My Take
DiVoran Lites
Noah, Marie, and Amy Dulgar
My grandmother, Marie (Dulgar) Bowers was born and raised in Jasper County Illinois. When she was twenty-one she married Ira John Bowers, a farmer’s son. They had two boys and continued to live in Illinois until the eldest was five and the youngest two years old. Marie knew a great deal about rearing children because her mother and father had produced ten of them, and Marie was the eldest of them all.
The family move, “Heading West,” is described here.
After the death of her mother, Marie and Ira reared Marie’s youngest sister, Helen, and the youngest brother, Paul along with Ivan and Lowell, their own boys. That gave Marie two five-year-olds and two, two year-olds. Eventually Noah took his two and headed back for Illinois. I think it was to spare Marie and because the other grown-up brothers and sisters would be able to help with the children. I wish I could talk to them all now and get the details. Thank heaven Dora and Marie both told me family stories for all the years we were together.
I’ve always loved one story Marie told about getting herself and the four children ready for church. Of course, they would have had their tin washtub baths in the kitchen the night before. All that was left in the morning was to dress them, brush their hair, and keep all four clean until they could get in the car and go to church. Marie was a good thinker and planner so she came up with the idea of setting the children on the floor with a bedpost holding them down by their clothes.
After going to school in Pueblo, Ira and Marie opened a beauty and barbershop in this house on Main Street. Later they bought a Victorian house to live in. They divided the upstairs into apartments and arranged a back room as a beauty shop with its own entrance.
Once the women’s block, now the prison museum.
Ira went to work as a guard in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Marie once told me that the families of the prisoners were always polite to the guards they met in the town because they wanted to make sure theirfamily members were well treated. The penitentiary had the first electric chair in Colorado and also had a horizontal whipping post the men were forced to bend over for punishment. If you ever go through Canon City on vacation. You can stop in and see these items of death and torture.
Marie and Ira Bowers married 63 years
DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn. She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”
Old Things R New 