When Denver Public Schools began forced busing to desegregate the city’s schools just over two decades ago, the reaction of many white parents was swift: They left. In 1974 nearly 54 percent of the Denver student body was white. By late last year, when the district was released from federal…
What the puck? In honor of the Stanley Cup, the Rocky Mountain News has dubbed its sports section the Hockey Mountain News–but Hokey might be more appropriate. It certainly describes Saturday’s column by Rockies first baseman Andres Galarraga, who used his weekly space not to discuss batting averages, or baseball,…
The sexual-harassment suit against US West that arose out of former US West employee Robert Harlan’s murder trial has taken a bizarre turn in U.S. District Court. In the past three months, many of the case’s numerous plaintiffs have struggled to find new legal representation because of the revelation that…
Jerry Storm, the Colorado Wildcats’ No. 1 fan, has been going to games for five years now, so he’s seen it all. He’s watched women get into fights in the stands. He saw the Cats’ Thomas Stubblefield rush for 2,000 yards in 1994. He once saw an opposing player belt…
Mark Her Words I salute Patricia Calhoun for her May 16 “Razin’ in the Sun,” about losing Zeckendorf. At least someone is watching–and writing about–what’s literally going down here. Jody Ross Denver In his May 30 letter, Tyler Gibbs chides Patricia Calhoun for “perpetuating the suspicion that DURA and the…
I’m doing a good job of being disappearing,” LoDo artist Jorg “Peter” Schmitz says in lilting, German-accented English. He sounds proud of the accomplishment, and perhaps he should be. Schmitz is the man of the hour, the person whom everyone–including members of a Denver grand jury–wants to talk to. And…
On the blue-dark evening of May 13, 1995, Craig Williams stood on the porch of the single-story ranch house he’d built twenty years ago. To the south, east and north, his wheatfields promised a bountiful year; the stalks were thigh-high already, their tips clustered tightly with beads of grain. As…
Senator Hank Brown’s selection of Greeley attorney Walker Miller to fill a federal judgeship in Denver won’t surprise those who know that the men’s personal relationship extends back to their college days in 1957. But the senator may well owe Miller more than just a debt of friendship. Miller was…
Last week Jet Aspen, the start-up airline that was to ferry powder-hungry passengers from Los Angeles and other cities to Aspen, Telluride and Montrose, filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy laws. Despite publicity and millions of dollars it raised, the Virginia-based company never got off…
A few weeks ago, about three hundred Denverites lined up to attend the world premiere of a new movie at the refurbished Oriental Theatre in northwest Denver. It was a gala event for the 650-seat theater: Limousines pulled up and unloaded gents in tuxedos and ladies in gowns. “I’ve been…
A wing and a prayer: Guess we can forgive Denver airport officials if they felt a chill run down their spines after the May 11 crash of a ValuJet DC-9 in the Florida Everglades. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that DIA honchos were falling all over themselves trying…
The most bitter newspaper war in Denver right now is between two papers most people have never heard of. The dispute pits the publisher against the former editor of the Women’s Business News, a biweekly paper that has offered profiles of local businesswomen and articles on workplace issues for the…
Wonder if Timothy McVeigh has one of those $240 Colorado Avalanche jerseys yet? Everyone else within fifty miles of McNichols Arena now wears one, and to hear people talk, they’ve all been dedicated hockey fans since the Eskimos made the first ice cube and Gordie Howe was in diapers. In…
Bland Hotel While I appreciate that Patricia Calhoun’s reference to my essay “The Loss of Zeckendorf Plaza” (“Razin’ in the Sun,” May 16) allows that even bureaucrats may have hearts, I do take issue with her charge that neither DURA nor the planning director put up much resistance to the…
The Lone Tree Golf Club describes itself as “a public country club,” and the oxymoron seems entirely fitting. The gabled roof of the 50,000-square-foot clubhouse looms over the fairway, and the club boasts a full-service restaurant and bar, a parquet dance floor, a boardroom, and even suites for overnight visitors…
“Anything’ll set you off,” says garage-door repairman Jerry Sutliff. It was a conversation in a restaurant that set Sutliff off one day last December. Another man was talking about his mother, who’d just died. “What got me,” Sutliff remembers the man saying, “was that Mom’s house was full of rooms…
A new lending institution, which some suspect is nothing but a novel way to lure personal-injury clients to hungry attorneys, has several local lawyers crying foul. Even Franklin D. Azar, the personal-injury attorney whose shameless television commercials have made him a household word, disapproves. “Somebody’s going to be in a…
If you are sixteen-year-old child-prodigy gardener Jonah Bradley on your day off, think polite reserve. Otherwise, just as you begin loading your cart with white petunias and nicotiana–and maybe the strange lime-green nicotiana known as “Starship,” which you have been thinking about privately all winter–some old lady will come up…
LoDo lowdown: On Tuesday, Lower Downtown District Inc. released its much-blabbed-about neighborhood plan charting LoDo’s aesthetic future. The draft document, yet to be approved by the city council, calls for a 100-foot height limit on new buildings in most of LoDo and a 100-foot puke limit for restaurateurs and bar…
Is the man who attacked you on the night of April 12, 1993, in this courtroom?” Heather Smith hesitated for a moment before taking her eyes off Denver Deputy District Attorney Doug Jackson. Everything she had been through in the past three years–the pain, the nightmares, the self-doubts–hinged on this…
Evidently, there are no limits on baseball’s current charms. Volatile Cleveland Indians outfielder Albert Belle, long a wrecker of locker rooms and teammates’ psyches, throws a baseball at a magazine photographer who has the temerity to take his picture, and American League president Gene Budig orders him to counseling. Self-absorbed…
Child’s Pay Michelle Dally Johnston’s April 25 story, “Adopting an Attitude,” was disconcerting to read, for three reasons: 1. If not for private adoption agencies, some of which are highly ethical and caring agencies, the only options left for Coloradans would be Social Services adoptions or attorney-led private adoptions. Social…
