The birthing process for Sue Ratcliff lasted 25 months. Laid off from her job as a Sheridan police officer after becoming pregnant in late 1991, Ratcliff sued the little southern suburb, citing sex discrimination and failure to follow the outline of the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The waiting ended just…
Michael Jackson always said he loved the children of the world; now he’s paying the price. On January 25 an estimated $10 million of Jackson’s money settled the civil suit of a fourteen-year-old boy who had claimed the singer molested him. But Jackson still can’t rest easy–he has another litigant…
part 1 of 2 He enters the room slowly, gripping his gnarled cane and a colleague’s arm for support. But don’t be fooled. He may be 78, with bad knees in the bargain, but Howard Higman–University of Colorado professor emeritus, chairman of the Conference on World Affairs and living legend–doesn’t…
part 2 of 2 For two of the past three years, the Conference on World Affairs has been the target of protests by a small group of women calling themselves, among other things, Women in Support of Castration. The women are deeply offended by the CWA program, which lists the…
The cat in the hat: Local viewers might have had some trouble recognizing the self-proclaimed “Black Avenger” as he appeared on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung last Thursday night. Gone were the black leather chaps, the stylin’ beret–and much of the attitude. Ken Hamblin looked–and sounded–like he’d just left…
First night on the new job, Calvin Natt called a couple of his guys by the wrong names, and he found himself constantly amazed. “I had no idea the kids had so much athletic talent,” he said the next day. “I’d only watched them on tape from the East game,…
Hamblin on Wry Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “The Smother Brother” in the January 12 issue: In my opinion, the central point that most stands out about Kenny the Negro (as he sometimes calls himself) is not his newfound rap that mimics and cashes in on the success of the real star,…
A $7.50 can of sale paint was no bargain for 44-year-old Denver antique dealer Myke Johnson: She might wind up mortgaging her house to pay for it. But Johnson won’t find a lot of sympathy in Edgewater. The little suburb’s police force reportedly turned out en masse for Johnson’s trial…
One of the few undisputed facts about Denver International Airport is that the new automated baggage-handling system must succeed. Should the computerized network fail, there’s no backup. And that’s not good news. Because despite last week’s rosy reports that claimed the system was a hit, its batting average was actually…
Back on October 3, when the Denver International Marathon was still just a race and not a synonym for negative balance sheets, Leslie Fuller, who helped organize the event, was ecstatic. “It was fantastic,” she says, recalling her feeling on the day of the race. “It was one of the…
part 2 of 2 With Poundstone out of the picture in the 1989 election, longtime Greenwood resident Rollie Barnard was elected mayor. And for a couple of years things stayed quiet. Seeing an opening when the Poundstone group lost power, Myrna Poticha had run again for council and been re-elected…
The noises coming from Unit #69 are ominous: a few loud bangs, then a sort of dragging sound. The smell, too, is intense–it has floated up from the threshold to sock Dave Emge squarely in the nostrils. To his educated palate the odor appears to be a combination of unwashed…
part 1 of 2 If it’s true that, as one resident says, God has smiled down on the city of Greenwood Village, he must have turned a blind eye to the local government. In this wealthy Denver suburb, a quiet community split between modern upscale tract homes and 1950s ranch…
Bonds on the run: Denver officials may not know how to open an airport on time (much less on budget), but they clearly understand how to stop certain complaints before they ever get off the ground. For proof, check out one of those pesky property-tax notices popping up in mailboxes…
Figure skating isn’t exactly a sport, and it isn’t Swan Lake. It is, rather, that frozen netherworld where community theater meets the double axel, in costumes on loan from the floor show at Caesar’s. It’s no wonder that the skaters themselves are often quivering bundles of nerves and that their…
“I don’t give up very easily,” says Stephen W. Smith. “No matter what, I keep making things happen.” Smith’s claim is no idle boast. He is currently a resident of the Jefferson County jail, where he is awaiting trial on a potpourri of charges, including first-degree forgery, criminal impersonation, issuing…
The Denver accounting firm Patten, MacPhee & Associates has received a thorough drubbing in the national press over the past two weeks for its role in the hottest scandal of Bill Clinton’s presidency–the Whitewater real estate deal. Now, it turns out, the firm also finds itself near the center of…
Mary Murphy has spent more than ten years trying to make Calvary Temple pastor Charles Blair pay for his sins. As a member of the James 1:27 Committee, a group formed by investors who lost millions of dollars in Life Center, a Calvary-backed senior citizens’ complex that failed in the…
All Talk and No Action Congratulations to Patricia Calhoun for an excellent column, “The Smother Brother,” in the January 12 issue. She may be the only person who ever gets the last word in with Ramblin’ Hamblin. Sophia Thomas Denver I very much enjoyed Patricia Calhoun’s piece on Ken Hamblin…
Kelly Roberts lays on the blue eye shadow a bit too thick for anyone other than a fortune teller. But there are no crystal balls or tarot cards in the jumbled single-wide trailer where she lives with her children in a valley near Durango. Take away her mascara, and the…
Where does a $5 billion gorilla sit? Wherever it wants to. Among the giant Denver International Airport’s latest victims are regional airports that have been forced to delay or cancel improvements–all because of an unpublicized DIA policy shift. And at least one of those airports, Longmont’s Vance Brand, is badly…
Federico Pena, former Denver mayor and current Secretary of Transportation, was so anxious to build Denver International Airport that he paid an $8 million “ransom” to Adams County. So says Jim Nelms, chief hostage-holder and an early player in Denver’s airport game. In the Eighties Nelms served as both Adams…
