John Heide says to come by his property around 11 a.m. So I come around 11 a.m. I drive slowly; there are cows in the road. They have names pinned to their ears, like Lori and Oreo. I am unsure if cows can smile, but these seem to. I smile back.
Once at the property, I sit in my car behind a big, green fence and wait for John. He and his wife Nancy are in the middle of an online auction — a “ranch retirement,” they’re calling it — that will liquidate their collection of heavy tractors and other equipment, as they wind down their 452-acre cattle operation on Upper Valley Road. He needs just a moment, he says through the phone, to finish showing a potential buyer one of the tractors. And he will be with me, shortly.
John comes. He clambers down from a side-by-side, and unlocks the gate for me. He moves nimbly. All of his clothes are blue. He is, as of this past April, 80 years old. And today, so be it, is his and Nancy’s 59th wedding anniversary. It is a good day, but chilly. He shoos me into his home.
Nancy welcomes us. I can barely stammer out a hello before coffee and pastry are foisted upon me. I accept them, gladly. The home is beautifully decorated, and I notice a gorgeous, vintage square piano sitting in the corner of their living room. I complement the piano.
“Oh, that old thing?” asks Nancy. “It isn’t in tune, but we’ll probably send it over to JHS some time or another. John’s brother bought it in the 50’s. It’s a shame, but we don’t have anyone to play it.”
I’m no pianist, but I can check for tune. There are one or two hiccups in the lower octaves, but, otherwise, the piano is perfectly tuned. This is a mint-condition, mid-century Baldwin Acrosonic. John Lennon owned one, which is presently listed online for $1.5 million. Baldwins not formerly owned by famous musicians can go for upwards of $10,000.
“Do you have any idea how much this thing is worth?” I ask.
As would happen many times throughout the hour I sat with the Heides, they affectionately laugh at me. When I pointed to many examples of their invaluable contributions to Boulder and their neighbors, each, like the piano, was simply chuckled at, discounted, or brushed off. Both Heides seem to believe that they did only as anyone might, put in their position. I eventually abandoned my effort to get the pair to brag on themselves.
Luckily, there were many others willing to do it for them.
“Either of them would give you the shirt off their back, anytime,” said Jefferson County Commission Chair Cory Kirsch. “John is largely the reason why I joined the Boulder-Bull Mountain Fire Department, and anytime my dad would need a weld or a bit of help they were always there for us.
“It’s sad to see the ranch finish up, but their retirement is very well deserved. Perhaps 10 years too late even; it was probably harder for them to stop than to keep at it.”
The Heides, and John’s parents before them, have been ranching in the Boulder Valley for a total of more than 80 years. But “we are, unfortunately, old,” said Nancy, playfully. “Age is really the only reason why we’re shutting things down now. We’ll stay in this home, and maintain everything, until the ranch sells. Our new house is important, but not like this place.”
Once the Heides complete their equipment auction, they will move to sell the last of their 20 cattle. They have split the property into two parcels: a fully functioning 400-acre ranch, which has been on the market since September, and 52 remaining acres on which the Heides are building their new home, which should be completed early next spring.
The ranch clearly is at the core of who the Heides are. But so, as I would learn, is Boulder and the Boulder Valley community.
John Heide, alongside Tom Carey Jr., Lee Cooper, Don Larson, Larrey Lattin, Jim McCauley, Tom Murphy, and Mark Olsen, helped found and supply the Boulder Valley Fire District in the early 1970s, which would eventually become the Boulder-Bull Mountain Fire Department. Heide served on the fire department’s governing board for roughly 50 years, only stepping away in 2021. He was involved in the early sourcing and repurposing of vehicles for fire emergency response and the construction of two Boulder Valley fire houses, and he personally worked as a volunteer firefighter for much of his tenure.
“The fire district was only a handful of us at the start, but it’s grown a lot since then,” said John Heide. “I didn’t do a thing anyone else didn’t do. But I did so happen to have a commercial driver’s license, which meant I got to drive the big trucks. And I loved every day of it.”
The Heides also created the Paula Heide Project Fund, named for their late daughter, which has made significant contributions to non-athletic programs at JHS. They were instrumental in providing financial support, labor, and equipment to establish and build the JHS Outdoor Classroom program and learning space, which allows JHS students to gain first hand experience in ecology, forest management, and identifying and cultivating local flora in the program’s native plant garden.
“They might be the most unselfish people I’ve ever known,” said JHS life sciences teacher Steve McCauley who helps run the Outdoor Classroom program. “They’ve been incredible for this community, and it’s very much in their nature to not tell you very much about it.” McCauley, who says his children refer to the Heides as their third set of grandparents, has worked for the family’s ranch for over 35 years.
“They are some of the kindest, most generous people you could ever hope to meet,” added former JHS principal T.J. Eyer, who oversaw the creation of the Outdoor Classroom program in 2006. “They are quiet pillars of support for this community; they’re always ready to help and they never make much of a scene about it. They’re the sort of people that make this community go.”
And so on. Every person solicited for comment on the Heides’ work and retirement gave almost the same testimony. From the Heides themselves, though, not so much: Both Nancy and John actively fought the premise of a formal interview, and gave me little more than hints and allusions to the work they’ve done in Boulder. I was shown a plaque gifted from the fire department upon John’s retirement, framed snippets of The Monitor with some of our old coverage of them, and a few photographs. Each was humbly, lovingly, and quietly presented, and I was asked to look and see the real physical artifacts of their lives as opposed to critically inspecting any one thing they said, or didn’t say.
As I stand to leave, John bolts up. “Come with me to see the tractors, before they go,” he says.
We step outside, and he drives me in the side-by-side up a dirt path to where the equipment sits. He points out the many vehicles before us, sharing their stories. I grab a few pictures of him in front of an old 1953 McCormick tractor he had personally restored.
“And this one, this is the newest one,” says John, in front of his 2014 New Holland Powerstar tractor. “Let’s take one here.” So we do one more photo, looking out across the ranch, into the hills. John beams.
John had few words on the many acts of service and charity that have punctuated his life. But, on his tractors, he was as an extremely verbal child: excited, proud, and demonstrative. “Conor, now get back here and see this one,” he instructed. I joined him in this attitude, and we talked about tractors for a good length of time.
As with his and Nancy’s old home, their cattle, and their lives as ranchers, I could tell these machines were being walked away from with real reluctance, but from a knowing necessity. Be it pet names on the ears of livestock, or a much loved collection of tractors, or an old but cherished piano, the Heides have filled their home, and their lives, with quiet details showing great care and respect for each other, their land, and their community.
“We’ll continue with all we can,” said Nancy. “Our project fund for Paula, and the outdoor classroom, are still very important to us. But we’ve always been home-bodies, and now we have a chance to be rested home-bodies. Even if some of our retiring feels really hard, it’s going to be a wonderful thing.”
