RED CLIFF \u2014 Like all mothers, Cordelia Leyba-Lovato has been many things in her long life. She has just been doing them longer than most.<\/p>\n
\u201cCordy,\u201d to her friends and family, turns 100 years old on Mother\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
She has lived without electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, heat and money. She always had love: eight children \u2014 four sons and four daughters \u2014 18 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren, and 27 great-great-grandchildren \u2026 so far. One husband, Vergilio Lovato, nicknamed \u201cRed\u201d because of his flaming red hair. Son Raynaldo Lovato survived Vietnam with the U.S. Army\u2019s Special Forces only to die in an auto accident on April 28, 1972, shortly after his honorable discharge. He was 24. Son Jessie was born June 7, 1953, and died the same day.<\/p>\n
People treat Cordy special.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am special!\u201d she said, flashing her million-watt smile.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d make no big changes in her life. She\u2019s not interested in traveling. Her life has been adventure enough, although she said she\u2019d walk in the mountains more, one of her favorite things to do. She\u2019d regularly grab grandchildren to pick raspberries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d look around and ask each other, \u2018Where\u2019s grandma?\u2019\u201d said Tomasita Bustos, one of her 18 grandchildren. \u201cThen we\u2019d spot her way up high on a mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know where the good raspberries are,\u201d Cordy said smiling.<\/p>\n
The grandchildren gathered at their small Red Cliff house before and after school. The school bus stop was right out the front door. Grandaughters Georgetta Sandoval-Stevens and Bustos said they never came home to an empty house. They\u2019d walk into Cordy\u2019s house to be welcomed by the aroma of homemade tortillas, roasted potatoes and her world-famous green chili. She\u2019d make massive batches of green chili and never eat any.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was for them,\u201d Cordy said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more than power and grace in love like that, there\u2019s personality. Her grandchildren said they experienced and embraced her dedication to them, and embraced her in return.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe love that she showed us grandkids is immeasurable,\u201d some of her grandchildren said.<\/p>\n
Cordy\u2019s kind of love is given without expecting anything in return, they said, but their grandmother received it anyway \u2014 partly because they love her so much, and partly because there are so many of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe taught many of us what true love really was by a grandparent,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
Now that she\u2019s 100 and needs some help, her children and grandchildren are lining up to provide it. You don\u2019t plan that, they said. That\u2019s what happens when love becomes an action verb.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe showed us grandkids how to share and appreciate all that we had as she had done with all her children. She taught us the meaning of family first,\u201d some of her grandchildren said.<\/p>\n
People like Cordy will make us rethink what it means to be \u201clocal.\u201d Born May 10, 1920, the youngest of five sisters and one brother, she is the 11th generation of the Leyba lineage.<\/p>\n
Her son, Harvey, traced the Leyba family to the 1540s, 19 years after Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztec. On the Leyba side of the family is the 22nd Viceroy of Spain appointed by King Charles V of Spain. Two of her ancestors, two brothers, settled and established in northern New Mexico before the United States was formed in 1776.<\/p>\n
Cordy was raised on a small farm along the Santa Barbara River, in Llano Largo, Taos County, New Mexico \u2014 part of the Santa Barbara Land Grant of 1796. Her father Ismael farmed with horse-drawn plows, as his Spanish ancestors did when they first arrived in New Spain. Ismael took Cordy to school two miles away on horseback, until she could make the daily trip by herself.<\/p>\n
In 1938 she was 18 years old and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, working at a camp for men 75 miles west of Roswell, New Mexico. Among many other skills, she learned to weave wool to make blankets for U.S. soldiers.<\/p>\n
Two years later, on Nov. 14, 1940, she married Vergilio in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He migrated to Gilman, Colorado, where he found work painting the brand new bridge on Highway 24 near Red Cliff. It was silver when they started. It was green when they finished. In those days painting a bridge meant hanging on rope seats about 300-feet above the Eagle River. The New Jersey Zinc Company soon hired him in their Gilman mine.<\/p>\n
The growing family lived in a part of Gilman called \u201cRanchitos\u201d where many of the Spanish miners and their families from Northern New Mexico lived after migrating to Colorado looking for jobs after the Great Depression, including many of Cordy\u2019s family and childhood friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no work in New Mexico. Here there were all kinds of jobs,\u201d Cordy said.<\/p>\n
The families scoured the mine scrap piles for building materials, creating simple one- and two-room shacks with discarded timbers. No plumbing, only outhouses. Heat was wood stoves fueled by scrap wood dumped at the mine.<\/p>\n
A few shacks had electricity. No one had running water. Harvey recalls that the company installed a pump in the center of Ranchitos that froze in the winter. Residents hauled water from Rock Creek until the pump thawed.<\/p>\n
Around 1950 the mining company bulldozed all but three company houses to build water and sewer lines and new rental houses. Cordy and Vergilio considered themselves lucky; they and their now-six children lived in one of those three houses. The other families moved to Red Cliff, Minturn and Eagle.<\/p>\n
The company leased the new homes to employees based on seniority and family need. Vergilio had been with the company for years, and they had a half dozen children. That pushed them to the top of the list and they got the first available house \u2014 two bedrooms with a bathroom, with hot and cold running water, kerosene heat and electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese houses were like a dream come true, a mansion on top of Battle Mountain for my mother and her growing family,\u201d Harvey said.<\/p>\n
They finally bought their own home, a log house built in the 1880s. Their children grew, Vergilio retired after 30 years in the mine, and 52-year-old Cordy decided to get a job. Mountain Haus in Vail had the good fortune to hire her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw all those other ladies working, and I decided to try it. I had no more kids at home, so I thought I\u2019d go into the world,\u201d Cordy said.<\/p>\n
She worked there 20 years, retiring at 72.<\/p>\n
She took care of Vergilio after his stroke. He died on June 20, 2001. She lived by herself for several years, but finally sold her house. She\u2019s living in Red Cliff with her granddaughter Georgetta, who says Cordy raised her from infancy.<\/p>\n
A century flies by, Cordy said, and her life is full. She says she\u2019ll stay in Red Cliff until she dies and is buried next to Vergilio in Greenwood Cemetery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m healthy and I have people to help me,\u201d she said. \u201cI love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey Lovato along with some of Cordelia\u2019s other children and grandchildren provided the historical information in this story.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" RED CLIFF \u2014 Like all mothers, Cordelia Leyba-Lovato has been many things in her long life. She has just been doing them longer than most. \u201cCordy,\u201d to her friends and family, turns 100 years old on Mother\u2019s Day. She has lived without electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, heat and money. She always had love: eight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-community","7":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 16:08:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}