Distinguished artisan establishes Laramie jewelry legacy

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Written by Lindsey Hoyt

Thursday, 04 December 2008 13:22

A shaky, 73-year-old jewelry maker rattled as she talked about gemstones and the gauges of silver. All of a sudden she whipped out a blow torch, sparked a flame and soldered some metal.

Vivian Tracy kept the University of Wyoming campus clean in the early 1990s, as a custodian and then as a custodial supervisor.

She now runs the jewelry and rock shop, Green Gold, alone, which faces the train tracks on First Street, as it has for 25 years. Vivian’s late husband, Bob, started the shop. Bob had a passion for jade – the stone also known as green gold. She followed his passion with him and it became hers.

Vivian’s ringed fingers handled the tools of her trade to the sound of Sean Hannity’s radio voice. Her constant neck ornament, a crucifix, was tucked into her sweatshirt that afternoon. It was her fourth go at trying to melt small snips of metal into the sides of a silver ring to strengthen it. It was a matter of melting the solder without burning out the piece connecting the ring. When she would finally get it, the ring was to hold the polished, oval stone for a bolo tie.

She tried to be patient when she torched the third ring. She tried to keep her language in check. She called on the angels to help.

Close to 6 p.m., she successfully finished her ring, fourth time’s the charm. “I think I got it! I should have called on the angels a long time ago,” Vivian says.

Vivian listens to Hannity, along with Limbaugh and Beck. She speaks slowly in a soft, but sometimes gruff, gravelly voice. But she’ll talk about politics for long minutes with a savvy, ornery attitude.

Jewelry was the frame of Bob and Vivian’s marriage. Vivian said they would go jade hunting in other parts of Wyoming for the weekend as a date. They traveled to trade shows as dealers. Probably the greatest Christmas gift Vivian gave Bob was a piece of jade he wanted; it was the only Christmas gift he didn’t guess correctly and spoil the surprise.

Rings are constant adornments on Vivian’s fingers. Among them are two beautiful stones set in silver rings. Bob made them for her. She also wears her wedding ring.

They amassed a huge collection of jade over the years in many of its colors: black, apple green, olive green, green-and-pink, cinder. Among the jade sits a big, gray rock. Vivian said Bob found it while jade hunting one day, and he called it his Teton Mountains because the rock looks like a miniature slice of mountain peaks. She laughed, and it sounded like layers of memories.

Her daughter, Cindy, will inherit most of the jade. The collection is filled with memories for Cindy, who called it a legacy that can’t be replaced.

“When I think about that, I think about the memories of going out with my parents and having them to myself for a whole weekend, being the center of the universe,” Cindy said.

Vivian was born in Eureka, California – a northern coastal town in the Redwoods. Her alcoholic father left the family early on, and her mother had diabetes. Vivian lived there until she was orphaned at 9 years old and was taken to Wyoming by her sister and brother-in-law. They raised her in Douglas where she graduated from Laramie High School.

She said being a UW custodian was hard work. She met her longtime friend Bernnie Foulke there, who was a custodial supervisor. They worked for a few years before Bernnie left, and then Vivian moved up to assistant supervisor and retired as the supervisor.

Bernnie, a Jane-of-all-trades, is a skilled jewelry beader; she recently bought The Bead Shop on Ivinson Street. She is a quarter Rosewood Sioux Native American – one of the seven tribes from South Dakota, she said. Bernnie is in her 40s, thin, and dresses casually. But she wears earrings and has over 300 pairs at home.

About Vivian, Bernnie said: “She’s generous like no one else that I know. She’ll do anything for you. I’ve always known her to be very happy, even in hard times.”

The window display of Green Gold is more memorable than its name. Two of her cats live at the store and often snooze and sun among the gems and beads in the window. They are photographed by passersby on foot and in cars.

After 25 years, Green Gold will be in a new location. Vivian has to close and be out of Green Gold to make way for the expansion of Sweet Melissa’s restaurant by the end of December.

Vivian knows Bernnie is worried. She will just call on the angels like she did making the bolo tie, and everything will turn out just fine.

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