Paul Silvers

Paul Silvers, a retired U.S. Army Colonel and longtime resident of Boulder, Colorado, passed away at age 91 on January 11, 2022. We will miss his tremendous sense of humor, love of history and music, and the many lessons he shared with us about his amazing life in Europe and the U.S.

Paul leaves behind his wife of 64 years, Ingrid, and his three children with their spouses: Steven (Valerie); Ken (Erin) and Michelle (Jeff). He loved his six grandchildren and two great grandchildren: Tyler (wife Genny and children Cora and Danny); Ben; Marissa; Samantha, Madeleine and Daniel.

The youngest of three boys, Paul was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1930 to Al and Minnie Silvers.

In 1940, two years after moving to Brussels, Belgium, the Silvers and other Jewish families fled invaders from Nazi Germany. After several days on the run the refugees were turned back at the French border, to an occupied Brussels where they were forced to wear the yellow star identifying them as Jews.

Soon relatives and friends began disappearing into camps where they became victims of the Holocaust. In a desperate effort to survive, the Silvers family decided they would separate. In 1942, at the age of 12, Paul was hidden amongst Catholic children at a boarding school run by Father Bruno of the Dom Bosco religious order in Tournai, Belgium, where he remained until the wars end. Paul always said that his "forever and lasting heroes" were the American soldiers who freed his family and his country.

Finally in 1950, the surviving family was able to immigrate to the United States aboard the French liner Liberte. They settled in Los Angeles where they started up a small street-side diner called Paul's Cafe. (In later years Paul would laughingly recall his early challenges with strange American cuisine like hot dogs).

Driven to succeed, Paul spent evenings going to school to learn English to obtain his coveted US citizenship. He continued working and going to college, earning a Bachelor of Science and then a Doctorate from Los Angeles College of Optometry in June 1956. That same year he was commissioned as a 2nd LT in the US Army Medical Service Corp and sent to his first post in West Germany. Soon after arriving, a distant relative asked him to check on a claim at a reparation attorney’s office. Upon walking into the office, Paul was immediately smitten by a beautiful red-headed legal secretary named Ingrid Hainke. They married two years later and moved back to Los Angeles.

Over the next several decades, Paul and Ingrid raised three children and moved often, as Army families do, living in San Antonio, Texas, Ft. Meade, Georgia, Edgewood, Maryland and Chapel Hill, North Carolina where Paul earned his Master’s degree in Public Health at the University of North Carolina. Eventually stationed in Germany, the family enjoyed ski trips to nearby Austria and road trips to Spain, Italy and Holland.

In 1975, the family moved to Boulder, Colorado where Paul took over the optometric departments at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora. Having decided that Boulder was their favorite American town, he and Ingrid settled permanently in the Table Mesa neighborhood, with all the kids graduating from nearby Fairview High School.

In 1983, Paul was awarded the Legion of Merit for Chief in acknowledgement of his stellar leadership in managing the Fitzsimons’s expansive Optometry Clinic and Ophthalmology Services.

After 26 years of active duty, Paul retired as a full Colonel. He worked as an optometrist in Boulder for several more years until his history books, bike riding, walking the foothill trails and family gatherings became full-time occupations.

Preceding Paul in death are his beloved brothers Jack Silvers and Harry Silvers, who both resided in Los Angeles. A celebration of life will be announced.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.cristmortuary.com for the Silvers family.