Reunion | This 2,500-acre community at the north edge of the Rocky Mountain
Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is putting a new face on Commerce City, once
best known for its heavy industrial zones closer to Denver. Now four years into a
20-year construction cycle, 1,000 of an anticipated 12,000 homes have been built.
Just after 7 a.m. all hands in the Hayden family fold for a breakfast prayer. It will be repeated at lunch and again before dinner.
They give thanks for their food, their faith, their strength to hold firm to a life they have carved even if it sometimes differs from those around them.
Bill and Cindy Hayden, 43 and 36, and their children, Maryann, 6, and Will, 5, moved to Colorado from northern Virginia in 2003, settling comfortably into a planned community rising from the farm fields west of Denver International Airport.
Their biggest consideration in picking the Reunion subdivision in Commerce City was drive time. Bill’s old commute was more than 2 hours in each direction. When they began house hunting here they drew a 30-minute radius around his job at Boeing and refused to look anywhere beyond that boundary.
While he works as an engineer, Cindy home schools in a spare room converted to classroom space, complete with student desks.
It’s not that they don’t like the local schools. But they do worry about crowded classrooms where their kids, both exceptionally bright, might not get the attention they need.
Or worse, the wrong kind of attention.
Cindy makes no apologies for keeping her children protected. They call grown-ups “sir” and ma’am.” No video games, no SpongeBob, no Star Wars.
Most of the time, though, theirs is a family interchangeable with any other, shuttling between swim lessons, dance class, gymnastics and soccer.
The Haydens lean to the right in politics and turn to the Bible to guide their lives. They pride themselves on staying in touch with current events.
“The marriage question is huge to us this election,” Cindy says. “It’s hard to hear the ads that bash President Bush. I’m teaching my kids that we must honor our president. He’s our leader.”
– Jenny Deam
