Robert Reppel and the Sunbeam Bakery

My grandparents Bertha McDowell and Robert Reppel met while they were both residents in Gunnison, Colorado.

Gunnison is located in central Colorado at the bottom of several valleys. Due to its location in the Rocky Mountains, cold air in all the valleys settles into Gunnison making it one of the coldest places in the United States during the winter.

Gunnison is the home to Western State College which recently became Western State Colorado University.  The college was originally chartered in 1901 and opened for classes in 1911 as Colorado State Normal School. In 1923, the name was changed to Western State College to reflect the curriculum expansion from a teaching institution to a liberal arts college. Western was the first public college west of the Mississippi River to be designated a liberal arts college. Both of my grandparents attended classes at Western.

Prior to his arrival in Gunnison, Robert was a resident of Peoria, Illinois where he was employed as a baker. Based on entries in the Peoria city directory, the last year Robert was listed as a resident in was 1923. After leaving Illinois around 1924, Robert would never live in Illinois again.

We will never know exactly when he moved to Gunnison, but in the fall of 1924 24-year-old Robert was a student at Western State College.  To finance his education, Robert was working as a baker for the "Co-op". During a recent visit to Colorado, my sister took my mother, sister, and I to the Gunnison Pioneer Museum. Hidden in one of their buildings was a repository of old newspapers. They were bound into large newspaper size books by year and by publication.

I pulled out 1924 Gunnison News-Champion book and began paging through it. In the Friday October 3rd edition, was an article listing new students attending Western State College. There is black and white was proof my 24 year old grandfather having emigrated from France a mere 5 years earlier was attending Western State College. According to my mother his classes included Chemistry and English for latter of which he failed.

In the 1925 Gunnison News-Champion book we found Bertha McDowell listed among the list of new students at Western. Since there was no photocopier in the area, I pulled out my pocket camera and attempted to get photos of the newspaper articles. Unfortunately some of the photos are out of focus or didn't capture the complete article.

Based on family stories, we knew Papa had been a partner in a Bakery business in Gunnison. The family story was the partner ran off with the assets and stuck Papa with the bills.  Articles and advertisements in the newspapers document one of my grandfather's earliest business ventures, the Sunbeam Bakery.

We found short articles regarding the soon to open bakery in two different local newspapers, the Gunnison News-Champion and the Gunnison Republican.

Beginning the first week of November Bob and his partner Ray began advertising their bakery in the Gunnison Republican. The ads appeared during every edition beginning November 5th, 1925 until June 10th, 1926.

Weekly ads appeared in the Gunnison Republican first announcing the opening and later their weekly specials.

Soon after this there was a small article in the newspaper indicating that Ray Carroll was taking over the Bakery as a sole proprietor. Unfortunately the photo of this article was out of focus and unusable.

After this article, no further advertisements were found in the following months for the bakery. The July 8th edition of the Gunnison Republican contained a list of local businesses. This was last word of the bakery that we could find; there were no weekly ads.

After leaving the museum we went to lunch on Main Street. The restaurant was less than a block from the location of the Sunbeam bakery. So after lunch we walked down the street to look at the building. We took a few pictures in front of the bakery.

Sunbeam Bakery was located in 2 story building on Main Street