Walter Plywaski placed the blue yarmulke on his head. A Jew by ethnicity but an atheist by choice, he rarely wore the symbol of faith. But it seemed important now, as he stood near a mass burial site for Jews murdered at what had once been the Riederloh “punishment” camp…
Tom Anthony has a dream: of lozenge-shaped, four-person vehicles that cruise an elevated rail on demand, delivering passengers around the metro area at 30 mph or taking them up into the mountains and out to Denver International Airport at four times that speed. Suddenly, cars are unnecessary. Parks bloom where…
What began as a mind exercise for Jerald Lepinski ten years ago has become a crusade to challenge the music notation system that’s dominated Europe and America for hundreds of years. Lepinski, a Denver music teacher and choir conductor for more than thirty years, is not the first to suggest…
When Mayor Wellington Webb’s stepson Keith Thomas clipped a parked car March 31 and kept on driving, it wasn’t the first time he’d “hit and run,” says a former business associate. In fact, claims bar owner Chester Johnson, after he fired Thomas for alleged misuse of funds last fall, Thomas…
State your business: The June issue of Spy rates the nation’s fifty states in order of annoyance–and we make the dirtiest dozen. Texas takes first place, but Colorado clocks in at number twelve for, among other reasons: “Laws: In Durango, it is illegal to go out in public dressed in…
Business and politics have been known to make uneasy bedfellows, but an obscure Boulder company is showing just how strange the marriage can be. Last month United States Voting Machine Inc. declared bankruptcy. The announcement was hardly earthshaking: USVM listed a mere $20,000 in assets. Yet the company’s union of…
Most of America didn’t want Jackie Robinson to reach Daytona Beach, much less Brooklyn. In February 1946–half a century ago–Robinson and his new bride, Rachel, began one of the most important journeys in the nation’s sports and social history by boarding an airplane in Los Angeles. Everything went well until…
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…
Regular starting catcher Jayhawk Owens struggled to pull on his pants, his sprained left thumb encased in a wad of Ace bandage big enough to gift-wrap a Cadillac. Most of the prematurely weary relief pitchers had their shoulders packed in ice, like flounder headed for market. Roger Bailey, who sprained…
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…
