Lyle S. Berry

Lyle S. Berry

Lyle S. Berry, an early day resident of Lusk passed away in Arvada, Colo., on September 10, 1994, at the age of 101 years. He was born December 12, 1892, in Pompey, N.Y., and moved shortly thereafter to Alliance, Neb., where his father was an attorney and county judge. Mr. Berry grew up in Alliance and then went away to school in Chicago where he studied electrical engineering. In 1915, he took a job in electrical maintenance at the old Boysen Dam on the Wind River in Wyoming. He moved to Lusk in 1917 and entered the Air Service in 1918 and served as operator of the Ellington Field electric generating plant near Houston, Texas, until the end of the war when he returned to Lusk and became manager of the Lusk Municipal Light & Power plant.

Mr. Berry married Gina Johnson of Fosston, Minn., on March 17, 1920, and shortly after they opened the Berry Electric Company at the present site of the Coffee Cup Cafe. Both Mr. & Mrs. Berry took out homesteads in the Lance Creek area. They moved from Lusk in 1933 to purchase a hotel in Holyoke, Colo., and did not return to Lusk until the World War II years when Mr. Berry worked on several defense industry installations. After moving to Denver in 1942 and living there seven years, they moved to Newcastle where they built and operated the Berry Hotel and Chalet Motel. Returning to Lusk, after selling their interests in Newcastle, they lived there several years and then moved to Denver for their remaining retirement years near their family. Mrs. Berry passed away in 1988 in Arvada.

Mr. Berry had been a member of Harmony Masonic Lodge in Lusk since May 11, 1926, and a member of the Colorado Consistory until his death. He leaves his daughter, Jean McLaughlin of Arvada, Colo., his son, James Berry of Steamboat Springs, Colo., and eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Lyle and Gina Berry always considered Lusk as their home town, having lived there at three different times in their lives.

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