{"id":1311640,"date":"2019-06-20T20:30:25","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T02:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=981709"},"modified":"2019-06-20T20:30:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T02:30:25","slug":"the-best-class-to-ever-come-out-of-glenwood-ready-to-ride-as-grand-marshals-in-strawberry-days-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/the-best-class-to-ever-come-out-of-glenwood-ready-to-ride-as-grand-marshals-in-strawberry-days-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe best class to ever come out of Glenwood,\u201d ready to ride as Grand Marshals in Strawberry Days Parade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Floyd Diemoz maintains that Glenwood Springs High School\u2019s Class of 1955, \u201cwas the best class to ever come out of Glenwood.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 81-year-old sees his dear friend Glenn Vawter, a fellow Class of 1955 graduate, as one of the many reasons why he has stood by those words for going on 64 years now.<\/p>\n

Diemoz, Vawter and others from the 33-member class will serve as the Grand Marshals of this year\u2019s 122nd Strawberry Days Festival Parade.<\/p>\n

Appropriately enough, Diemoz a former drummer and Vawter an early saxophone player in the school\u2019s marching, concert and jazz bands will ride down Grand Avenue this Saturday in a 1964 Oldsmobile Starfire, 64 years after graduating.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teachers we had were just marvelous,\u201d Diemoz recalled of what he and classmates always said to each other at their reunions. \u201cI remember someone telling us, \u2018You guys are just small town, little class and it\u2019s going to be difficult to compete for any of you that go off to college.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

However, those marvelous teachers helped pave the way for Diemoz and Vawter to earn degrees from the University of Denver and Colorado School of Mines, respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuccess doesn\u2019t necessarily come from pinnacles like Harvard, Yale or Berkeley,\u201d Diemoz joked.<\/p>\n

Diemoz, who studied electrical engineering, went on to deliver the keynote speech at the Oct. 14, 1992 opening of Interstate 70 in the Glenwood Canyon after steering the massive, controversial infrastructure project to completion. A bumpy road to navigate, Diemoz had to act as a mediator in many ways between passionate environmentalists and the cutthroat Highway Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, here we stood in between and actually ended up with the solution,\u201d Diemoz explained.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Vawter who had a background in petroleum engineering became a senior vice president for the Fortune 150 Company Tosco, which worked extensively on the Colony oil shale project in Parachute.<\/p>\n

Both men also married Glenwood Springs High School Class of \u201955 graduates.<\/p>\n

Diemoz knew all along that he would tie the knot with his high school sweetheart Lavonne. However, it was not until their 45th class reunion that Vawter reconnected with former classmate Mary Linda Clapham.<\/p>\n

Clapham was named Strawberry Days queen both locally and nationally as well as Miss Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were both single and it just sort of clicked,\u201d Vawter said.<\/p>\n

The two got married shortly after the reunion and actually took Diemoz and Lavonne with them on their honeymoon to Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere aren\u2019t many people that take their friends on honeymoons,\u201d Vawter laughed.<\/p>\n

Whether the point guard on the Class of 55\u2019s co-champion basketball team, the star quarterback on its football team that not one opponent scored a single point on during its regular season, or musicians like Diemoz and Vawter who cheered them on along the way, members from the Class of \u201955 did not have \u201ccliques.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had such great people uniformly across that class,\u201d Diemoz explained. \u201cThat to me was just a wonderful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

mabennett@postindependent.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Floyd Diemoz maintains that Glenwood Springs High School\u2019s Class of 1955, \u201cwas the best class to ever come out of Glenwood.\u201d The 81-year-old sees his dear friend Glenn Vawter, a fellow Class of 1955 graduate, as one of the many reasons why he has stood by those words for going on 64 years now. Diemoz, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 10:51:24","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":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}