Donald James Dufford
| Publication year | 2010 |
| Pages | 37 |
2010, July, Pg. 37. Donald James Dufford
July 2010
Vol. 39, No. 7 [Page 37]
About the Author
Amanda D. Bailey worked with Jim Dufford for eleven years before becoming a district court judge in Mesa County. She is now retired-bellestarr@aol.com. Ed Ruland; Betty Bechtel; Stephan Schweissing; Barbara Campbell, Jim's sister; and his daughters, Sarah and Tedron, provided information for this article.
Donald James Dufford-"D.J." or "Jim" to his friends-was one of a kind. In his life, he went from the desert of Eastern Utah to the top of Grand Junction's legal community. He represented the best of Western Colorado.
Early Days
Jim was born February 8, 1919, in Green River, Utah, the oldest of four children of Phillip G. (Peege) and Janet Dufford. Peege became sheriff in Sunnyside, a coal mining community in eastern Utah. The family lived primarily in a now-gone mining camp called Hiner, near the town Helper. Jim's family knew all the ranch families in the area, and Jim often rode behind his father on their horse to visit them. He came to love the beautiful desolation of the high desert, down to the very look and smell of the sagebrush, as well as the powerful rivers that flowed through it. He explored the byways of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming throughout his life.
Jim moved to Grand Junction in his teens, before his entire family moved to Colorado. He lived with an aunt there, his mother's sister. His mother believed that in Colorado he would get the education she so valued. When the rest of the family arrived in Grand Junction, his father went into the insurance business.
While a teenager in Grand Junction, Jim spent his summers working as a cowboy for area ranchers. One time, on horseback, he and a cousin moved a herd of cattle to the Fisher Valley east of Moab, Utah. To pass the time, they would throw their hats into the air and shoot at them. When they arrived at their destination with the herd, they showed the foreman their hats and insisted they had shot the hats off each other's heads-a report that earned a stern rebuke from their boss. Perhaps as punishment, Jim was tasked with riding the outfit's mule to get the mail, over the La Sal Mountains and down John Brown Canyon into Gateway, Colorado-a long, boring day's ride in each direction. As an adult, and continuing until he was well into his 70s, Jim used to drive his pickup truck over the same trail-now a decent four-wheel drive road-for fun.
Jim started college at Mesa Junior College in Grand Junction, then a two-year school. Though slight in build, he played in the offensive back field on the school's football team. He and his older brother Buck formed a band called the Wampler-Dufford Collegians. Jim played the saxophone. The twin daughters of the prominent grocer family in town, the Prinsters, sang with the band. They played in local dance clubs, such as the popular Mile-A-Way, and all over the Western Slope, including Pea Green and Dunton, tiny places today that were booming towns in the 1930s.
A Life-Long Love of Flying
Jim started flying lessons when he was a teenager, and he loved it from the first time he left the ground at Eddie Drapela's fixed-base operation at Grand Junction's old airport. He flew numerous types of aircraft over the years, and he continued flying into the 1960s. At one point, Jim flew charter flights on what he described as "rattletrap airplanes" for Drapela's service. He often flew to Craig and Leadville and took people for rides in his plane, and he even gave flying lessons. He flew supplies to Hite Crossing in Utah in the late 1950s, when the federal government built Glen Canyon Dam to make Lake Powell. Jim claimed that sometimes he flew a plane mounted on skis and skied the plane down the hills north of Craig, raising the nose just a little at the last minute, to skim over the fences. No one doubts the veracity of the story.
He did the kind of flying that was needed on the Western Slope-taking ranchers up to spot cattle, and hunters and outfitters to find game. Once, he took a passenger...
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