Colorado and Denver voted down the 1976 Olympics, something never done before or since. People were sick of growth. The Olympic chair said Colorado had missed out on so many fine venues that would have been built. Critics said they would have already been torn down by now. Red Skelton, during a visit, saw so many construction cranes he commented: "I am going to come back when you are done."
I HAD HOPED TO PUT YOU IN MOOD WITH THE FOLLOWING JOHN DENVER SONG BUT ALAS TOO MUCH VIOLENCE FOLLOWS. BEAUTY REALLY IS COLORADO'S HALLMARK, NOT TIM MCVEIGH, THE RAMSEY MURDER, KOBE BRYANT, THE AIR FORCE ACADEMY RAPE SCANDAL, THE SAD STORY OF RETURNING VETS WHO NEED TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF HELP, THEY DON'T ALWAYS GET, TO EMERGE FROM THEIR PRIVATE HELLS TO BECOME THE HEROES THEY ARE.
JONBENET RAMSEY
BOULDER, Colo. _ A decade after the Christmastime slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, two aspects of the case endure: the public's fascination with the murder of the 6-year-old beauty contestant, and a sense for some that the notorious crime may never be solved. Former lead police investigator Steve Thomas, who has maintained from the start that suspicion points to the family, disputes that DNA will solve anything. He says the killer is dead.
PATSY RAMSEY DIES
Patsy Ramsey, who was thrust into the national spotlight by the unsolved 1996 slaying of her daughter, 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant JonBenet, died Saturday following a long battle with ovarian cancer, her lawyer said. She was 49. Ramsey was diagnosed with the disease in 1993 and suffered a recurrence several years ago, attorney L. Lin Wood said. She died at her father's home in Roswell, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, with her husband, John, at her bedside. "It is not unexpected but it is a sad day," Wood told The Associated Press. JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family's home in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 26, 1996.
TOWN ON ROAD TO EXTINCTION
DINOSAUR, Colorado - Make no mistake about it, this is no Jurassic Park. Paint is peeling off the town's stegosaurus and the annual summer 'Bedrock Day' festivities had to be cancelled. Dinosaur, Colorado may be on the road to extinction. Nevertheless, the town and its 400 inhabitants hope to ride the coat tails of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Jurassic Park. The town clerk, Wilma - yes, she has heard all the jokes about Fred Flintstone's wife - Sims, said the phones have been ringing with people intrigued about the town after seeing the film. Trouble is, having enjoyed the film's lifelike computer-animated dinosaurs, people might find themselves disappointed if they braved dilapidated US Highway 40 to get here. There isn't much to see. Three small motels, two restaurants, a couple of gift shops, two petrol stations with shops and a liquor store constitute the shopping district. 'I feel like a real Lone Ranger up here,' said Dick Blakley, whose restaurant - until last week the only one - offers such delicacies as Bronto Burgers and Chicken Frinaosaurus. The town's troubles began in the Sixties with the arrival of expressways to the south and north that lured traffic away from US 40, until then the main east-west route. In 1965, it renamed itself Dinosaur, hoping to benefit from traffic to the nearby Dinosaur National Monument. Times, though, have remained hard. Mayor Dennis Sims, Wilma's son, said Bedrock Day was called off this year because of a lack of money and volunteers. Past festivals included games, a dance, a talent show and a parade. The Rev H D Pattison, pastor of Dinosaur Baptist Church, said that if there is a spirit of gloom it may be because people put all their faith in last year's attempt to legalise gambling. The town bought a police car and maintenance truck on the assumption that gambling would go through, but the proposal failed on a statewide ballot in November. In the meantime, while America goes dino-crazy, the 15ft fibreglass stegosaurus outside City Hall is falling apart.
AIR FORCE FINDS AWOL PILOT'S REMAINS IN BOMBER'S WRECKAGE
EAGLE, Colo. _ The Air Force said Friday it found body parts in the wreckage of an A-10 warplane on a lofty peak, indicating the Capt. Craig Button was in the cockpit when it crashed into a mountain. "What we found was fragmentary human remains," Maj. Gen. Nels Running said. "We are not positive whose human remains they are." A military lab will conduct DNA and other tests to determine if the remains are those of Button, Running said. The announcement culminated a three-week search for Button's plane after he veered away during a training run on April 2. The Air Force took advantage of improved weather at the site on Friday and lowered three special operations sergeants by cable from a helicopter hovering at 13,000 feet to recover the remains. The procedure took about an hour. At one point observers in another helicopter were stunned when it appeared one of the PJs, as they are called, had fallen. But it turned out to be only a pack.
PSYCHIATRISTS REJECT TREATMENT FOR HOMOSEXUALITY, SAY IT IS NATURAL
DENVER _ The American Psychiatric Association's board voted unanimously Friday to reject therapy aimed solely at turning gays into heterosexuals, saying it can cause depression. "All the evidence would indicate this is the way people are born. We treat disease, not the way people are," said Dr. Nada, Stotland, head of the association's join committee on public affairs. "The very existence of therapy that is supposed to change people's sexuality, even for people who don't take it, is harmful because it implies that they have a disease," said Stotland, of Rush Medical College in Chicago. "There is evidence that the belief itself can trigger depression and anxiety." The American Psychological Association made a similar decision last year, in 1997.
Biography Debunks Molly Brown Myth
DENVER _ Molly Brown survived more than the sinking of the Titanic.
Even before Broadway and then Hollywood got its hands on her legend, writers began embellishing her story.
One account stated she was born during a tornado that destroyed much of Hannibal, Mo. Another claimed Ms. Brown headed West after waiting on Mark Twain, born in Hannibal like Molly in a diner. A third contended she pulled a gun to make men row a lifeboat away from the sinking Titanic in 1912.
None was true.
But ``her real story is even better,'' said Kristen Iversen, author of a new biography of the legendary Leadville, Colo. woman. The Denver for the Performing Arts put on a workshop in 2009 of a revised version of the play "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," which corrects many of popular history's errors.
SAND CREEK MASSACRE, AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
CHIVINGTON, Colo. — Tribal elders swear they can still hear the murdered children crying. Until recently, no signs marked the killing fields where the Colorado militia massacred more than 150 Arapahos and Cheyennes during the Civil War on the banks of Sand Creek amid the gently rolling hills dotted with sagebrush and yucca. Some historians consider it a pivotal point of Western history.
SNOWMOBILERS HUNKER DOWN IN RAILROAD CABIN TO SURVIVE BLIZZARD
CONEJOS, Coloardo - The snowmobilers looked more like winners of the Paris-Dakar than six people feared dead in a blizzard. They beamed amid cheers as they came down a snowy mountain where they had been stuck for three days.
They had done the smart thing when they got lost Friday in Colorado's San Luis Valley: They broke into a cabin and stayed put.
"We just stayed in the cabin. It was safe. We were aware there would be people looking out for us. We didn't want to split up and take unnecessary risks," said Jason Groen, one of those rescued Monday near the New Mexico border.
The six were trapped by one in a series of storms that killed at least three people across the West, unloaded as much as 11 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada range, flooded hundreds of homes in Nevada and knocked out power to a quarter-million Californians. At least three people — two skiers and a hiker — were missing in the snow-covered mountains of California and Colorado.
ORPHAN TRAIN RIDERS REMEMBER THEIR TRIPS
LAKEWOOD, Colo. _ It is one of the least-remembered of America's
migrations to the West: as many as 350,000 orphan children shipped out of
New York on ''Orphan Trains'' from the 1850s to 1929.
The trains stopped in rural areas so that prospective parents could look
over the youngsters and decide whether to take in any of them. The process wasn't always successful, recalled Dorothy Sharpley, 81, one of
six Orphan Train "riders" who attended a reunion Saturday in Colorado.
Sharpley said she was rejected by her first adoptive family,in Columbus,
Neb. "I was sent back to New York only to ride the train again and end up in
St. Mary's, Neb., only 20 miles from Columbus."
The trains were the idea of Methodist minister Charles Loring Brace,founder
of the Children's Aid Society of New York, intended as a means of moving
children out of the alleys and squalor of a city overrun by immigrants and
the industrial revolution,out to the West and wholesome farm family life.
"It was a major event in migration to the West, where life revolved around
the railroad," said Tom Noel, a University of Colorado historian.
WACO
DAVIDIANS SET UP IN CABIN IN REMOTE COLORADO WOODS BALDWIN, Colo. _ Three Branch Davidians are holed up in a remote log cabin with semi-automatic weapons, a police scanner and night vision equipment. Three-thousand rounds of ammunition are on order. But the local sheriff says he won't tolerate a repeat of the cult's bloody standoff in Texas. "If they break the law I'm going to hammer them," says Sheriff Richard Murdie. Sheets of camouflaged cloth or black plastic cover some of the windows of the log house occupied by three Davidians looking for a new home base after last year's shootout and fire at their Mount Carmel compound near Waco, Texas. "We wanted to be able to look out without being seen. Some of the people killed at Mount Carmel were shot through windows," said Wally Kennett.
A SUBDIVISION WITH A DIFFERENCE: ANASAZI RUINS
CORTEZ, Colo. _ Views from Nancy Reynolds' log house high above this Four Corners town resemble scenes from a classic Western film.
The deck offers a panorama of Shiprock, N.M., more than 40 miles away, Sleeping Ute Mountain, Mesa Verde National Park and the La Plata and San Juan Mountains.
"There's different weather on each side," Reynolds says, adding the "sunsets, double rainbows and crackling lightning make this the best show in town."
But it's the backyard that makes her Indian Camp home unique. It has its own Anasazi ruin, left by the prehistoric people who lived here for more than 1,000 years, departing about the year 1,300.
Anyone who buys one of the 31 sites among the junipers, pinons and sage at Indian Camp, 6 miles east of Mesa Verde, must agree to preserve the pueblos and semisubterranean ceremonial kivas of those the Navajos call the Ancient Ones.
HISTORY EXPLAINS WHY TB CASE IN DENVER CAUSED WORLDWIDE CONCERN
DENVER _ There is a reason why reports of a rare strain of tuberculosis attracted worldwide attention; a history as scary as the plague. More than 4,000 years ago, TB killed an Egyptian whose mummified remains were dug up; the case was first described in 1910. Hippocrates had called the disease "consumption" in 460 BC. Some called it the "white plague." It became fashionable in Europe to have that gaunt look, and was the theme of popular operas. TB remains a global health threat, especially for AIDS victims. It has claimed the lives of millions, including many of the high and mighty, although the science used to centuries past to diagnose it remains suspect. UNSINKABLE LEADVILLE FINDS A WAY TO SURVIVE WITHOUT MINES
LEADVILLE, Colo. _ In 1882, Oscar Wilde visited this rough-and-tumble mining town high in the Rockies and read the works of Renaissance author Benvenuto Cellini to a group of townspeople. The crowd liked it so much they asked Wilde why he hadn't brought the writer along. Wilde explained that Cellini was dead. "Who shot him?" someone in the crowd asked. As of Friday, the mines that made Leadville a tough and pitiless Wild West outpost are all gone. But while the place is a far cry from its heyday, when 40,000 people packed the city, Leadville is no ghost town. In fact, Leadville is booming again, a growing middle-class community of charming Victorian homes. "Leadville will never die because living here becomes the most important thing in your life," said Stephanie Olson, who gave up her law practice to care for her kids and run a small scenic railroad in Leadville, at 10,430 feet the nation's highest incorporated city.
LEAD-CONTAMINATED TOYS FROM CHINA RECALLED BY U.S. LIBRARIES
DENVER _ A Wisconsin company is recalling thousands of bendable cat and dog toys given out by libraries across the country to student readers because the toys were contaminated with more than four times the safe amount of lead.
The American Library Association's Web site calls it "a toxic toy alert" and it reached all the way to Alaska. The library in Pueblo, Colo., learned of the problem from ALA and contacted Highsmith of Fort Atkinson, Wis. "We contacted them earlier this week and they e-mailed us a release about the recall," said Jon Walker, district director of the Pueblo Library. "We have been calling the families and encouraging them to bring the toys back and we will give them a replacement prize," said Walker. The toys were awarded for completing a student reading program. The American Library Association Web site said, "A serendipitous conversation during a summer-reading promotion between an Indiana children's librarian and a staff member of Bloomington Hospital has triggered the recall of thousands of toys containing hazardous lead levels that libraries nationwide were giving out to children as program incentives."
SHERIFF KILLERS NO MATCH FOR RUGGED SAN JUANS
LAKE CITY, Colo. _ The killers of Sheriff Roger Coursey were no match for the rugged San Juan Mountains in winter. A month after a sheriff was gunned down while pursuing two bank robbers, the suspects' frozen bodies were found under a spruce tree on a snowy 9,000-foot mountain. They apparently carried out a suicide pact less than two miles from where the sheriff was slain. "I yelled for joy and started crying," said former Undersheriff Ray Blaum, who witnessed the killing of Sheriff Roger Coursey and became Hinsdale County's top lawman afterward. A nationwide manhunt and a segment on TV's "America's Most Wanted" led to scores of false sightings of the suspects in half a dozen states. Now authorities believe that a few hours after Coursey died, Mark Vredenburg and Ruth Slater lay down under a brown sleeping bag and carried out their suicide pact with the same .44-caliber gun used to kill the sheriff. It was within a few miles of the site where more than a century earlier mountain guide Alferd Packer allegedly ate the Utah gold seekers he was leading when heavy snows trapped them.
MARROW RECIPIENT MICHELLE MAYKIN
BONE MARROW CHARITIES FIND NEW WAY TO GET DONORS
DENVER _ Significant progress has been made in the past two decades finding bone marrow donors for leukemia and other cancer sufferers, but on any given day 6,000 people need donations _ even though 11 million people are on a global donor registry.
The Denver-based Love Hope Strength Foundation, founded by entertainment insurance executive James Chippendale and British musician Mike Peters, formerly of The Alarm, has a way to boost the numbers: Solicit donors at rock concerts. Both Chippendale and Peters are cancer survivors.
On the weekend of July 19-20, the foundation advertised for donors at Denver-area concerts featuring Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Steve Winwood and the Dave Matthews Band. It set a foundation record of 435 newly registered donors for a music event. In the past, getting 50 was a good result for a run-of-the-mill drive.
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