Bluebell Avenue resident had unusual past,
By Silvia Pettem
In last month’s “On the Corner,” I wrote that early real estate developer David Dobbins built four almost-identical brick bungalows, one on each of the southeast corners of Bluebell Avenue and 15th, 16th, 17th, and 19th streets.
The house at 1604 Bluebell was owned by Miriam Rieder who lived there from the late 1930s to her death in 1957. Rieder was an assistant professor of Romance Languages at the University of Colorado. She also was considered an eccentric, and she had an unusual past.
At the time, acres of undeveloped property surrounded Rieder’s home. She bought the land and preferred it wild and unkempt with native plants and flowers providing a sanctuary for ground-nesting birds. After one neighbor complained of her “weeds,” she wrote a scathing letter to the editor of the “Daily Camera.”
“What is the matter with people who are so blind that they see beauty, and utility, only in their own little clipped lawn?” Rieder asked. “How can people go to church and sit in pews and worship God, and then devote their weekdays to trying to destroy what He has generously given us to enjoy?”
Rieder regularly patrolled her property and carried a pistol to scare off intruders. Parents of neighborhood children complained that she chased and shot at them. In 1950, the then-61-year old woman pleaded guilty in court to “threatening the lives of young people,” but she claimed she only did it to frighten them off of her land.
The public was unaware during her lifetime that Rieder was the daughter of former German professor Mary Rippon. At CU’s recent May Commencement, the highly acclaimed Rippon received a long-overdue posthumous honorary doctoral degree. But in 1889, she had secretly married one of her adult students, and they had a child. That child was Miriam Rieder.
Rippon conveniently took a year’s sabbatical to Germany where Rieder was born in 1889. Then Rippon returned to CU and continued to teach. The little girl was left in orphanages and passed around an extended family of aunts and uncles for the first few years of her life. Rippon (who would have lost her job if her marriage had been known) never lived with her husband. Eventually he remarried and was able to raise their daughter.
When Rieder lived at 16th and Bluebell, she was separated from her husband Rudolph. Their son Wilfred is now deceased, but he spent most of his adult life on the East Coast. Think of Rieder, her birds, and her unusual background, as you drive by her former home.
Cutline: Miriam Rieder’s former home at 1604 Bluebell Avenue was one of four (initially!) almost-identical brick bungalows built by real estate developer David Dobbins.
Silvia Pettem is the author of “Separate Lives: The Story of Mary Rippon,” available in local bookstores and at www.thebooklode.com.
