Juan Manuel Medina digs graves; Denzil Wiggins cuts stones; and Jeff Nash repairs flight gear.
They are among those who toil in lesser- known businesses in the shadow of the retail, technology and government sectors.
About 135 of the 920 disclosed employment classifications tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Colorado had fewer than 100 employees in 2004. Some of the smallest belong to federal facilities such as Peterson Air & Space Museum in Colorado Springs. Only Nash and the museum director work there full time; the museum is visited by 12,000 people a year.
“For two people, it is a very busy place,” said Nash, whose duties include conducting tours and planning and building exhibits.
When the rubber ear pieces and oxygen mask in a 1950s flight helmet begin to deteriorate, it’s Nash who repairs them. Keeping in good repair the museum’s historic objects, which include the wreckage of a World War II P-38 that crashed in Colorado, is a full-time job. “Conservation is a continuous process,” he said.
In his job as head of the interment crew at Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery, Medina is also in touch with history. Some of Colorado’s most prominent dead are buried in its 285 acres.
Though he and his crew dig the holes and bury the caskets, his business is with the living. Over 25 years, he has grown accustomed to laboring in the shadow of grief.
The job has rewards beyond a $32,000 salary. Born and raised in Mexico, Medina, 51, acts as a translator for grief-stricken Hispanics, an opportunity to help that makes him feel good. “I help them to be comfortable. I say, ‘Hey, we will take care of you.”‘
Wiggins, 76, owner of Red & Green Minerals, a rock shop in Lakewood, doesn’t have to show the same kind of sensitivity. He sells lapidary equipment, saws rocks and polishes stones.
A one-time furniture mover, Wiggins opened the shop in 1967, and employs two.
“They wait on people. They’ve got to know a little bit about rocks,” he said, “but it’s not a specialty.”
