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How the West Was Won Alan Prendergast’s story on the Center for the New West (“Winging It,” April 11) was a priceless piece of work. Good reporting, better writing. I laughed so hard while reading it that the only way I could calm down was to look at my US…

Rodney Long was at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., when the spirit “hit” him. It stayed with him on the trip back to Denver, and it’s with him still. “If you go by your heart, you go with your spirit,” he says. “You go in the right direction.”…

Except for his protruding gut, Wild Bill Hardney appears to be in great shape as he steps into the boxing ring at the 20th Street Gym. For a 54-year-old chain-smoker, he looks pretty good dancing around, dodging blows, firing off tightly controlled punches from shoulder height, crouching in low on…

When Phil Burgess gets up to speak, he doesn’t just take the floor. He takes the whole room–floor, walls, ceiling, people and every last scrap of oxygen in the place. He storms the podium like Patton rolling through the Rhineland or Al Haig commandeering a press conference; there’s no question…

One of Denver’s top airport administrators took early retirement last summer, but he didn’t fly off into the sunset. Instead, Errol K. Stevens came back to work the next day as a private consultant–with a contract from the city that pays him more than he earned as a public employee…

If Colorado experiences an increase in the number of prisoners on death row, the condemned may have convicted killer Thomas Luther and a recalcitrant juror to thank. Eleven of the jurors who in February convicted Luther for the 1983 murder of Cher Elder stood together this past Friday, many of…

It takes money to make money, but Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz has gotten so good at pulling money out of unlikely situations, he’s starting to look like the King Midas of 17th Street. When he’s not out raising funds for Bob Dole’s campaign or talking to the president of Mexico…

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest: New flight paths introduced last week at Denver International Airport are supposed to cut down on noise–both from the planes themselves and from irate citizens who complain when they thunder overhead. But echoes of earlier problems still resound. Next Tuesday, Paul Grant is slated…

Drive, He Said Thank you, Patricia Calhoun, for your two wonderful columns on Greg Lopez. They said things that badly needed saying. In the first, “Good People” (March 21), you made an eloquent case for what an extraordinary writer he was and what a loss his death will be for…

Randolph Kelly’s house is full of family photos. They’re stacked on the television and on tables; they cover the walls. On the north side of the living room hang two large and faded photos, their sepia tones encased in oval frames. One of the pictures is of Kelly’s dead wife’s…

With layoffs looming, AT&T has been offering courses for employees exploring second careers–including “floraculture” instruction in the company’s own cafeteria. The course, given by a local occupational school, was represented as a state-approved program taught by licensed instructors and promised to deliver a diploma and good job prospects in the…

Last week, as Denver Public Schools officials announced they would not permit another Nation of Islam rally to take place at George Washington High School, Alvertis Simmons was asked to comment. “Don’t lump us all together,” Simmons complained. “I’m sick and tired of people trying to pigeonhole us as one…

Who’s on First? For about an hour there Monday, the race for retiring congresswoman Pat Schroeder’s First District slot got really interesting. That’s when concert impresario Barry Fey, subbing for vacationing KTLK talk-show host Peter Boyles, took the early-morning opportunity to announce that he was running for Schroeder’s seat. “I’ll…

Denver General Hospital and the city’s neighborhood health clinics will soon launch their first-ever marketing campaign, but don’t expect to see it in high-rent neighborhoods. It’s aimed at Medicaid recipients–many of them poor people and minorities. The $200,000 marketing program also is supposed to provide a “corporate identity” to the…

Workers of the World, Unite! Thanks for Stuart Steers’s “Still Hurting,” in the March 28 issue. It seems that the rich just keep getting richer–and the poor keep hurting. Stan Brackett Denver I enjoyed “Still Hurting,” by Stuart Steers, very much. The ancient Roman policy of bread and circuses still…

When Spicer Breeden crashed into Greg Lopez on March 17, two worlds collided. The ironies piled up quickly. Just a year separated Lopez and Breeden in age; the two had grown up mere miles from each other. And both men were familiar faces in Lower Downtown hangouts–although Breeden frequented the…

Kim Eli, a 39-year-old single mother with two daughters, knows firsthand just how compassionate Colorado’s workers’ compensation system is toward people who are injured at work. For years she worked in the delicatessen departments of area King Soopers stores, including the Mayfair branch at 13th Avenue and Krameria Street. Slicing…

It may be old-fashioned, but it is a dream many people still hold: to start and run a family business. What could be more satisfying than earning a living while working closely with loved ones? The answer, if you’re a member of the Lewis family, is, just about anything. Nine…

Drive, he said: Yes, that was Ben Klein, the only RTD boardmember who’s been officially certified sane, schmoozing two weeks ago with Transportation Secretary Federico Pena at a White House ceremony marking the feds’ agreement to fund an extension of Denver’s light-rail system. Klein, the current RTD chairman, knew Pena…

Last fall, as Jet Aspen, a start-up airline that plans to link several major cities to Colorado’s most noted ski resort town, prepared its flight application to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the company’s chief executive officer boasted that he had accumulated $8 million in financing. That was a problem–but…