There are peaceful uses for atomic energy, and then there’s the Steen family, blown apart by the biggest uranium bonanza in American history. Shreds of memories and court documents now litter the landscape of what started out as one of the century’s most inspiring success stories. Charlie was the indomitable…
Better homes and stadiums: Since Pat Bowlen wants taxpayers to build him a $320 million home for the Broncos (see story at left), we’re sure he won’t mind if we take a peek at his own crash pad, a three-story brick beauty (latest assessed value: $1,971,580) that overlooks the tenth…
Following the Denver Broncos’ Super Bowl win last month, Denver’s movers and shakers tripped over themselves in a rush to endorse a new taxpayer-financed stadium for the team. Mayor Wellington Webb, Governor Roy Romer and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce all gave high-profile endorsements to the stadium proposal, even…
Last Christmas wasn’t merry for Arlee Martin and her daughter Rose Warren. A teenage employee of Foley’s Cherry Creek department store not only refused to wait on the pair but allegedly spewed racial slurs at them and attacked Warren. The two black women were so shaken by the encounter that…
You know those moments when all your senses open like a flower? Picture this: West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium in mid-March, a tidy little ballpark, swept and green and balmy. Nolan Ryan is on the hill wearing that gruesome blaze of Astro orange and yellow across his chest, and he’s…
“Bill becomes law if governor sins.” –typo in the 1998 Colorado Legislature’s pamphlet How a Bill Becomes a Law Does abstinence make the heart grow fonder? If so, then the folks calling for Roy Romer’s head should be anointing it instead. The alleged personalities at KNUS radio, chief among them…
It was a small thing, really, just a signature on the back of a plain manila application card. At the time she endorsed it, in 1942, she had no way of knowing it would get her fired, arrested, thrown in jail and forced into hiding. But on the day she…
An Affair to Dismember Patricia Calhoun’s “Sealed With a Kiss,” in the February 12 issue, was superb–simply wonderful! It was the ultimate Calhounism. She hit the proverbial nail on the head at every turn. She drove the nails through Governor Romeo’s glib talk and feckless conduct. Romer does not realize…
What’s your sign? The Denver Performing Arts Complex has some snappy new signage, part of a $1.5 million improvement project now under way. By June the area should have two more electronic marquees (the first three were installed in December), as well as banners on 14th and Arapahoe streets, new…
When Andy Parks was growing up, once or twice a year his family would leave their home in Parker and fly to California or Florida or New York or Germany. Parks’s father, James, a busy obstetrician and gynecologist, was flexible on these vacation destinations. Anywhere was fine with him–with one…
The first time Russell Welty heard about the Year 2000 Problem–also known as the Millennium Bug or, in programmer jargon, Y2K–it sounded simple. Too simple. The problem, stripped down to its essentials, is this: Most computers on the planet are programmed to calculate dates in a two-digit format–for example, 02/14/98…
Denver may soon be the last city in the metropolitan area where you can legally buy a one-on-one table dance from a stripper and hand a tip directly to her. With the help of a religious-right legal foundation based in Arizona, virtually all of Denver’s neighboring cities have adopted ordinances…
Rocky mountain hype: Little could Fort Collins fourth-grader Kari Neuman have known when she proposed making John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” the official state song that she was putting a match to a powderkeg of positive karma just waiting to explode all over Colorado. In recent days, the Denver Musicians…
The decisions of a Denver Probate Court judge that deprived 83-year-old Letty Milstein of her rights and her money were slapped down late last week by the Colorado Court of Appeals. The case of Letty Milstein, mother of Denver socialite Judi Wolf, was sent back to the probate court by…
For months, someone had been tagging the city-owned west Denver boxing gym that Mike Quintana runs with his father. So when Quintana heard some kids rattling their spray cans out back one night last October, he grabbed them and called the cops. And just as the kids were about to…
She’s loud. She’s brash. In the past, some of her teammates couldn’t stand her. While growing up poor in Triumph, Idaho, population fifty, she learned to scrap for the last pork chop on the platter. When the boys in town teased the freckle-faced girl with the funny name, her older…
There Auto Be a Law I read with high moral indignation, considerable irritation and an extremely jaundiced eye Tony Perez-Giese’s “Take It for a Ride,” in the February 5 issue, about the need for regulation in the car business. I was one of “them” for three months in 1995, and…
Governor Roy Romer lied. You can read his lips in a six-minute smooch that catches Romer in the middle of a close, personal consultation with B.J. Thornberry, his former deputy chief of staff, in the front seat of a car parked outside Dulles Airport. The kiss was captured in 1995,…
What’s cooking? Artist Martha Keating has already made northwest Denver look better, with projects like the 20th Street Viaduct mosaics that she created with Bob Luna and a host of neighborhood children. Now she’s preparing to inject more good taste into the area–in the form of a bakery she wants…
Even before the accident, Mike Grainger wasn’t quite right. “We called him ‘Mike Grainger, Mike Grainger, Mike Grainger,'” remembers Barb Thomsen, one of his former co-workers at the Burlington Northern railyards in Alliance, Nebraska. “He always repeated everything. He was kind of slow in the head.” But everybody liked Mike…
The hearing has dragged on for two days of testimony from police officers, a special-education teacher and Division of Motor Vehicles investigators. Now it’s time for yet another expert witness: a forensic document examiner who’s been trained by the FBI. He explains how to use infrared lasers to analyze handwriting,…
Pull out! Pull out!: Gosh, is Western Pacific Airlines, that beacon of fiscal brilliance that was supposed to save Denver from big, bad United, really crashing and burning in bankruptcy court? Who could have predicted it? Just because the airline was already losing money hand over fist by the time…
