Alan Dumas had a big heart. Coincidentally, that’s what killed him Saturday. But not before he gave Denver two decades of wonderful memories, energizing the town with his ebullience, his wit, his imagination, his generous spirit and, above all, his stories. Some of the best never made it to print…
Colorado has always been quick to forgive–and forget. In the midst of the current economic boom, with houses selling within a day for more than their asking price and the daily papers offering cash signing bonuses for new delivery people, it’s hard to remember just what a bust Colorado was…
It’s the workplace, stupid. I do not care if Bill Clinton wants to cavort with Hollywood cuties, light fires with torch singers or be a close personal buddy to Buddy. That’s between Hillary and Bill and whoever he might be lavishing his attentions on in what had better be a…
Jim Stone has waited for this day a long time. Thirteen years, if you start counting from back when the engineer was terminated by Rockwell International in March 1986. Close to ten years, if you start from July 1989, when Stone first filed suit against his former employer, charging that…
On Tuesday, City Hall still bore the scars of Monday’s Super Bowl rally. Outside, street sweepers blew away leftover parade litter; on the doors, notes from Mayor Wellington Webb promised a victory celebration for city workers; inside, miscreants wearing blue and orange swapped high fives as they waited to pay…
For drama, it didn’t come close to a young man tortured and strung up like a scarecrow on a fence beside a lonely strip of Wyoming asphalt. Which meant that for the media, it barely rated a mention. On November 1, 1993, a battered body was found by the side…
Attitude is everything, these kids agree. Although they can’t prevent cops from stopping them–they accept that–they know that too much attitude can make all the difference after you’re pulled over for some minor thing, but really for “driving while brown” or “driving while black.” Juan Hernandez made the mistake of…
Tom Tancredo is sitting in the cigar bar at the Brown Palace, puffing on a stogie. The congressman-elect from Colorado’s Sixth Congressional District should be on top of the world: After besting five other Republicans to take the primary nomination in August, a month ago he beat Democrat Henry Strauss,…
As Tuesday’s sunrise spread vintage Broncos colors across downtown, it looked like a city transformed. Which, of course, it is. From the bluff alongside I-25, you now gaze over hundreds of housing units popping up in the Platte Valley, the almost-finished facade of Ocean Journey and the cranes carrying pieces…
“As with all weak people, the criticism and backbiting by reporters occurred only during office gossip. After this, they all proceeded to genuflect in print for a rich man or politician. They had no access to public funds, the most stolen article in all of crime…they constantly perpetrated the worse…
By 9 a.m. Tuesday, several residents of Lone Tree, Colorado’s brand-spanking-newest city, were already lined up at the tidy, tiny civic center, barely an Elway-armed throw from Park Meadows. They were there to do their civic duty, to vote early and avoid the crush of procrastinators who’ll still be puzzling…
By now the nation knows that Linda Tripp was worried about her bangs, that Monica Lewinsky was worried about her lack thereof with the president, and that an unworried Hillary Clinton thought her husband was simply “ministering” to a misguided youth outside the Oval Office. We know this because Congress…
Twenty years ago, Denver led the way in dealing with domestic violence. While other cities were just beginning to recognize the plight of battered women–hell, in some states it was still legal for a husband to rape his wife–Denver was funding safehouses, establishing police protocols and reconfiguring courts to provide…
Listen carefully. In the 21 months since JonBenet Ramsey’s body was discovered in a Boulder basement, Colorado has tried the two men charged with the Oklahoma City bombing, convicting both Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols and sentencing McVeigh to death. We have hosted the Summit of the Eight. We have…
“I’m always on the record,” Governor Roy Romer confessed as he sat down with a Washington Post reporter for a 45-minute heart-to-heart last month. The interview was just one in a possibly never-ending series of sincere chats during which Romer, the three-term Colorado governor who took a second job as…
My grandfather was too old to fight in World War II. He went anyway. (He lied to get into World War I, too–but was booted after recruiters learned he was underage.) In 1943 he was an orthopedic surgeon, his practice finally taking off after the Depression, when patients often couldn’t…
On May 22, 1996, John Sheron put on his softball uniform and told his wife he was going to a game. He played for a while, then drove up to the Wal-Mart in Evergreen, where he bought a shotgun. He took the gun out to his car, got in and…
While real-estate values soar across Denver, one neighborhood–Overland Park–has been left in the dust. A few miles down the river, the Central Platte Valley is finally fulfilling its century-old promise, transforming its gritty past into the city’s future centerpiece: already home to Coors Field, an amusement park and a children’s…
Poor Ken Calhoun. The former Denver Post vice president of marketing, known as “Ken4Boys” in Internet chat rooms, didn’t so much as get his Bermudas unzipped for that “hot oil massage” he’d talked about with a supposed teenage boy he had planned to meet on a Florida vacation. But within…
The bus stops here. During last year’s State of the City address, Wellington Webb urged the Broncos to give up on Stapleton and instead support a new stadium downtown. Even in these heady economic times, Webb warned, a Stapleton site was too darned expensive. “Where is that money coming from?”…
Patricia Ann Burns had finally taken all she was going to from her husband, Clarence. One day in August 1982, the 38-year-old elementary-school teacher, who’d been beaten twice by Clarence in recent months, told her husband that she was through with the hitting and yelling and through with the marriage…
On hot summer nights, when her children were sleeping, she would open her windows wide and listen to the sounds of Capitol Hill–the sirens, the screams. “Ambulances and fire trucks were going all night long,” Clarissa Pinkola Estes remembers. “You’d hear angry voices. You’d hear a great big slap, and…
