William S. "Billy" Colerick
Marriages
Mabel Colerick - 1921
Burial Details
Obituaries
Eagle Valley Enterprise page 1 - July 7, 1944
Death Calls Billy Colerick at Fulford
HAD JUST COME IN FROM CALIFORNIA FOR THE SUMMER TO WORK HIS MINE.
The community was deeply shocked Sunday morning on learning of the sudden death that morning of Billy Colerick at his camp at Fulford of heart failure. Mr and Mrs. Colerick had only arrived from their California home a few days before to spend the summer at Fulford where Mr. Colerick had intended supervising the working of his mining property on New York mountain. George Guenon was to work the property and had taken them up only two days before. Saturday Billy was in fine spirits over being back in Fulford and was feeling exceptionally well, planning on going up to the mine Sunday and showing Guenon what he wanted done on the property. But early Sunday morning he was taken suddenly ill, and was dead before Dr. Parkison could reach the camp. Mr. Colerick was born in Ohio, in December, 1869. He was educat- 1 ed in Ohio and started the study of medicine, when he broke off his studies for a trip to South America. On returning to the States, he came to Colorado in 1898, living first in Denver, then going to Leadville and coming to Red Cliff where he mined for a time. He then came to Eagle and went up to Fulford, where he located the Doctor Jack Pot claim. He had worked that and contiguious properties which he had acquired continuously since. Each year he, has expected the vein to open up in paying quantities, as he has always had ore that showed values in gold. Once having acquired the mining “bug” he never recovered, and always maintained that there still “war gold in them ’ar hills.” In 1921 he married and he and Mrs. Colercik have since made their home in California, coming back to Fulford every summer, with few exceptions, to work at the mine.The years had taken their toll, and Mr. Colerick had been in ill health for several years, but he still persisted in coming back to his first love and faith. Death came where and as! he would have had if, had he had any say in the matter. Besides his widow, there is only one near relative surviving, a brother, Frank, in Ohio, who spent a few summers out here working with his brother. Mrs. Colerick left last evening for her California home with the body where interment will be made. She will return within a few days to close affairs at the mine.
Family source
To the friends of William S. Colerick
Billy is gone. That is, a body once belonging to William Colerick has been left in California, to be watched over by grass, green trees and singing birds. But Billy himself is not gone.
Every year, when Spring was opening into Summer, Bill grew as restless as a boy with his pole all strung, his worms all dug and the river waiting. Billy was going somewhere! "Colorado," he'd say to his California friends. "Up above Eagle. Got a gold mine up there. I can hardly wait...."
But it wasn't just a gold mine that pulled Billy to Colorado as regularly as a wild goose goes north. It was rare, pure air of the high places. It was a huddle of white-topped peaks. It was a hillside of pines and spruce, and the smell of mountain flowers, and all this and other remembered things--the grins, the quiet smiles, the handshakes of friends. It was seeing a familiar back moving down the street, or the way a person walked, or how he stood--all those little things which seem forgotten but never are. Billy would not put it in words, but it was there--the remembrance of friends and what they did at odd moments, day by day. These people pulled him back to Eagle, as surely as the high places, the pines--and the gold mines.
Billy hadn't felt so well this last spring. But all that misery, he said, would pass away when he went to Colorado. Up above Eagle.
And Billy got there, too. He made it. He was part and parcel of those mountains once more, as truly as every block of stone, every pine needle, every drop of water. Of course, his body gave out and came back to California. But Billy, himself--he didn't come back. He's tramping the hills, cocking his head to listen to a bird, resting on a boulder, sizing up a hill side. He has become one with all the Old Timers who ever kicked a rock over to squint beneath it just on a chance that, maybe--
And so we want to thank all our friends for their kindnesses, the help they have given us. But we also hope that they will not be sad. Billy would feel strange about the sadness.
"My goodness!" he'd say, "Why all the fuss? Sun's out, the mountains are white against the sky. It's a perfect day for Colorado, up above Eagle!"
