Jerry Lehr, who died Sept. 15 at age 89, was the son of immigrants and a founder of the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia, devoted to preserving the singular culture that began more than 200 years ago.
Lehr was 6 when his parents moved to Windsor, joining a wave of Russian Germans drawn to the high plains so similar to the farmland their ancestors cultivated on Russia’s vast steppes.
At the time, Germans from Russia made up Colorado’s second-largest ethnic group. Most, like Lehr’s parents, were escaping forced conscription into the Russian army – a violation of the promise extended when German native Catherine the Great, empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, offered land southeast of Moscow to German settlers in 1763.
The empress recruited Germans by offering villages where they could govern themselves and continue their language and customs, paying neither taxes nor customs.
Then, in about 1900, as tensions grew between Germany and Russia, those pledges disintegrated. The settlers’ descendants emigrated or faced conscription and relocation to Siberia.
Lehr’s father was among the German Russians who fled, ending up with his countrymen on Windsor’s beet farms.
“My parents spoke the dialect their ancestors took out of Germany in the 1700s, but they wouldn’t teach us because it was very uncool to be German when I was born, during World War II,” said daughter Paula Lehr. “But later, that changed. In high school, we used to fight other kids who’d tell us that we weren’t German, we were Russian. We’d say, ‘No! We’re German!”‘
During World War II, Jerry Lehr worked as a fireman, stoking the coal that fueled Union Pacific’s steam locomotives carrying troops and supplies.
He routinely worked 16 hours a day for the short- handed railroad. In 1943, Lehr worked every day, from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve, including Christmas.
After the war ended, Lehr ran Jerry’s Standard Service, a filling station in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood. He went on to work as a stationary engineer for the city of Denver, maintaining the boilers and furnaces at the former Denver General Hospital, the City and County Building and the Denver Botanic Gardens, his last and favorite assignment.
In 1968, Lehr and his wife were among the founders of the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia, a preservation group that grew from a handful of members to a national organization with annual conferences held throughout the western United States. The Lehrs never missed one.
Survivors include his widow, Pauline, of Aurora; daughter Paula Lehr of Gunnison; sons Ron Lehr of Denver and David Lehr of Fraser; sister Alvina Bailey of Novato, Calif.; brother Victor Lehr of Tehoma, Okla.; and three grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
