Sons take Pueblo business to half-century mark

Colorados a good place to paint.

You can usually work year-round except for a few weeks in the winter sometimes.

Jerry Burrer one-half of Burrer Painting Inc. says this on a frigid winter day, sitting in the Houston Construction office across Sixth Street from the Burrers current job at the up-and-coming judicial building.

Jerry, 70, and his brother Mike, 57, have learned to celebrate the states weather they could be trying to paint in Oregon or Washington, Wisconsin or Minnesota during 40 years that have taken them from Fruita to Alamosa, Brush to Aguilar. Most of their jobs, however, have been in Pueblo where their father, the late Edwin E.C. Burrer, started the business nearly 50 years ago.

Edwin came to Colorado from Texas. He discovered that he liked to paint while serving in the Navy, and back from the service, he worked for a railroad before entering a painter apprenticeship program. He was employed by painting contractor E.L. Bocock in Pueblo, then struck out on his own.

Mike says the earliest record of the family business is a check dated for March 1963.

While Jerry worked for several years at another job, Mike joined his painter dad while still in high school.

This is all Ive known, he says. My dad said, If youre not going to go to college, you can go to work.

The two took over the business in 1987 when their father retired. Edwin died in 1999.

Decades of buildings

Originally posted here:
Sons take Pueblo business to half-century mark