Letter to the Editor
Susanne and I are writing this letter to try and set things aright. This concerns a letter in a previous issue that was written about Roy Smith, and another letter written in response to that letter.
First of all Jackie said she was reading about Roy on the internet. I didn’t know there was anyone out there who actually believed what they read on the internet. People make up the strangest stories there.
Connie Chung came to town and did a story about Roy and she also made it sound as if the whole town was racist. I wrote Connie Chung after the TV show aired and explained things to her, but she never wrote back. In my opinion, she didn’t really care about Roy. She just cared about her TV show and ratings. People being nice to each other does not make good ratings.
The story of Roy Smith did not happen 40 years ago. It was during the BLG (Before Legalized Gambling) era.
Roy Smith was a real person. I first met Roy on a very cold, snowy and windy day in January of 1979. I was visiting a friend in Russell Gulch and there was a guy in a homemade camper vehicle parked in front of the Fort, a mining mill building in Russell Gulch affectionately known to locals as “The Fort.” The guy came up and knocked on my friends’ door and introduced himself as Roy Smith. What he actually said was “My name is Roy Smith, but most people calls me Nigger Roy.” We invited the man in out of the cold. We introduced ourselves and we didn’t pay much attention to the part about “Nigger Roy.” I didn’t know anyone up here at the time who would call anyone a nigger.
Well, Roy said the clutch had gone out on his truck and asked if we could give him a ride to Idaho Springs to get a new one. We drove over to Idaho Springs on the Virginia Canyon Road, also known as Oh My God Road, and picked up a new clutch at Clear Creek Supply. Being good with mechanics, I told Roy that I would help him put the clutch in. Understand it was about 10 degrees, snowing and very windy and we did this on the open street. We pulled the transmission out to remove the clutch, pressure plate and throw-out bearing and put the new clutch parts in. After it was all done Roy wanted to pay me, but I had done for him what I would have done for anyone and didn’t want any payment. He said he had an old station wagon that had a good engine I could take out of it and he pretty much insisted I at least take that. I accepted. That’s how I met Roy.
In the years I knew Roy I introduced him to many people. He almost always mentioned himself as being called “Nigger Roy.” This must have been from when he lived somewhere else, because I never ever heard anyone call him “Nigger Roy.” At that time, mountain people had respect for anyone who had the gumption to live up here and endure these winters. A lot of us lived with no water or electricity and cut all our firewood using a bow saw. That included Roy.
A few years later Susanne and I bought a house in Russell Gulch. At that time Roy lived in a little cabin on the South face of Alps Hill.
I was doing quite a bit of stone work at the time and I used to hire Roy to help me out. I always paid him cash $10.00 per hour, which at that time was a good wage.
Everyone in town knew Roy, and at that time in town everybody knew everybody. Everyone in town treated Roy like one of the family. We were all family and we took care of each other. When anyone was in need there would be many people that would run and help and not ask anything for it. You really had to be around here at that time to understand. I want to make it very clear that Roy Smith was part of the family. He was accepted as one of the family and was never treated as an outsider.
As in every town you’ll always have a few bad apples. There were two in Roy’s case. One was a guy that was mining in the area, and the other was a guy who lived in Russell Gulch. Both of these people hired Roy to do some work. I’m not going to mention their names, but I am sure you can get them from the court files or somewhere else. The point is that these were people were not part of the family. They weren’t friends of mine, or anyone else up here. They did not hang around in Central City.
Now, from what he told me, Roy worked for the miner guy and the guy refused to pay him. Roy said that whenever he went to talk to the guy about his money the guy would threaten him. I was giving Roy a ride home one day and he told me that the miner guy had sent two men in a blue tow truck up to his house to beat him up. He said he had contacted the Sheriff about it. At that point, after dropping him off, I went home and got my 30-30 rifle and put it in my truck. Every time I drove to or from my house, I looked up at Roy’s house to see if there was a strange truck there. I also mentioned it to some others in the neighborhood, and if anyone had seen a truck at Roy’s, we would have done something about it. We never saw those guys who beat up on Roy and there were no more of those beatings after that, so we never got to catch them.
The other incident also occurred in Russell Gulch. Roy had worked for this other guy, who most of us didn’t care for. This guy also did not pay Roy. Roy told me that he was standing next to a 4×8 sheet of plywood that was being used as a sign late one evening and this guy saw him and drove right at him with his truck. Roy got behind the sign so the guy couldn’t hit him and this guy ran over the sign with Roy under it. Roy sued that guy and got a lot of money out of it. He deserved every penny.
As far as the Sheriff at that time, I am not defending the job she did in investigating the case because I wasn’t by her side during the investigation. However, when I heard that she had the name “Nigger Roy” in her computer files, I was not surprised. She was required to have that name in there. This was one of Roy’s aliases. And she has to include all the aliases that she is aware of. Remember, when he first moved here, Roy did say that he was called “Nigger Roy” and he introduced himself to many people as “Nigger Roy,” so technically that was an alias. If someone calls themselves “Dumbass Billy Bob,” they are going in the computer as “Dumbass Billy Bob.”
Anyway, Roy was badly mistreated by two people who were pretty much strangers up here themselves, while the rest of the town treated him as if he were family. If you are calling this area racist, than you have no idea of what you are talking. Anything found on the internet can be called hearsay at best. The courts don’t allow hearsay. Why should we.
From Susanne: When I was managing the Glory Hole Tavern, which is now part of Doc Holliday’s Casino, Roy would come in every day for some coffee or water and we had some great talks. Gigi also worked there and we would give him BBQ ribs and chicken and he told us his stories. He was part of our town. He would stop at Muriel’s Copper Broiler Restaurant where she fed him and we would watch him read his Bible which was usually upside down, though no one had the heart to tell him. When he went to the Toll Gate Saloon, now part of Century Casino, the owner told his workers to give Roy what ever he wanted and not to charge him. He meant food of course, as Roy didn’t drink alcohol.
Roy received a large settlement from his court cases of which I am sure the lawyers got a large share. Roy left town soon after.
The last we heard about Roy was that he was living in a small town in southern Colorado. Gigi ran into him in a bar where he was singing and playing his guitar. She said he seemed quite happy. He played a song for her that he wrote, about how we took care of him while he was living in Central City.
The road to his cabin is now named after him, Roy Smith Road.
We could write more about Roy but we don’t want to use up the whole paper.
Sincerely,
Ken and Susanne Staruk
Black Hawk, CO