Denver's Lights Are a Little Dimmer After Death of Corky Scholl, but Save the Signs Shines On

The lights in Denver are a little dimmer since photojournalist and sign-preservationist Corky Scholl passed. The longtime member of the 9News team was responsible for the creation and consistent social media presence of Save the Signs, an effort to archive the history of the Mile High City through its signage, both neon and not, all with an artistic statement about the era into which that sign was born.

Scholl passed away on Saturday, August 30, at the age of 48. However, efforts have already begun to ensure that his legacy will live on.
Jeff "JJ" Bebout (also known as Neon Dad) and Todd Matuszewicz from Morry's Neon are making sure Save the Signs lives on, both as a social media entity and as an organization — two separate things, officially, but they work together in concert toward the same goal, Bebout suggests. Both men sit on the board for Save the Signs, and Bebout promises that he'll continue on with the social media archive.

Bebout and Matuszewicz both primarily knew Scholl through his preservationist work, where it overlapped and inspired their own. "But he brought such skills and gifts from his professional work to the work Save the Signs was doing, what we were all doing together," Matuszewicz says. "He was very good at making other people look very good."

Scholl first got into signage thirteen years ago. He'd just bought a house on East Colfax Avenue, and he would see all these classic signs on his way to work every morning — and then, sometimes, they'd just be gone, as if they were never there at all.

"So as the photojournalist that he was," Bebout recalls, "he began documenting them, and created this Facebook page to record and preserve them. He'd take pictures of the signs the way they were, he'd research them, he'd post about them. Every day for thirteen years. Sometimes multiple times a day."

The first sign that inspired it all, says Matuszewicz, was the Mozart Lounge. "It was just a few blocks down from where he lived," he adds. "He saw one day that they were painting it, and doing a really poor job of it. They were calling it the Aqua Lounge, just the name hand-painted with not a lot of graphics. It hit him that they'd just destroyed this beautiful sign."

Later, when someone else bought the place, Scholl still had the pictures of the original signage and was able to show the new owners what the old sign looked like. They pledged to restore it. "It became a beautiful sign once again," says Matuszewicz. "That was the moment when Corky decided that hey, this was something that could be done. That epiphany was really the launch point."

The Facebook group grew to over 27,000 followers, and as it gained notoriety, Scholl's ability to affect positive change grew, too. "There's a lot of effort now to landmark these locations, and landmark their signs," explains Bebout. "Corky had a hierarchy to preservation philosophy. Best case is to restore them in place; if not, to keep them safe as close to their original location as possible. If at all possible, keep them out of private collections, but even that is better than the dumpster."

"Ideally, we keep them in situ," agrees Matuszewicz, "and re-light them there."
There are plans afoot, say Bebout and Matuszewicz, not just to continue Scholl's work, but to follow through on the bigger plans he'd left behind. They're working on a museum, for one, but details are still in the early stages. And the work on landmark status, too, will continue, along with the social media presence.

"We talked with Corky's wife, Melissa," Bebout says, "and got permission from her to carry all this on, invited her to sit on the board as a custodian. But what a task, right? He did so much. It's going to be a tall order."

Irreplaceable, really. "Corky had an encyclopedic knowledge of signs," Matuszewicz says. "Just remarkable. About a month back, we went out to Brush, Colorado, to see the Desky Hotel sign. Not a neon sign, but a beautiful Federal sectional with illuminated panels. There are maybe a dozen left of them in the country. And someone said while we were in Brush, we could stop by the Kozy Kourt Motel, and Corky started rattling off all the other places on that same stretch, just off the top of his head."

Both men agree that there's a lot that they'll miss — that Denver and Colorado will miss — about their friend Corky Scholl. "He's a real gem in this city that's lost," says Matuszewicz, to which Bebout nods.

They still talk about him in the present tense, which still feels like the right thing to do. Scholl's lights are still shining.