Profile: Reggie Masters

By Dawne Belloise

Longtime local Reggie Masters laughs that her family are all “Yoopers.” That is, they’re from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the wild country. Like all Yooper kids, Reggie’s childhood unfolded playing in the woods in rural Michigan with boundless freedom. When she was 12, the family moved to Wilmington, Delaware. 

As an adult, once she arrived in Crested Butte, Reggie felt connected and at ease in her chosen home because of her Slavic heritage. Many of the first mining families in CB were Slavic immigrants and their culture left an indelible mark in the fabric of the town’s heritage. She’s been a very active community member ever since.

In high school, Reggie was a dancer, played field hockey and was a majorette. “I made the squad because I tossed the baton in the air and when it came back it hit me in the head, bounced away and I was laughing,” she claims. She graduated in 1966 and enrolled at the University of Delaware, studying textiles and clothing in business and industry. She earned a Bachelor of Science but laments that there was too much chemistry because, “That particular department was heavily funded by Dupont who wanted those students in their textile productions.” Reggie focused on fashion design, intending to be a buyer for clothing. 

Reggie was hired by Strawbridge & Clothier out of Philadelphia and spent the summer after graduation in Europe. Upon returning, she was hired as a junior buyer in their women’s department. “My boss was a big, tall woman and I was the only one who got to go to New York City with her to all the manufacturers,” she tells. Her boss played a major role in changing the fashion image for larger, tall women from drab black and navy blue to more trending styles. 

During that summer, Reggie met some people from Hood River, Oregon, who invited her to visit. “I didn’t like being in the city. I was scared. I was a country girl and it was uncomfortable,” she says. So, she arranged to be transferred to an affiliated company in Portland because, as she told her boss, “I needed to see trees.” Reggie packed up her little 1970 VW bug with everything she owned and while driving cross country from Philadelphia to Oregon decided to stop in to visit a high school friend who was attending Western State College (now Western Colorado University). It was a cold February day in 1971 when Reggie came around that corner at Round Mountain on the way to Crested Butte for the first time. “I said OH WOW! And I never left.” Reggie was a skier. She got her first skis when she was six years old and had skied on the East Coast. “They were skis with no edges and you’d go find a hill and ski down it.” Her first winter in CB, Reggie recalls that it snowed three to six inches every night and then those crisp bluebird skies were enticing her to ski every day. 

She was loving her new mountain life in Crested Butte and felt, “Great snow, beautiful scenery, why would I ever leave?” Reggie got a job at the old A-frame warming house working for Fred Drury and Preston Pitta, the original owners of the warming house and Bier Stube. Eventually she worked the Grubstake, the Way Station and Bacchanale. For a while she was a fishing guide with Botsie (an original local legend). From 2000, Reggie worked at Zacchariah Zypp for eight years. “Noel taught me to set stones in silver and gold.” She knew she wanted to remain in CB, so “I did whatever I could to survive.”

In 1972, Reggie got her real estate license and went to work for Dick Montrose and Associates as a real estate agent. It was there that she initiated the concept of putting up photos of the properties for sale in the windows, “Because we were always out playing and the office closed signs read: ‘Out Hot Air Ballooning or Out Skiing.’” Reggie recalls those wonderful, less crowded and dusty street days. “Part of what I loved about the early days of CB was the irreverence, people were escaping to here to opt out of society’s norms.” 

At one point, she had sold her VW to have enough money to do a three-week private float expedition with Dick Montrose down the Grand Canyon. “We were supposed to be just passengers on a raft, but two weeks before we were supposed to go, the rowers of the support raft backed out and they told us we were going be rowing that support raft. But we didn’t know how to row a support raft,” she laughs. “So we went down every river we could, the Gunnison, the Taylor, Roaring Fork, to learn how to maneuver in whitewater.” But when they actually got on the river for the trip, they realized that the support raft was quite heavy. “We came close to flipping the heavy raft, so they put Dick on one oar and me on the other, and once we got it down, we danced through the whitewater and had fun.”

Reggie had a best friend in CB who was an ocean sailor and taught her to sail on open waters. Together, they helped deliver boats from New England to the Caribbean and then back to New England. “All these yachts and sailboats would be delivered in the fall to the clients’ places in the islands and then sailed back in the spring. I got to be part of the crew. Being out at sea is probably my favorite place to be. It’s so magical. Even more so than the mountains, it puts in perspective for me the power of nature. You’re out there by yourself, you watch the stars every night, the transition of the planets through the constellations, watching the heavens move. You’re out for weeks at a time and the power of the universe and the earth is humbling. It’s just you and nature and that’s what I feel in the mountains too, the power of nature.” In her sailing adventures, Reggie’s been knocked down, a nautical term where the boat is flat on its side, and has sailed through two hurricanes, where she says trusting your crew, yourself and your boat is mandatory.

Reggie was one of the first people who built a home in CB South, back when the only two stick-built homes out there belonged to Doug the Bump and Chris Smith. “CB South was just a field and people thought I was crazy because it was so far out,” she recalls, laughing. Then the market crashed in 1980 so she sold her duplex home and took the opportunity to get aboard a brand new Swan 57 sailboat to sail transatlantic through the straits of Gibraltar from Spain to the Caribbean. “It’s bumper to bumper freighter traffic through there and you’re like an ant with those.” Reggie was planning to stay with that boat, spending the winter as a first mate, “But I met a guy in the British Virgin Islands,” she smiles, and when the boat went north for the summer she stayed in the BVI with Mike Masters, who she married there and had their two kids, Leah and Renee.  

While living in the BVI, Reggie opened a picture framing business and art gallery, seeing an opportunity since there wasn’t one in that entire country. “Everyone had to take their art to St. Thomas to get their framing.”  She hired all local women and sold all local art, but when she decided to leave and sell the business to a local woman who had worked for her for seven years, the government wouldn’t allow it, “Because we were using power tools. It was a chauvinistic society.” Eventually, Reggie found a way to sell it to her employee. 

She returned to CB in June of 1989 with her two little kids because, “I knew it was a good, safe place to raise children by myself.” Reggie had kept her real estate license active and went to work for Jim Gebhardt at Bighorn Realty. For years she was an equestrian mom since Leah and Renee did Class A regional and national horse shows. Reggie still loves to ride horses but has only one horse now. Back in those years when her daughters were young, she helped start a 4H Club in CB and a Brownie troop. 

Reggie has played in the UCC handbell choir since its inception 25 years ago. Still a full-time broker, Reggie is also a member of the Coldwell Banker Sterling Society, which is reserved for the top 15% of Coldwell Banker’s agents worldwide. She’s been Realtor of the Year for the Gunnison-Crested Butte Association of Realtors, which she modestly explains that, “It had more to do with community service than with just production.”

Since arriving in the valley, Reggie’s been involved extensively with community. She volunteers with Habitat For Humanity, “doing whatever they need for green home building like making the drywall panels out of straw, staining, installing siding and painting.” Reggie volunteers with both Living Journeys and Gunnison Tough where she does everything from selling merchandise and accommodating guests to driving cancer patients to their treatments. She’s also involved with Adaptive Sports. She’s a sitting member of the Homebuyers Assistance Fund Committee with the local Board of Realtors, a new organization that grants cash to help people acquire their first property. It’s funded by brokers who donate from their property closings. 

These days, Reggie is still active and she still skis. “Not like I used to, but I still get out there and do it. Every year I say it’ll be my last year doing downhill and then I buy another pass,” she smiles. She says that there’s no place like home and, “Crested Butte is where my friends and family are. I will have a presence in CB for the rest of my life.”