisher Dancers.

Our practice studios grew from a small play cemented floor in the basement to the living room with rolled up rugs, to the attic, where Bob, with my mothers help, sanded the floor, installed walls, mirrors and barres. My mother’s real talent was sewing, so it was not long before she was making most of our costumes.

As we grew, ballet occupied more of Joan’s and my lives. Gail continued piano and Lynn and I divided our time between ballet and drama. But this didn’t mean we had no social life. When we were at Smiley we participated in the activities you would expect from young teenagers. We rode on boys’ handlebars on 23rd to the Park Hill Drugstore, joined potlucks, and we ran for offices in the school. Oh yes, we all went to the church dances at the Methodist Church on Friday nights or to the Tower Theater, where we could hold hands with our boyfriends. (If a boy put his arm around you or you talked, you were immediately sent to the right side of the theater. Kissing was absolutely forbidden!)

Joan and Gail went to East High but in 10th grade I went to New York City and studied ballet at the American School of Ballet. Joan eventually was in American Ballet Theater. Gail was off to the University of New Mexico after she graduated.

It was Lynn who was the real Park Hill Girl. She was born at Mercy Hospital, and lived in our house until she went to CU. She had friends at each school that she attended, Park Hill, Smiley and East.

The rest of our lives are another story. Each of us going our separate ways that have carried us around the world and back, but we are always tied to our Park Hill roots. I am the lucky one who has returned to care for my husband and my 105-year old mother, but most of the family is still nearby.

Beth Fisher Colwell is the second youngest of the Fisher Dancers of Park Hill.