Community service is life-long passion

By Dan MacArthur
North Forty News

Charles "Chuck" Hagemeister is firmly rooted in the region's history while always looking toward the future.

Although the proud product of pioneer stock turned 74 on Pearl Harbor Day, Hagemeister rejects any notion that he's ready to retire to a life of leisure. He's much too busy helping plan for the construction of a new museum following the overwhelming voter approval of the $56 million Building on Basics capital improvement package.

A lifelong educator, Hagemeister is clearly excited by the prospect of joining forces with the Discovery Science Center to create a more interactive museum that makes learning fun.

"I think you'll see a good museum like Denver's," he predicts.

The $6 million joint venture would result in a 50,000-square-foot structure at the eastern edge of Lee Martinez Park. In addition to encouraging the redevelopment of North College Avenue, the shared facility also would strengthen the connection between the park and the downtown via the Poudre River Trail, as well the link between history and science.

Building such bridges between the past and present is a critical goal for Hagemeister, who's convinced that history doesn't have to be boring. It's a conviction he's gained through immersion in his own family's rich history while living his entire life in the shadow of local history.

His grandparents, Charles and Anna Blunck, traveled by covered wagon from Iowa to Fort Collins in 1886. They established a series of farms, each successively larger, southeast of Fort Collins in areas now subsumed by the city's subdivisions.

Charles Blunck was widely regarded as the father of the sheep-feeding industry that then was a powerful economic force in the region. He prospered, buying the first Cadillac in Fort Collins, a town house on East Oak Street, a ranch south of Stout (now submerged under Horsetooth Reservoir) and farm surrounding Richards Lake north of town, which later produced crude during the Wellington oil boom of the 1920s.

Blunck's youngest daughter, Ruth, married Alfred Hagemeister in 1928. After Charles died the following year, Alfred and Ruth moved in with Anna at the Blunck home where they raised Chuck and his brother Howard.

Hagemeister largely credits his mother for fostering his commitment to preserving history and serving the community. "She never let us forget where we came from. She always said, 'Give back to the city,'" he recalls.

Her encouragement was compounded by the serendipity of Hagemeister growing up directly across the street from Lincoln (now Library) Park. He avidly monitored construction of the original Pioneer Museum that opened there in 1940. A frequent visitor, he became friends with the museum's first curator, Clyde Brown, who delighted in showing the young Hagemeister the eclectic artifacts contained in what was known as "the city's attic."

That connection further fueled a lifelong love of history that would lead Hagemeister to join the museum board in 1967 and later play a key role in relocating the old museum that his mentor had filled to overflowing.

While attending Colorado A&M, as Colorado State University was then known, he also worked on the city street crew tearing up the abandoned tracks of the trolley he once rode to school. The tracks were sold for scrap, and a tractor dragged the decommissioned Car 21 to a shameful retirement, rotting on a short section outside the museum until its restoration started in 1977.

"Even when we were doing it, my mother got on my case," says Hagemeister. He concedes the irony of then helping rip out the tracks that he later would be reconstructing when a section of the line along Mountain Avenue was restored. A member of the Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society during those years of reconstruction, Hagemeister later served as a trolley conductor.

Joining the police department in 1954, Hagemeister said even then he considered himself a teacher - creating an education division to reach out to youth. His interest in history also remained strong, he says, recalling one day while on patrol when he saw papers blowing from the old courthouse being demolished. Discovering that they were irreplaceable territorial documents, he gathered them up and delivered them to the library for safekeeping.

Hagemeister decided to formally make education his calling. "Kids needed a lot of help, and I thought I could help them better and more directly as a teacher," he says.

He earned his undergraduate degree from CSU and later master's degrees in counseling and school administration. In 1964, he became a social studies teacher at the old Lincoln Junior High School.

Hagemeister worked as counselor at Poudre High School from 1968 to 1973 and returned to Lincoln in 1973 as assistant principal. His main missions were improving discipline and designing the new Lincoln that opened in 1976.

That also was the year of the state centennial and national bicentennial that sparked a renewed interest in history. "I think the centennial/bicentennial got us to thinking," Hagemeister contends. "In the 1970s, I really got motivated."

He founded the Fort Collins Historical Society and served as its first chairman. As chair of the city's centennial/bicentennial committee, he was in charge of placing markers in front of historically significant properties, including his grandparents' home.

Perhaps most significantly, as chair of the museum subcommittee of the city's Cultural Resources Board from 1975 to 1978, Hagemeister facilitated relocation of the museum to the former Carnegie Library after construction of the new library and demolition of the old Pioneer Museum.

Recipient of the 2005 Pioneer of the Year and Museum Volunteer of the Year awards, he chairs the independent Museum Advisory Council and is helping the police create their own museum.

History is understandably important to Chuck Hagemeister and he wants to make it matter to others so they can better understand how far they've come and where they're headed.

"Be aware of your history. Don't take for granted what happened before you," he says. "Preserve the old so you can learn."