935 Diestel
Did you know Diestel is the German word for thistle?
February 2013
We live in the house at 935 Diestel Road which we purchased on May 22,1991. It is the Tudor on the gully half way down the street. We are the Haley family... George, Tricia, Maureen and Grace. George’s children Andrew, Kate and Erin were also raised in this house. We have two cats named Sebastian and Chaz and a dog named Liesl whom many of you know. ;) We are the fourth owners of the house. We bought this house from John and Karen Geisler. John was Dean of Meteorology at the University of Utah at the time and they were looking forward to downsizing and retirement. They purchased the house from owners Gerald and Olive Smith. The Smiths lived in the house for many years and are still remembered by some of our older neighbors. There is a funny story involving a vacuum truck that would come periodically to clean out the coal room and one or two of the Smith boys. The truck had a canvas top which would inflate while the vacuum snaked thru the coal shoot into the coal room to suck up the coal dust. The boys jumped from the roof onto the inflated, coal dust filled back of the truck which made the contents of the truck come back thru the hose, filling the house with ugh! coal dust. Could you imagine? The original owners of the house were a couple named Stibich. Mrs. Stibich was an elegant woman who always had poodles and was a renowned gardener. Her garden was featured in 1938 and in 1945 in the Salt Lake Tribune, as shown...the adjoining article says “Three years ago, when they built their beautiful home, Mr. and Mrs. Stibich looked at their backlot with something like despair. It was a steep hill of infertile gravel with not a green thing growing. Today, you wouldn’t know it had been anything but a lovely spot of verdure and flowers.“ and “This garden certainly is an example of what one can do with an unpromising lot, given only a sense of the fitting and the beautiful, and a determination equal to one’s good right arm and strong back.” The garden is rumored to have been featured in Home & Garden magazine in the 30’s. Mrs. Stibich brought with her lilac and rosebush cuttings from her mother’s garden in New York which flourished ... we still have her rose garden and now enormous lilac bushes to this day. Sadly a few years ago we lost the beautiful weeping willow that graced the backyard. A predominant feature was a rock pond that held koi who wintered in oil barrels by that coal burning furnace in the basement. The Smiths filled in the pond. The terraced gardens and rock walls were built over a three year period by off duty firemen. The original wooden lower deck is still in the yard. A.W. Stibich was a WWI munitions expert who moved to Utah from New York to be part of a little company then known as Hercules, Inc. aka Hercules Powder Company. The Hercules Powder Co., once a small dynamite manufacturing firm, had begun producing rocket motors at its Bacchus Works south of the Magna community, named after 1912 founder T.W. Bacchus. The increased jobs were one factor encouraging subdivision development in the Magna, Kearns and West Valley areas. A.W. Stibich was in charge of the dynamiting work that Hercules did at Kennecott Mining Co. The neighborhood now know as ‘Harvard/Yale’ was originally called Normandy Park and our subdivision was called Douglas Park. We added an addition to the house in 1994, the architect was Kin Ng of the firm, Max J. Smith and Associates (MJSA). We have spent 22 wonderful years in our charming house on Diestel Road and have many treasured memories of friends and neighbors.
February 2013
We live in the house at 935 Diestel Road which we purchased on May 22,1991. It is the Tudor on the gully half way down the street. We are the Haley family... George, Tricia, Maureen and Grace. George’s children Andrew, Kate and Erin were also raised in this house. We have two cats named Sebastian and Chaz and a dog named Liesl whom many of you know. ;) We are the fourth owners of the house. We bought this house from John and Karen Geisler. John was Dean of Meteorology at the University of Utah at the time and they were looking forward to downsizing and retirement. They purchased the house from owners Gerald and Olive Smith. The Smiths lived in the house for many years and are still remembered by some of our older neighbors. There is a funny story involving a vacuum truck that would come periodically to clean out the coal room and one or two of the Smith boys. The truck had a canvas top which would inflate while the vacuum snaked thru the coal shoot into the coal room to suck up the coal dust. The boys jumped from the roof onto the inflated, coal dust filled back of the truck which made the contents of the truck come back thru the hose, filling the house with ugh! coal dust. Could you imagine? The original owners of the house were a couple named Stibich. Mrs. Stibich was an elegant woman who always had poodles and was a renowned gardener. Her garden was featured in 1938 and in 1945 in the Salt Lake Tribune, as shown...the adjoining article says “Three years ago, when they built their beautiful home, Mr. and Mrs. Stibich looked at their backlot with something like despair. It was a steep hill of infertile gravel with not a green thing growing. Today, you wouldn’t know it had been anything but a lovely spot of verdure and flowers.“ and “This garden certainly is an example of what one can do with an unpromising lot, given only a sense of the fitting and the beautiful, and a determination equal to one’s good right arm and strong back.” The garden is rumored to have been featured in Home & Garden magazine in the 30’s. Mrs. Stibich brought with her lilac and rosebush cuttings from her mother’s garden in New York which flourished ... we still have her rose garden and now enormous lilac bushes to this day. Sadly a few years ago we lost the beautiful weeping willow that graced the backyard. A predominant feature was a rock pond that held koi who wintered in oil barrels by that coal burning furnace in the basement. The Smiths filled in the pond. The terraced gardens and rock walls were built over a three year period by off duty firemen. The original wooden lower deck is still in the yard. A.W. Stibich was a WWI munitions expert who moved to Utah from New York to be part of a little company then known as Hercules, Inc. aka Hercules Powder Company. The Hercules Powder Co., once a small dynamite manufacturing firm, had begun producing rocket motors at its Bacchus Works south of the Magna community, named after 1912 founder T.W. Bacchus. The increased jobs were one factor encouraging subdivision development in the Magna, Kearns and West Valley areas. A.W. Stibich was in charge of the dynamiting work that Hercules did at Kennecott Mining Co. The neighborhood now know as ‘Harvard/Yale’ was originally called Normandy Park and our subdivision was called Douglas Park. We added an addition to the house in 1994, the architect was Kin Ng of the firm, Max J. Smith and Associates (MJSA). We have spent 22 wonderful years in our charming house on Diestel Road and have many treasured memories of friends and neighbors.