Soap-making and blacksmithing and calligraphy — oh my!

ing the class for the last three years and has been making soap herself for the last 10.

“It just kind of became an addiction at some point,” she said.

BY ANDREW FRAIELI AFRAIELI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Blacksmithing, soap-making and calligraphy: 20th-century heritage crafts that have been brought into the 21st century at Heritage Lakewood.

“Our focus, as a site, and by proxy, the programs, is the 20th century,” said Stephen Luebke.

As the museum programs specialist, or just the educator, as he calls himself, Luebke hunts for class ideas and develops and runs them. According to Luebke, the classes have been running for years, ebbing and owing in funding, but always trying to appeal to many.

A couple of di erent classes run every month at Belmar Park, what the city calls a “20th-century history park and museum.” Most recently was soap-making.

“ e point of cold-press is to look pretty. You have to be patient, but it’s pretty,” Katrina Hoing, the teacher for the soap-making class, said in her January class. As she elaborated throughout, the technique she teaches is cold-press, which allows colorful patterns to be made in the soap bars.

Hoing, a paralegal, has been teach- e next blacksmithing class is in March.

For the class, she worked with four students making two ve-pound batches of scented cherry that would be ready for Valentine’s Day. A mix of coconut, olive oil and almond oil was combined with water and lye and mixed to make something of a pudding consistency.

A small amount was separated and dyed red before pouring the now red and original, yellow-tinged, amount into a mold. Using a bamboo stick, students created swirls and patterns in the mixture.

Because of the cold-press technique, the molds have to sit for 24 hours before Hoing cuts them into bars. After that, she leaves them to sit for another four weeks to allow the chemical reaction of lye turning the oils into soap to nish.

“You can’t wash your hands with olive oil and have clean hands,” Hoing joked.

According to Luebke, most of the classes at the moment have existed for years, with people being hired as others leave — Hoing being one of those people. She stumbled into teaching the course, but the course had already existed before her. People have approached Luebke to make a class though, like the blacksmith.

“Our blacksmithing program is a direct result of him,” said Luebke.

“If someone approaches us with an idea, we’ll kind of mull it over, do some research,” he continued. “I try to see if it’s possible, run the numbers, see if there’s a market for it, whether that market is saturated — just in the area.” e full class list can be found on Heritage Lakewood’s website.

Blacksmithing, he added, t well into the program’s 20th-century craft focus, and was certainly not competing with any other programs nearby.

For other classes, Luebke has hunted down teachers, like the upcoming youth skateboard deck design class in February. is class, he explained, will be taught by a local gra ti artist that works with the city in other projects.

Luebke also highlighted how he aims for a variation of people in classes. e blacksmithing class, for example, has had students from 16 all the way to 80, he said.

And obviously, obviously, we should have, because we didn’t know … there was something to be scared of or that because they could be dangerous,” Sally said.

“We kind of hung our heads in shame”

A typical summer for the Glass family while Christian was growing up involved lots of summer sports and art camps, visits to family in England and evenings at home with friends and family.

“ e boys would just play soccer, they play basketball or they play frisbee or they play chase. And so that was, often I would have to say, the summer evenings,” Sally said.

Sally remembers Christian playing tennis at a competitive level, so much so that he even blew out his knee at a young age. Simon recalls Christian riding his bike up and down a big hill in their neighborhood to visit friends.

“He really really loved his sports,” Sally said.

Summers will perhaps never be the same for the family, after former Clear Creek Sheri ’s Deputy Andrew Buen was accused of shooting Glass ve times in June 2022 after he phoned for help with his crashed vehicle in the small town of Silver Plume.

When his parents rst heard the news of their son’s death, they were led to believe he was the cause of the incident, provoking o cers and inciting violence. e two were not only overcome with grief but guilt, too.

“We kind of hung our heads in shame,” Sally remembered.

Quickly, the parents felt they were missing parts of the story.

“I started thinking about it. And I was like, but, he’s never hurt anyone,” Sally said. e family’s lawyers reviewed the bodycam footage and told the parents they believed Christian was not to blame for the incident, con rming the family’s suspicions. e bodycam footage was released in September, and a vigil was held for Christian days later in Idaho Springs to call for action against police violence in Clear Creek County.

“No one said sorry”

e Clear Creek Sheri ’s O ce dubbing Christian’s death as “the June Incident” in a press release from Oct. 5 has been a painful and erasive gesture indicating failure of the system, according to the Glass family.

“ e day that Christian Glass was killed, murdered, that’s ‘the June incident.’ at’s what happened. And so that’s really important to name it, you know, and to say his name, and to remember him as a life lost,” Sally said.

Sally hailing from England and Simon from New Zealand gave them both di erent impressions of the police before coming to the United States. After this incident, they both said it would take a complete overhaul to restore a semblance of trust in law enforcement.

“I never thought the U.S. police were very nice anyway, but I didn’t realize they were totally untrustworthy,” Sally said. “So I think that on top of being deeply unpleasant and aggressive, I wouldn’t trust them and all Christian’s friends just said, never call the police.”

Despite the international attention Christian’s murder has garnered, Simon and Sally say they still have yet to receive a real apology from o cers involved. Most of what they’ve heard has been statements