For more than 40 years, Lockley identified and mapped Jurassic and Cretaceous period tracksites in Colorado and everywhere they’ve been found. His insights substantially increased knowledge about dinosaur activities including courtship, parenting, migration and herding behaviors.

“I’ve asked other leading paleoichnologists about Martin’s influence and there’s no debate that he stood alone,” said Friends of Dinosaur Ridge (FODR) executive director Jeff Lamontagne. “As one colleague put it, Martin was the gold standard for identifying dinosaur tracks.”

Born in South Wales, Martin followed in the footsteps of his father, renowned ornithologist and prolific author Ronald Lockley. His father’s research and studies in natural science were a lifelong source of inspiration, as were several of Ronald Lockley’s famous friends, including Julian Huxley, Richard Adams and Sir David Attenborough.

Lockley moved to the U.S. to teach geology at the University of Colorado Denver in 1980 during the oil and gas boom. That was when and where his research on creatures from the Age of Dinosaurs began. It wasn’t long before his work began attracting professional attention and public excitement for the lesser-known branch of paleontology. Lockley was fond of pointing out that fossil bones don’t demonstrate how animals lived the way tracks do. He made the case in a 2022 TEDx Talk that has so far attracted more than a million views.

During his 30 years at UCD, Lockley traveled to hundreds of remote geological sites around North America, Asia, Europe, South America and East Africa. When he wasn’t in the field or teaching, he was an avid writer, publishing more than 600-plus  peer-reviewed articles, 1,000 papers, and 17 books. Lockley received numerous awards, including most recently the Korean Presidential Citation for Contribution to Cultural Heritage Protection in 2020. He was the first non-Korean to receive the award.

Lockley was driven in non-academic ways as well. In his youth, he was a star athlete and two-time winner of the All-England Schools championship in shot put. He never became an American citizen but chose to live in the Colorado foothills in a home he filled with souvenirs from a lifetime of world travels. He enjoyed the views and opportunities to hike outdoors almost daily.

In 1989, Lockley co-founded the nonprofit Friends of Dinosaur Ridge (FODR) to protect the iconic sloping tracksite on the hogback 20 miles west of Denver. He co-founded other nonprofits, research institutes and a Dinosaur Track Museum, and led efforts to establish UNESCO World Heritage sites to protect trackways in other countries. He also served as associate curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and was director of science at Moab Giants in Utah.

In 2021, Lockley and colleagues ranked the top 12 dinosaur tracksites in the United States. Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison was named No. 1 based on 16 criteria, including the number of tracks, the variety of species, and ease of accessibility for public visitation. It was Lockley’s hope that Dinosaur Ridge and the surrounding area would one day be designated a UNESCO Global Geopark.

The nonprofit that manages tours at Dinosaur Ridge will rename its Discovery Center building near Red Rocks Amphitheatre the Martin G. Lockley Discovery Center in tribute to his countless contributions. The organization is working on an exhibit to feature items from the scientist’s personal collection, including his charming drawings and field notes, on a rotating basis starting in spring 2024.

Lockley is survived by his children Peter Lockley (Emily) and Katie Lockley Weller (Spencer); four grandchildren, Graham, Aurelia, Isla and Daniel; his nephew Daniel Lockley (Liz) and grand-niece and nephew, Juniper and Asher Martin. He is also survived by his sister, Ann Mark, and his long-term partner, Gretchen Minney. He was preceded in death by his younger brother, Steven Lockley, and his parents, Ronald Lockley and Jill Stocker Lockley of the U.K.

The Lockley family has suggested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Friends of Dinosaur Ridge at dinoridge.org.

Kristen Kidd of Littleton is director of marketing and communications at Dinosaur Ridge. She was a Colorado Voices columnist in 2010.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Norman Lear, the writer, director and producer who revolutionized prime time television with “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Maude,” propelling political and social turmoil into the once-insulated world of TV sitcoms, has died. He was 101.

Lear died Tuesday night in his sleep, surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles, said Lara Bergthold, a spokesperson for his family.

A liberal activist with an eye for mainstream entertainment, Lear fashioned bold and controversial comedies that were embraced by viewers who had to watch the evening news to find out what was going on in the world. His shows helped define prime time comedy in the 1970s, launched the careers of Rob Reiner and Valerie Bertinelli and made middle-aged superstars of Carroll O’Connor, Bea Arthur and Redd Foxx.

Lear “took television away from dopey wives and dumb fathers, from the pimps, hookers, hustlers, private eyes, junkies, cowboys and rustlers that constituted television chaos, and in their place he put the American people,” the late Paddy Chayefsky, a leading writer of television’s early “golden age,” once said.

Tributes poured in after his death: “I loved Norman Lear with all my heart. He was my second father. Sending my love to Lyn and the whole Lear family,” Reiner wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “More than anyone before him, Norman used situation comedy to shine a light on prejudice, intolerance, and inequality. He created families that mirrored ours,” Jimmy Kimmel said.

“All in the Family” was immersed in the headlines of the day, while also drawing upon Lear’s childhood memories of his tempestuous father. Racism, feminism, and the Vietnam War were flashpoints as blue collar conservative Archie Bunker, played by O’Connor, clashed with liberal son-in-law Mike Stivic (Reiner). Jean Stapleton co-starred as Archie’s befuddled but good-hearted wife, Edith, and Sally Struthers played the Bunkers’ daughter, Gloria, who defended her husband in arguments with Archie.

Lear’s work transformed television at a time when old-fashioned programs as “Here’s Lucy,” “Ironside” and “Gunsmoke” still dominated. CBS, Lear’s primary network, would soon enact its “rural purge” and cancel such standbys as “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres.” The groundbreaking sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” about a single career woman in Minneapolis, debuted on CBS in Sept. 1970, just months before “All in the Family” started.

But ABC passed on “All in the Family” twice and CBS ran a disclaimer when it finally aired the show: “The program you are about to see is ‘All in the Family.’ It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are.”

By the end of 1971, “All In the Family” was No. 1 in the ratings and Archie Bunker was a pop culture fixture, with President Richard Nixon among his fans. Some of his putdowns became catchphrases. He called his son-in-law “Meathead” and his wife “Dingbat,” and would snap at anyone who dared occupy his faded orange-yellow wing chair. It was the centerpiece of the Bunkers’ rowhouse in Queens, and eventually went on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Even the show’s opening segment was innovative: Instead of an off-screen theme song, Archie and Edith are seated at the piano in their living room, belting out a nostalgic number, “Those Were the Days,” with Edith screeching off-key and Archie crooning such lines “Didn’t need no welfare state” and “Girls were girls and men were men.”

“All in the Family,” based on the British sitcom, “Til Death Us Do Part,” was the No. 1-rated series for an unprecedented five years in a row and earned four Emmy Awards as best comedy series, finally eclipsed by five-time winner “Frasier” in 1998.

Hits continued for Lear and then-partner Bud Yorkin, including “Maude” and “The Jeffersons,” both spinoffs from “All in the Family,” with the same winning combination of one-liners and social conflict. In a 1972 two-part episode of “Maude,” the title character (played by Arthur) became the first on television to have an abortion, drawing a surge of protests along with high ratings. And when a close friend of Archie’s turned out to be gay, Nixon privately fumed to White House aides that the show “glorified” same-sex relationships.

“Controversy suggests people are thinking about something. But there’d better be laughing first and foremost or it’s a dog,” Lear said in a 1994 interview with The Associated Press.

Lear and Yorkin also created “Good Times,” about a working class Black family in Chicago; “Sanford & Son,” a showcase for Foxx as junkyard dealer Fred Sanford; and “One Day at a Time,” starring Bonnie Franklin as a single mother and Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips as her daughters. In the 1974-75 season, Lear and Yorkin produced five of the top 10 shows.

Lear’s business success enabled him to express his ardent political beliefs beyond the small screen. In 2000, he and a partner bought a copy of the Declaration of Independence for $8.14 million and sent it on a cross-country tour.

He was an active donor to Democratic candidates and founded the nonprofit liberal advocacy group People for the American Way in 1980, he said, because people such as evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were “abusing religion.”

“I started to say, This is not my America. You don’t mix politics and religion this way,” Lear said in a 1992 interview with Commonweal magazine.

The nonprofit’s president, Svante Myrick, said “we are heartbroken” by Lear’s death. “We extend our deepest sympathies to Norman’s wife Lyn and their entire family, and to the many people who​, like us,​ loved Norman.”

With this wry smile and impish boat hat, the youthful Lear created television well into his 90s, rebooting “One Day at a Time” for Netflix in 2017 and exploring income inequality for the documentary series “America Divided” in 2016. Documentarians featured him in 2016’s “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You,” and 2017’s “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast,” a look at active nonagenarians such as Lear and Rob Reiner’s father, Carl Reiner.

In 1984, he was lauded as the “innovative writer who brought realism to television” when he became one of the first seven people inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame. He later received a National Medal of Arts and was honored at the Kennedy Center. In 2020, he won an Emmy as executive producer of “ Live In Front of a Studio Audience: ‘All In the Family’ and ‘Good Times’.’”

Lear beat the tough TV odds to an astounding degree: At least one of his shows placed in prime-time’s top 10 for 11 consecutive years (1971-82). But Lear had flops as well.

Shows including “Hot L Baltimore,” “Palmerstown” and “a.k.a. Pablo,” a rare Hispanic series, drew critical favor but couldn’t find an audience; others, such as “All That Glitters” and “The Nancy Walker Show,” earned neither. He also faced resistance from cast members, including “Good Times” stars John Amos and Esther Rolle, who often objected to the scripts as racially insensitive, and endured a mid-season walkout by Foxx, who missed eight episodes in 1973-74 because of a contract dispute.

In the 1990s, the comedy “704 Hauser,” which returned to the Bunker house with a new family, and the political satire “The Powers that Be” were both short-lived.

Lear’s business moves, meanwhile, were almost consistently fruitful.

Lear started T.A.T. Communications in 1974 to be “sole creative captain of his ship,” his former business partner Jerry Perenchio told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. The company became a major TV producer with shows including “One Day at a Time” and the soap-opera spoof “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman,” which Lear distributed himself after it was rejected by the networks.

In 1982, Lear and Perenchio bought Avco-Embassy Pictures and formed Embassy Communications as T.A.T.’s successor, becoming successfully involved in movies, home video, pay TV and cable ownership. In 1985, Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy to Coca-Cola for $485 million. They had sold their cable holdings the year before, reportedly for a hefty profit.

By 1986, Lear was on Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest people in America, with an estimated net worth of $225 million. He didn’t make the cut the next year after a $112 million divorce settlement for his second wife, Frances. They had been married 29 years and had two daughters.

He married his third wife, psychologist Lyn Davis, in 1987 and the couple had three children. (Frances Lear, who went on to found the now-defunct Lear’s magazine with her settlement, died in 1996 at age 73.)

Lear was born in New Haven, Conn. on July 27, 1922, to Herman Lear, a securities broker who served time in prison for selling fake bonds, and Jeanette, a homemaker who helped inspire Edith Bunker. Like a sitcom, his family life was full of quirks and grudges, “a group of people living at the ends of their nerves and the tops of their lungs,” he explained during a 2004 appearance at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

His political activism had deep roots. In a 1984 interview with The New York Times, Lear recalled how, at age 10, he would mail letters for his Russian immigrant grandfather, Shia Seicol, which began “My dearest darling Mr. President,” to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sometimes a reply came.

“That my grandfather mattered made me feel every citizen mattered,” said Lear, who at 15 was sending his own messages to Congress via Western Union.

He dropped out of Emerson College 1942 to enlist in the Air Force and flew 52 combat missions in Europe as a turret gunner, earning a Decorated Air Medal. After World War II, he worked in public relations.

Lear began writing in the early 1950s on shows including “The Colgate Comedy Hour” and for such comedians as Martha Raye and George Gobel. In 1959, he and Yorkin founded Tandem Productions, which produced films including “Come Blow Your Horn,” “Start the Revolution Without Me” and “Divorce American Style.” Lear also directed the 1971 satire “Cold Turkey,” starring Dick Van Dyke about a small town that takes on a tobacco company’s offer of $25 million to quit smoking for 30 days.

In his later years, Lear joined with Warren Buffett and James E. Burke to establish The Business Enterprise Trust, honoring businesses that take a long-term view of their effect on the country. He also founded the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, exploring entertainment, commerce and society and also spent time at his home in Vermont. In 2014, he published the memoir “Even This I Get to Experience.”

___

Longtime AP Television Writer Lynn Elber retired from The Associated Press in 2022. Contributors include Alicia Rancilio in Detroit and Hillel Italie in New York.

She simplified a complicated industry for Garcia and, as the health center grew, she joined its board of directors, eventually serving as its chair.

“That was the type of person that she was,” said the Tepeyac clinic’s CEO and founder. “She was very adept at identifying a need within the community — and then not only committing herself to it, but rallying others.”

He was among community leaders who reflected on the impact of Rivera, 70, after she was killed on Nov. 18. Authorities have confirmed she was the victim of a murder-suicide in Northglenn.

Those who knew her remembered Rivera as an advocate for marginalized people, as well as an artist with a keen eye while aiming her camera.

Rudy Gonzales, president and CEO of the Denver-based nonprofit group Servicios de La Raza, sees her death as a “great loss,” and not just because they share family ties.

“We’re a small community when you think about Denver Chicanos,” Gonzales said. “She was someone who was fearless and decisive and one of our champions, making sure we were represented.”

Garcia said he put his trust in Rivera before opening the Tepeyac clinic’s doors in 1994. Several people had recommended Rivera, he said, given her robust experience in health care administration.

Starting in an entry-level position at Denver Health, “she worked her way up to managing one of their largest health centers,” Garcia said in an interview. “When she found a cause that she was passionate about, she just put her whole heart and soul into that work.”

Tepeyac, formerly Clinica Tepeyac, became one of those causes for her, catering to medically underserved communities. It’s now located at 2101 E. 48th Ave. in Elyria-Swansea.

But Garcia said he didn’t want Rivera remembered solely for her accomplishments in the health care field. He pointed to art as “her real passion.”

Her talent as a photographer first stemmed from a fascination with architecture. Rivera wondered what stories lay within a building’s walls.

“Over time, I have come to see that there is so much more in this world that fascinates and makes me wonder about what kind of stories life would tell if we would only listen,” she wrote on her artist’s page on the website of the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, Colorado’s oldest Latino nonprofit arts organization. “… That’s what I do when I look through the lens of my camera, I see a story.”

Family mourns “senseless act of violence”

The Northglenn Police Department said that, on the night of Nov. 18, officers responded to a call at a house on the 11700 block of Delaware Court and found the bodies of an adult man and woman, who died in an apparent murder-suicide involving partners in a relationship.

The coroner’s office for Adams and Broomfield counties later confirmed their identities as Rivera and Gardell Neal, 67, and said in a news release that “their manner and cause of death are pending further investigation.”

Rivera’s son, True Apodaca-Cobell, wrote in a Facebook post Nov. 19 that his mother was killed in a “senseless act of violence.” An attempt to reach him was not successful, but he told CBS Colorado that Rivera and her boyfriend were going through a breakup, and her boyfriend killed her before taking his own life.

Gabriel Tresco remembers Rivera, who was his godmother, as a tough, but loving figure who helped him fight through addiction issues for two decades.

“She was very instrumental in my recovery,” Tresco said in an interview. “Lo and behold, I’m clean.”

He described his family as “devastated,” with her absence already poignantly felt by relatives, friends and community members.

“We thought she had a lot of time left here,” Tresco said. “I just want her to be remembered as someone who loved humanity.”

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The circumstances of Rivera’s death have spurred the organizations she worked with to put the focus on domestic violence.

Renee Fajardo, the board chair of the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, noted that almost 70% of the women serving on its board have been affected by domestic violence.

“It is a serious problem,” she said. “It’s something that we don’t talk about.”

She called Rivera’s death “the last straw for us.” The arts council’s team is collecting stories and photos of Rivera.

Servicios de La Raza serves close to 2,000 domestic violence victims annually, Gonzales said.

His group gave Rivera an award in 2019 for her work with the Chicano arts council, but he said she helped make Denver better across the board.

“She manifested self-determination,” Gonzales said. “Now, we need her to help us from the other side.”

“One woman who should never be forgotten”

During her career, Rivera worked her way up the ranks of several organizations she joined, often taking on leadership roles. Once a clinic administrator at Denver Health, she was appointed by then-Mayor John Hickenlooper — now a U.S. senator — to the board of directors of Denver Health’s Community Health Services in 2010.

She has served as the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council’s executive director and as a board member at the Northglenn Arts and Humanities Foundation.

She watched her projects thrive. The Tepeyac clinic, originally located at 3617 Kalamath St. near the Highlands, Sunnyside and Globeville neighborhoods, expanded when it moved to its current home in Elyria-Swansea in 2006.

Rivera worked to secure a permanent space for the Chicano arts council in the Art District on Santa Fe, Fajardo said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rivera built up the council’s community presence through partnerships with Metropolitan State University and others.

This year, she served as the show curator of a free gallery exhibition at Northglenn Arts called “‘Amor es Amor’: Celebrating LGBTQIA+ Chicanos/Latinos.”

Through their work with the arts council, Fajardo and Rivera learned that they were related as cousins. Fajardo described their lineage as Manito: multiracial people from southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, with ethnic backgrounds including Hispanic, Indigenous, Italian, Jewish and more.

“Lucille was able to see the possibilities that it means to be a people of woven ancestry and heritage — of what beautiful things can be created in the world,” Fajardo said. “This is one woman who should never be forgotten.”

Apodaca-Cobell has sought donations through a GoFundMe page to help pay for his mom’s memorial service. “Unfortunately, the cost of arranging a memorial service is beyond what our family can afford at this time,” he wrote.

As of Tuesday evening, donations had reached more than $8,000, approaching the fundraising goal of $10,000.

Rivera’s funeral service is set for 10 a.m. on Dec. 8 at Latina Funerals & Cremations, 3020 Federal Blvd. in Denver. Her burial will follow at 1 p.m. at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery, 12801 W. 44th Ave. in Wheat Ridge. A celebration of life memorial is set for 5 p.m., but the venue had not yet been announced.

The investigation continues into Rivera’s death. Northglenn police encouraged anyone with information to contact Detective Terrie Hoodak at 303-450-8858.

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ATLANTA — Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, the closest adviser to Jimmy Carter during his one term as U.S. president and their four decades thereafter as global humanitarians, has died at the age of 96.

The Carter Center said she died Sunday after living with dementia and suffering many months of declining health. The statement announcing her death said she “died peacefully, with family by her side” at 2:10 p.m. at her home in the rural south Georgia community of Plains. It said a schedule of memorial events and funeral preparations would be released later.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Carter said in the statement. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

The Carters were married for more than 77 years, forging what they both described as a “full partnership.” Unlike many previous first ladies, Rosalynn sat in on Cabinet meetings, spoke out on controversial issues and represented her husband on foreign trips. Aides to President Carter sometimes referred to her — privately — as “co-president.”

“Rosalynn is my best friend … the perfect extension of me, probably the most influential person in my life,” Jimmy Carter told aides during their White House years, which spanned from 1977-1981.

Fiercely loyal and compassionate as well as politically astute, Rosalynn Carter prided herself on being an activist first lady, and no one doubted her behind-the-scenes influence. When her role in a highly publicized Cabinet shakeup became known, she was forced to declare publicly, “I am not running the government.”

Many presidential aides insisted that her political instincts were better than her husband’s — they often enlisted her support for a project before they discussed it with the president. Her iron will, contrasted with her outwardly shy demeanor and a soft Southern accent, inspired Washington reporters to call her “the Steel Magnolia.”

Both Carters said in their later years that Rosalynn had always been the more political of the two. After Jimmy Carter’s landslide defeat in 1980, it was she, not the former president, who contemplated an implausible comeback, and years later she confessed to missing their life in Washington.

Jimmy Carter trusted her so much that in 1977, only months into his term, he sent her on a mission to Latin America to tell dictators he meant what he said about denying military aid and other support to violators of human rights.

She also had strong feelings about the style of the Carter White House. The Carters did not serve hard liquor at public functions, though Rosalynn did permit U.S. wine. There were fewer evenings of ballroom dancing and more square dancing and picnics.

Throughout her husband’s political career, she chose mental health and problems of the elderly as her signature policy emphasis. When the news media didn’t cover those efforts as much as she believed was warranted, she criticized reporters for writing only about “sexy subjects.”

As honorary chairwoman of the President’s Commission on Mental Health, she once testified before a Senate subcommittee, becoming the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to address a congressional panel. She was back in Washington in 2007 to push Congress for improved mental health coverage, saying, “We’ve been working on this for so long, it finally seems to be in reach.”

She said she developed her interest in mental health during her husband’s campaigns for Georgia governor.

“I used to come home and say to Jimmy, ‘Why are people telling me their problems?’ And he said, ‘Because you may be the only person they’ll ever see who may be close to someone who can help them,’” she explained.

After Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, Rosalynn Carter seemed more visibly devastated than her husband. She initially had little interest in returning to the small town of Plains, Georgia, where they both were born, married and spent most of their lives.

“I was hesitant, not at all sure that I could be happy here after the dazzle of the White House and the years of stimulating political battles,” she wrote in her 1984 autobiography, “First Lady from Plains.” But “we slowly rediscovered the satisfaction of a life we had left long before.”

After leaving Washington, Jimmy and Rosalynn co-founded The Carter Center in Atlanta to continue their work. She chaired the center’s annual symposium on mental health issues and raised funds for efforts to aid the mentally ill and homeless. She also wrote “Helping Yourself Help Others,” about the challenges of caring for elderly or ailing relatives, and a sequel, “Helping Someone With Mental Illness.”

Frequently, the Carters left home on humanitarian missions, building houses with Habitat for Humanity and promoting public health and democracy across the developing world.

“I get tired,” she said of her travels. “But something so wonderful always happens. To go to a village where they have Guinea worm and go back a year or two later and there’s no Guinea worm, I mean the people dance and sing — it’s so wonderful.”

In 2015, Jimmy Carter’s doctors discovered four small tumors on his brain. The Carters feared he had weeks to live. He was treated with a drug to boost his immune system, and later announced that doctors found no remaining signs of cancer. But when they first received the news, she said she didn’t know what she was going to do.

“I depend on him when I have questions, when I’m writing speeches, anything, I consult with him,” she said.

She helped Carter recover several years later when he had hip replacement surgery at age 94 and had to learn to walk again. And she was with him earlier this year when he decided after a series of hospital stays that he would forgo further medical interventions and begin end-of-life care.

Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived U.S. president. Rosalynn Carter was the second longest-lived of the nation’s first ladies, trailing only Bess Truman, who died at age 97.

Eleanor Rosalynn Smith was born in Plains on Aug. 18, 1927, the eldest of four children. Her father died when she was young, so she took on much of the responsibility of caring for her siblings when her mother went to work part time.

She also contributed to the family income by working after school in a beauty parlor. “We were very poor and worked hard,” she once said, but she kept up her studies, graduating from high school as class valedictorian.

She soon fell in love with the brother of one of her best friends. Jimmy and Rosalynn had known each other all their lives — it was Jimmy’s mother, nurse Lillian Carter, who delivered baby Rosalynn — but he left for the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, when she was still in high school.

After a blind date, Jimmy told his mother: “That’s the girl I want to marry.” They wed in 1946, shortly after his graduation from Annapolis and Rosalynn’s graduation from Georgia Southwestern College.

Their sons were born where Jimmy Carter was stationed: John William (Jack) in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1947; James Earl III (Chip) in Honolulu in 1950; and Donnel Jeffery (Jeff) in New London, Connecticut, in 1952. Amy was born in Plains in 1967. By then, Carter was a state senator.

Navy life had provided Rosalynn her first chance to see the world. When Carter’s father, James Earl Sr., died in 1953, Jimmy Carter decided, without consulting his wife, to move the family back to Plains, where he took over the family farm. She joined him there in the day-to-day operations, keeping the books and weighing fertilizer trucks.

“We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business,” Rosalynn Carter recalled with pride in a 2021 interview with The Associated Press. “I knew more on paper about the business than he did. He would take my advice about things.”

At the height of the Carters’ political power, Lillian Carter said of her daughter-in-law: “She can do anything in the world with Jimmy, and she’s the only one. He listens to her.”

At 90, she was the oldest member of Congress and the longest-serving female in the chamber’s history. During a lingering bout of shingles earlier this year and ongoing reports of her mental decline, Feinstein resisted pressure from her own party to resign.

Former Speaker of the House and fellow San Franciscan Nancy Pelosi delivered a tribute to Feinstein on the floor of the U.S. House on Friday, saying that the senator led “with great dignity, with great effectiveness and great leadership” and “left on her own terms.”

Her death will force Gov. Gavin Newsom to make a crucial decision he said recently he hoped he wouldn’t have to face: appointing a replacement to serve the rest of Feinstein’s term with the hotly contested race to succeed her in full swing.

In a statement Friday morning, Newsom called Feinstein a “dear friend and lifelong mentor” who was a role model not only to him but to his wife and daughters for what a powerful and effective leader looks like.

“She was a political giant, whose tenacity was matched by her grace. She broke down barriers and glass ceilings, but never lost her belief in the spirit of political cooperation,” Newsom said.

There is nobody, he said, “who possessed the strength, gravitas, and fierceness of Dianne Feinstein.”

Dianne Feinstein was many things — a powerful, trailblazing U.S. Senator; an early voice for gun control; a leader in times of tragedy and chaos. But to me, she was a dear friend, a lifelong mentor, and a role model not only for me, but to my wife and daughters for what a…

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 29, 2023

At the start of her career, Feinstein was a trailblazer for women and gay rights, and after the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, she emerged as a reassuring leader and formidable force who pulled together the city that was still reeling from the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana 10 days earlier, where 900 people connected to the San Francisco-based People’s Temple died.

In what would become known as “The Year of the Woman” in 1992, she shared a historic moment with Barbara Boxer when they were both elected to the U.S. Senate and California became the first state with two women senators. Feinstein won in a special election and was sworn in first.

“She had tenacity. She never gave up,” especially in passing the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, Boxer said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “I will always remember how proud I was when she stood her ground on the floor of the Senate, when some of the men said, ‘Well, you don’t even understand what an AR-15 is,’ and she said, ‘I understand what gun violence is. I had to put my finger through a hole in the wrist (of Harvey Milk).’ It was very emotional.”

Feinstein also pioneered a number of other firsts: first woman mayor of San Francisco, first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the first woman to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, a watershed moment after public outrage over the handling of Anita Hill’s testimony during the male-dominated Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas in 1991.

“There are few women who can be called senator, chairman, mayor, wife, mom and grandmother,” her chief of staff, James Sauls, said in a statement Friday. “Senator Feinstein was a force of nature who made an incredible impact on our country and her home state.”

In 1994, the same year she passed the weapons ban, Feinstein wrote the California Desert Protection Act that established Death Valley and Joshua Tree as national parks and doubled the amount of federally protected wilderness in California. She also brokered landmark deals to preserve some of California’s key landscapes, protecting ancient redwoods at Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County and restoring as wetlands 16,500 acres of former industrial salt ponds around San Francisco Bay.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, she publicly released the “Torture Report” that exposed the CIA’s interrogation program that failed to work on terrorist suspects and, along with the late Sen. John McCain, authored legislation outlawing the CIA’s use of torture.

Feinstein is the 302nd senator to die in office and the first since McCain. President Biden was in Phoenix on Thursday honoring the late Arizona Republican with funds for a library in his name.

In a statement, Biden said Friday that he had a “front row seat” to Feinstein’s accomplishments serving in the Senate together for 15 years and recruited her to serve on the Judiciary Committee when he was chairman.

“There’s no better example of her skillful legislating and sheer force of will than when she turned passion into purpose, and led the fight to ban assault weapons,” Biden said. “Dianne made her mark on everything from national security to the environment to protecting civil liberties.”

For those old enough to remember the shocking assassinations at San Francisco City Hall in 1978, it was Feinstein’s brief videotaped news conference and its aftermath that launched her national political career. Standing outside the supervisors’ offices, news cameras illuminating her face, she delivered the shocking news: “As president of the board of supervisors, it’s my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed,” she said as the media erupted in gasps and shouts. “The suspect is Supervisor Dan White.”

She would later detail her actions that morning; When she heard the shots, she raced into Milk’s office. “I tried to get a pulse,” she said, “and put my finger through a bullet hole.”

Duffy Jennings, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was in the crowd when she made the announcement, said her leadership through a tumultuous era would come to define Feinstein.

“She was incredibly resilient, strong and decisive,” Jennings said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “It wasn’t just Jonestown and Dan White. The ‘70s had the Zodiac killer, Patty Hearst, the SLA, the New World Liberation Front, counterculture extremism. It was a horrific decade in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And politically, she was as strong as anybody in holding the town together.”

At one point, New World Liberation Front — an anti-capitalist terrorist group — planted a bomb on the windowsill of her daughter’s bedroom. It failed to explode.

Born in San Francisco in 1933, Dianne Emiel Goldman was the daughter of a prominent surgeon. She was Jewish but attended the prestigious Convent of the Sacred Heart Catholic girls school, where she acted in plays and — because of her 5-foot-10-inch height — often played male roles. In the early 1950s, she attended Stanford University, where she was elected vice president of the student body.

When Feinstein entered San Francisco politics in the late 1960s, “nobody took her seriously,” said Jerry Roberts, the Chronicle’s former executive editor who wrote an early biography called “Never Let Them See You Cry,” named for one of Feinstein’s tips for businesswomen.

Early media reports of her campaigns, he said, were “unbelievably sexist” and often characterized her as a “raven-haired beauty” with a “slender figure.” Her husband at the time, Dr. Bertram Feinstein, was widely mocked as a “first husband.”

“Just in terms of the cultural obstacles that she had to overcome to be taken seriously and to win is something people don’t think a lot about now,” Roberts said. “She was never a movement feminist, but she was a feminist.”

She kept a firefighter’s turnout jacket and helmet in her trunk to race to fires and once gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a man she saw collapse in the Tenderloin. She listened to a police scanner in her office.

Although she opposed domestic partnership legislation for the city in 1982, when the AIDS epidemic broke out, Feinstein “got right on it. I mean, instantly,” said Louise Renne, whom Feinstein appointed as San Francisco’s first woman City Attorney. “The folks at San Francisco General were pulled in to deal with the AIDS epidemic, and San Francisco took a leadership role in solving that problem.”

Feinstein was considered moderate politically, supporting environmental causes but also encouraging commercial high rise development in downtown San Francisco. She is credited with completing the Moscone Convention Center project, renovating the city’s cable car system and retrofitting Candlestick Park before the Loma Prieta earthquake struck during the third game of the 1989 World Series.

Feinstein ran for governor of California in 1990 and lost to Republican Pete Wilson, whom she would replace in the Senate. In 1996, she was one of only 14 senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act that prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Her leadership opened doors for two San Francisco women who would become the most powerful female politicians in the country — Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Kamala Harris as vice president.

Under pressure, Feinstein announced in February she would not seek a sixth term in 2024, but she remained in office despite her lingering illness. Her absence from Senate votes earlier this year opened her to criticism that she handicapped her fellow Democrats in the split Senate to appoint judicial nominees.

Her death in office will set up a crucial decision for Newsom, who has said he would appoint a Black woman to the seat if Feinstein retired early. But with three high-profile Democrats — Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee — battling for Feinstein’s seat, Newsom has said he would turn to an “interim appointment” rather than somebody campaigning for the job.

Feinstein was married three times. The first to Jack Berman ended in divorce. Her second husband, neurosurgeon Feinstein, died of colon cancer months before the Moscone and Milk assassinations. In 1980, she married investment banker Richard Blum, who died in 2022.

Feinstein’s only daughter Katherine Feinstein, a former San Francisco Superior Court judge, helped care for her in her mansion on the Lyon Steps in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood. Family infighting made headlines over the summer when Feinstein’s daughter sued Blum’s grown children over the marital estate, claiming they were shorting funds to her mother’s care to increase their inheritance. The Blum family countered that they acted “ethically and appropriately at all times.”

Looking back, Boxer recalls when she and Feinstein were first elected to the Senate, her colleague sat her down and told her, “You’ve got to stick with this. The longer you stay, the better you’ll feel, the more you’ll get done.”

Feinstein stuck with it on Capitol Hill for three decades, summing up why in her final acceptance speech, years before the political implications of her frail health threatened her legacy.

In the 2018 speech, she called serving in the Senate “the greatest honor in my life.”

At 90, she was the oldest member of Congress and the longest-serving female in the chamber’s history. During a lingering bout of shingles earlier this year and ongoing reports of her mental decline, she resisted pressure from her own party to resign her seat.

Her death will force Gov. Gavin Newsom to make a crucial decision he said recently he hoped he wouldn’t have to do: appoint a replacement to serve the rest of Feinstein’s term with the hotly contested race to succeed her in full swing.

At the start of her career, Feinstein was a trailblazer for women and gay rights, and after the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, she emerged as a reassuring leader and formidable force who pulled together the city that was still reeling from the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana 10 days earlier, where 900 people connected to the San Francisco-based People’s Temple died.

Dianne Feinstein was many things — a powerful, trailblazing U.S. Senator; an early voice for gun control; a leader in times of tragedy and chaos. But to me, she was a dear friend, a lifelong mentor, and a role model not only for me, but to my wife and daughters for what a…

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 29, 2023

In what would become known as “The Year of the Woman” in 1992, she shared a historic moment with Barbara Boxer when they were both elected to the U.S. Senate and California became the first state with two women senators. Feinstein won in a special election and was sworn in first.

“She had tenacity. She never gave up,” especially in passing the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, Boxer said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “I will always remember how proud I was when she stood her ground on the floor of the Senate, when some of the men said, ‘Well, you don’t even understand what an AR-15 is,’ and she said, ‘I understand what gun violence is. I had to put my finger through a hole in the wrist (of Harvey Milk).’ It was very emotional.”

Feinstein also pioneered a number of other firsts: first woman mayor of San Francisco, first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the first woman to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, a watershed moment after public outrage over the handling of Anita Hill’s testimony during the male-dominated Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas in 1991.

In 1994, the same year she passed the weapons ban, Feinstein wrote the California Desert Protection Act that established Death Valley and Joshua Tree as national parks. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, she publicly released the “Torture Report” that exposed the CIA’s interrogation program that failed to work on terrorist suspects and, along with the late Sen. John McCain, authored legislation outlawing the CIA’s use of torture.

For those old enough to remember the shocking assassinations at San Francisco City Hall in 1978, however, it was her brief videotaped news conference and its aftermath that launched her national political career. Standing outside the supervisors offices, news cameras illuminating her face, she delivered the shocking news: “As president of the board of supervisors, it’s my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed,” she said as the media erupted in gasps and shouts. “The suspect is Supervisor Dan White.”

She would later detail her actions that morning, that when she heard the shots, she raced into Milk’s office. “I tried to get a pulse,” she said, “and put my finger through a bullet hole.”

Duffy Jennings, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was in the crowd when Feinstein made the announcement, said her leadership through a tumultuous era would come to define Feinstein.

“She was incredibly resilient, strong and decisive,” Jennings said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “It wasn’t just Jonestown and Dan White. The ‘70s had the Zodiac killer, Patty Hearst, the SLA, the New World Liberation Front, counterculture extremism. It was a horrific decade in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And politically, she was as strong as anybody in holding the town together.”

At one point, New World Liberation Front – an anti-capitalist terrorist group – planted a bomb on the windowsill of her daughter’s bedroom. It failed to explode.

Born in San Francisco in 1933, Feinstein was the daughter of a prominent surgeon. Feinstein was Jewish but attended the prestigious Convent of the Sacred Heart Catholic girls school, where she acted in plays and – because of her 5-foot-10-inch height – often played male roles. She attended Stanford University in the early 1950s, where she was elected vice president of the student body.

When Feinstein entered San Francisco politics in the late 1960s, “nobody took her seriously,” said Jerry Roberts, the Chronicle’s former executive editor who wrote an early biography called “Never Let Them See You Cry,” named for one of Feinstein’s tips for businesswomen.

Early media reports of her campaigns, he said, were “unbelievably sexist,” and often characterized her as a “raven-haired beauty” with a “slender figure.” Her husband at the time, Dr. Bertram Feinstein, was widely mocked as a “first husband.”

“Just in terms of the cultural obstacles that she had to overcome to be taken seriously and to win is something people don’t think a lot about now,” Roberts said. “She was never a movement feminist, but she was a feminist.”

She kept a firefighter’s turnout jacket and helmet in her trunk to race to fires, and once gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a man she saw collapse in the Tenderloin. She listened to a police scanner in her office.

Although she opposed domestic partnership legislation for the city in 1982, when the AIDS epidemic broke out, Feinstein “got right on it. I mean, instantly,” said Louise Renne, whom Feinstein appointed as San Francisco’s first woman City Attorney. “The folks at San Francisco General were pulled in to deal with the AIDS epidemic, and San Francisco took a leadership role in solving that problem.”

Feinstein was considered moderate politically, supporting environmental causes but also encouraging commercial high rise development in downtown San Francisco. She is credited with completing the Moscone Convention Center project, renovating the city’s cable car system and retrofitting Candlestick Park before the Loma Prieta earthquake struck during the third game of the 1989 World Series.

Feinstein ran for governor of California in 1990 and lost to Republican Pete Wilson, whom she would replace in the Senate. In 1996, she was one of only 14 senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act that prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Feinstein’s leadership opened doors for two San Francisco women who would become the most powerful female politicians in the country – Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Kamala Harris as vice president.

Although she announced she would not seek a sixth term in 2024, Feinstein remained in office despite her lingering illness. Her absence from Senate votes earlier this year opened her to criticism that she handicapped her fellow Democrats in the split Senate to appoint judicial nominees.

Her death in office will set up a tense decision for Newsom, who has said he would appoint a Black woman to the seat if Feinstein retired early. But with three high-profile Democrats — Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee — battling for Feinstein’s seat in the 2024 election, Newsom has said he would turn to an “interim appointment” rather than somebody running for the seat.

Those remarks earlier this month on NBC’s Meet the Press angered Lee, the only Black woman in the race. The longtime Oakland congresswoman is struggling to gain traction, running third in most polls behind Schiff and Porter.

Feinstein was married three times. The first to Jack Berman ended in divorce. Her second husband, neurosurgeon Feinstein, died of colon cancer months before the Moscone and Milk assassinations. She married investment banker Richard Blum in 1980. He died in 2022.

She had one daughter, Katherine Feinstein, a former San Francisco Superior Court Judge, who helped care for her in her mansion on the Lyon Steps in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood.

Looking back, Boxer recalls when she and Feinstein were first elected to the Senate, her colleague sat her down and told her, “You’ve got to stick with this. The longer you stay, the better you’ll feel, the more you’ll get done.”

Feinstein stuck with it on Capitol Hill for three decades, perhaps summing up why in her final acceptance speech before her re-election in 2018, years before the political implications of her frail health in her final years threatened her legacy.

In the speech, she called serving in the Senate “the greatest honor in my life.”

Together, for 56 years, she and her husband, John J. Sie, both immigrants to the U.S., built a family in Colorado during his successful career in cable television.

Over the last 20 years, she became known as a generous philanthropist in Denver’s arts, film and academic spaces, and she built a legacy of work funding Down syndrome research.

“She’s kind and compassionate and supportive,” John Sie said. “A champion to those in need.”

Anna Sie died Sept. 20 at her home surrounded by her family. She was 78 years old.

She was diagnosed with endometrial cancer nearly a decade ago in December 2013.

Anna Sie immigrated from Naples, Italy, by ship with her father and two older brothers in 1955 and John Sie came from China five years before her.

For several years, while her family in the U.S. saved money to send for her mother, older sister and two younger brothers still in Italy, Anna Sie cooked, cleaned and became a translator for the family.

She was a switchboard operator when she met her husband, and through John Sie’s career-building, Anna Sie was the constant “guiding light” for the family.

After the two married, John Sie during his career helped build Showtime through Telecommunication Inc. and founded the Starz and Encore channels, but it was Anna Sie who inspired his entrepreneurship in television.

“It was her love of film that really guided me through my career,” John Sie said. “For the last 56 years, she immeasurably contributed to the welfare of all she touched. I’m forever grateful for those precious years.”

It was that work ethic and her strength and compassion that inspired her large family.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by five children: Susan Sie, Dr. Debbie Sie (Justin Hoffman), James Sie (Doug Wood), Michelle Sie Whitten (Tom Whitten) and Allison Sie Hildestad (Orin Hildestad); six grandchildren: Ben Sie, Shaela Hoffman, Sophia and Patrick Whitten, Silas and Freyja Hildestad; five siblings, Sabatino Maglione, Rosa Del Tufo, Ciro Maglione, Tony Maglione, and Sal Maglione, and dozens of in-laws, nieces, nephews and cousins.

“She’s my hero,” Sie Whitten said. “We have walked this path with her for 10 years since she got diagnosed. (She had) so much grace in the face of death every year. She was so strong right until the end.”

Throughout Anna Sie’s life in Denver, she was known for her generosity and kindness.

Anna Sie’s love of film extended to the couple’s support of Denver’s scene by establishing the Sie FilmCenter at 2510 E. Colfax Ave., the only nonprofit independent movie house in metro Denver.

“The two of them saw that as a need for our organization to have a truly independent art house cinema. We are so grateful for their contributions to make it happen,” Kevin Smith, CEO of Denver Film, said.

In 2008, Anna Sie created the Maria and Tommaso Maglione Italian Filmmaker Award within the Denver Film Festival to recognize the best Italian language films. Sie not only funded the award, named after her film-buff parents, she also helped judge the competition.

“She had an uncanny eye for spotting talent. She would go through the process with us and watch a ton of films and help us select,” Smith said.

Smith said the Sies channeled some of the money made through providing movies on cable via the Starz channel back into strengthening Colorado’s cinema culture. Their contributions will continue for years to come through an endowment the couple created.

“For me, it was one of those serendipitous things. I find it interesting that film was such a passionate part of it all. When you look at her life, it could have been a movie,” he said.

Along with their contributions to Denver’s film scene, Anna Sie and John Sie made a significant contribution to the Denver Art Museum with their gift for the Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center at the Museum’s Hamilton building entrance.

“Anna was an elegant and gracious presence in all her interactions with the museum,” said Christoph Heinrich, the Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the Denver Art Museum. “Alongside her husband, John, her boundless generosity and enthusiasm for being a welcoming place for all will have a positive impact in our community for generations to come.”

Additionally in the Colorado community, Anna endowed the Anna Maglione-Sie Chair in Italian Language and Literature at the University of Denver and the Dan and Boyce Sher Chair at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music.

As impactful as her philanthropy has been to Denver’s arts and academic communities, it’s through her contributions to advance Down syndrome research her family and friends said she leaves the biggest legacy.

“Without her, we wouldn’t have some of the resources we now have in Denver,” Sharon Magness Blake, one of Anna Sie’s best friends, said. “She made a huge impact.”

One of Anna Sie’s granddaughters, Sophia, has Down syndrome, and, seeing the gap in academic research when the family started looking for resources, she got to work to fix that.

“She realized there was a void, so she, her husband and (Sie Whitten), they all worked very hard for 20 years advancing research and care,” Magness Blake said.

The Anna and John J. Sie Foundation in 2008 was the founding donor for the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, which is one of the only academic centers fully dedicated to Down syndrome research and is now the largest geographic cluster of Down syndrome researchers in the world.

A year later, the family founded the GLOBAL Down Syndrome Foundation nonprofit to further support education and advocacy of Down Syndrome.

For Frank Stephens, a board member at the GLOBAL Down Syndrome Foundation, Anna Sie made a lifetime’s worth of difference in his life.

Stephens also has Down syndrome, and he said he will always keep her kindness close to him.

“She never doubted for one minute people with Down syndrome could do a whole lot,” Stephens said. “That’s what she understood, and now everyone does. The world is now better because of the way she existed.”

Stephens’ father, John Stephens, said Anna Sie made a significant impact not only on the treatment of people with Down syndrome in the medical community but her efforts in no small part helped to improve their life expectancy.

“The average life expectancy when Frank was born was 20 or 23 (years old),” John Stephens said. “It’s now in the 60s. It’s in no small measure because of what she and John (Sie) started. The fact people started paying attention, that’s the difference she made.”

Frank Stephens said her work will “always be a force for good and for change.”

Additionally, Anna and John Sie founded the Alzheimer’s and Cognition Center, Anna and John J. Sie Center for Down Syndrome at Children’s Hospital Colorado, and the pilot GLOBAL Adult Down Syndrome Center at Denver Health.

She also provided the seed funding to start the GLOBAL Inclusive Program, the first post-secondary program for students with intellectual disabilities at a Jesuit University and the second at a Catholic University in the U.S.

“From my perspective, with that idea that every person counts, we can help a lot of people if we set our minds to it,” said Sie Whitten, who is also the president and CEO of the GLOBAL Down Syndrome Foundation. “She has been very protective of (people with Down syndrome) in terms of inclusion and discrimination, but also to make sure they can live much longer and healthier lives.”

On top of Sie’s devotion to her family and her philanthropic work, she was one of the most dependable friends someone could have, according to Magness Blake.

“She was always there when you needed someone to talk to, and was very generous with her time,” Magness Blake said. “She took being a friend seriously. She would do just about anything to help you. It was comforting to know there was somebody out there who would go to such lengths to help you.”

Magness Blake said she will remember her friend as an amazing lady with elegance.

“She was a very regal, great lady,” she said. “One of a kind. She would laugh at my saying that, but she really was.”

Services for Anna Sie will be at 10 a.m., Thursday at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, 1530 Logan St., in Denver.

In lieu of flowers, Anna asked that donations in her memory be sent to the Global Down Syndrome Foundation at www.globaldownsyndrome.org or mailed to 3239 E. 2nd Avenue, Denver, CO 80206.

Staff writer Aldo Svaldi contributed to this story.

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Editor’s note: This article was updated to correct an editing error that removed references to the Sie family’s gift for the Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center at the Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton building entrance.

Sinisi, a Denver Post reporter and staff writer for 25 years, died suddenly Monday in his Denver home. He was 80.

Known to Denver Post readers by the name in his byline, J. Sebastian Sinisi, the Brooklyn-born Sinisi was familiar to colleagues and friends as Joe. Sinisi began his long career with The Post in 1979, and through the years he never lost his heavy, characteristic Brooklyn accent.

Frank Scandale, a former Denver Post city editor who also served as Sinisi’s editor at times during the 1990s and into the 2000s, hails from New York. He recalled the first time they met, in 1990.

” ‘Ey, I heer yoor froom da neighbahood,’ ” Scandale recalled of Sinisi’s Brooklyn-laced greeting.

“I look at him, I think he’s giving me the business, busting my chops,” said Scandale, who has a New York accent, although not as pronounced. “I said, ‘Hey, what the hell are you doing?’ ”

Sinisi was perplexed and initially hurt by the aggressive response, Scandale said.

“Then it dawned on me: This is how he really talks,” Scandale said. “We were off and running.”

Brooklyn accent aside, Sinisi was a Renaissance man. A voracious reader, Sinisi pursued the arts, classic literature, poetry, fashion, architecture, music and sports, especially baseball. His broad interests gave him the ability to cover a variety of beats and stories.

“As a journalist, he did a lot of different things,” Scandale said. “He was funny, and he was entertaining. To him life was a big opportunity.”

In summer 1993, when Pope John Paul II came to Colorado for World Youth Day, Sinisi was among The Post staffers who covered the event. On a media bus with other reporters, Sinisi was seated next to Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, and they struck up a conversation.

“Coming off the bus, a TV type asked me ‘who was that guy you were talking to?’ ” Sinisi wrote in a biography. “I replied, ‘He helped save America from Richard Nixon.’ We could use more Bernsteins, and Woodwards, today.”

Born on Aug. 26, 1942, he was the first of three children of an Italian immigrant family. Sinisi attended Brooklyn Technical High School, where he first became interested in journalism. An Eagle Scout in his youth, Sinisi was the first member of his family to attend college, graduating from Hunter College in 1964. On Aug. 28, 1963, at age 21, Sinisi boarded a bus departing a Harlem church to attend Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in Washington D.C.

Sinisi’s first job in journalism, while attending Hunter, was as a copyboy at the New York Post.  Sinisi wrote for several business publications, including Fairchild News in New York City. In 1974, he became the Fairchild bureau chief in Denver.

Sinisi is among Denver Post colleagues awarded a 2000 staff Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for coverage of the Columbine High School shooting. Sinisi, in 2013, was inducted into the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

Initially hired by The Denver Post as a features writer, including covering fashion, Sinisi during his career interviewed many of his favorite writers and authors, including Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton, Leon Uris, William Burroughs, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, Herb Caen, Carlos Fuentes, Hunter Thompson, Joseph Heller, Ken Kesey, rodeo champion Larry Mahan and “beat” poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.

“The first interview of many with Ginsberg was by phone, prior to a week-long symposium at Boulder’s Naropa Institute with a roster of ‘Beat Generation’ luminaries; most of whom were still living at the time,” Sinisi wrote in a biography. “When that lengthy conversation was done, Ginsberg asked me to relate what I’d taken down, ‘because I don’t want to be misquoted for all eternity in The Denver Post.’ ‘All eternity?’ I asked. ‘You give the Post far too much credit. And clout.’ ’’

Ginsberg died in April 1997. Sinisi wrote an obituary that ran on Page One in The Denver Post.

In his youth, as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, Sinisi’s boyhood hero was Duke Snider. Sinisi attended many games at Ebbets Field in Flatbush. Years later, as a reporter, he interviewed Snider in Denver when the former Dodgers star was on a book tour.

They met at the Brown Palace. “He was self-effacing, but lit up when I showed him my hand-written scorecard of the next-to-last game ever at Ebbets Field, in late September 1957. I’d just turned 15, and the Dodgers were about to move to Los Angeles in 1958,” Sinisi wrote in a  biography.

Snider hit two home runs in that September game off of future Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts. Snider asked Sinisi for a copy of the scorecard. He was “delighted to oblige.”

“When I returned to the Post newsroom, a short walk then, friends asked how the interview had gone,” Sinisi wrote. “ ‘Well, the Duke was 10 minutes late,’ I said. ‘But I’d waited 31 years.’ ”

In 2015, Sinisi and his wife, Chloe Randolph “Randy” Venable Sinisi, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at the Denver Press Club with family and friends.

“Being married to Joe was like being on a roller coaster, it had its ups and downs,” Randy said with a laugh.

She recalled her husband being assigned to write a story about a Lakeside Amusement Park roller coaster with enthusiasts who rode the coaster all day long. He likely pleaded for the assignment, she said.

“He came home in the middle of the afternoon with bruised ribs. I think he broke a rib,” she said.

Prior to the internet, Randy recalled a time Sinisi phoned her at home from the office. He asked her to grab a book from their home library, telling her where and what shelf the book was on, as well as the chapter and page, so he could place the exact quote in his copy.

“Joe had such a sense of adventure. He was so smart, and he had a photographic memory,” she said.

Sinisi is survived by Randy; their son, Joseph Vance Sinisi; granddaughter Cassandra Sinisi; and a sister, Marion Derme of Buffalo, N.Y.

A celebration of his life will be held at the Denver Press Club on Oct. 14. Memorial contributions may be made to the Denver Press Club, Colorado Public Radio or the American Frontotemporal Dementia Foundation (theaftd.org).

Barker — also a longtime animal rights activist — died Saturday morning, according to publicist Roger Neal.

“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker and I did together to expose the cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry and including working to improve the plight of abused and exploited animals in the United States and internationally,” said Nancy Burnet, his longtime friend and caretaker, in a statement.

Barker retired in June 2007, telling his studio audience: “I thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me into your home for more than 50 years.”

Barker was working in radio in 1956 when producer Ralph Edwards invited him to audition as the new host of “Truth or Consequences,” a game show in which audience members had to do wacky stunts — the “consequence” — if they failed to answer a question — the “truth,” which was always the silly punchline to a riddle no one was ever meant to furnish. (Q: What did one eye say to another? A: Just between us, something smells.)

In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, Barker recalled receiving the news that he had been hired: “I know exactly where I was, I know exactly how I felt: I hung up the phone and said to my wife, ‘Dorothy Jo, I got it!'”

Barker stayed with “Truth or Consequences” for 18 years — including several years in a syndicated version.

Meanwhile, he began hosting a resurrected version of “The Price Is Right” in 1972. (The original host in the 1950s and ’60s was Bill Cullen.) It would become TV’s longest-running game show and the last on a broadcast network of what in TV’s early days had numbered dozens.

“I have grown old in your service,” the silver-haired, perennially tanned Barker joked on a prime-time television retrospective in the mid-’90s.

In all, he taped more than 5,000 shows in his career. He said he was retiring because “I’m just reaching the age where the constant effort to be there and do the show physically is a lot for me. … Better (to leave) a year too soon than a year too late.” Comedian Drew Carey was chosen to replace him.

Barker was back with Carey for one show broadcast in April 2009. He was there to promote the publication of his memoir, “Priceless Memories,” in which he summed up his joy from hosting the show as the opportunity “to watch people reveal themselves and to watch the excitement and humor unfold.”

He well understood the attraction of “The Price Is Right,” in which audience members — invited to “Come on down!” to the stage — competed for prizes by trying to guess their retail value.

“Everyone can identify with prices, even the president of the United States. Viewers at home become involved because they all have an opinion on the bids,” Barker once said. His own appeal was clear: Barker played it straight — warm, gracious and witty — refusing to mock the game show format or his contestants.

“I want the contestants to feel as though they’re guests in my home,” he said in 1996. “Perhaps my feeling of respect for them comes across to viewers, and that may be one of the reasons why I’ve lasted.”

As a TV personality, Barker retained a touch of the old school — for instance, no wireless microphone for him. Like the mic itself, the mic cord served him well as a prop, insouciantly flicked and finessed.

His career longevity, he said, was the result of being content. “I had the opportunity to do this type of show and I discovered I enjoyed it … People who do something that they thoroughly enjoy and they started doing it when they’re very young, I don’t think they want to stop.”

Barker also spent 20 years as host of the Miss USA Pageant and the Miss Universe Pageant. A longtime animal rights activist who daily urged his viewers to “have your pets spayed or neutered” and successfully lobbied to ban fur coats as prizes on “The Price Is Right,” he quit the Miss USA Pageant in 1987 in protest over the presentation of fur coats to the winners.

In 1997, Barker declined to be a presenter at the Daytime Emmy awards ceremony because he said it snubbed game shows by not airing awards in the category. He called game shows “the pillars of daytime TV.”

He had a memorable cameo appearance on the big screen in 1996, sparring with Adam Sandler in the movie “Happy Gilmore.” “I did `The Price Is Right’ for 35 years, and they’re asking me how it was to beat up Adam Sandler,” Barker later joked.

In 1994, the widowed Barker was sued for sexual harassment by Dian Parkinson, a “Price is Right” model for 18 years. Barker admitted engaging in “hanky panky” with Parkinson from 1989-91 but said she initiated the relationship. Parkinson dropped the lawsuit in 1995, saying it was hurting her health.

Barker became embroiled in a dispute with another former “Price Is Right” model, Holly Hallstrom, who claimed she was fired in 1995 because the show’s producers believed she was fat. Barker denied the allegations.

Neither uproar affected his goodwill from the audience.

Born in Darrington, Washington, in 1923, Barker spent part of his childhood on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where his widowed mother had taken a teaching job. The family later moved to Springfield, Mo., where he attended high school. He served in the Navy in World War II.

He married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart; she died in 1981 after 37 years of marriage. They had no children.

Barker was given a lifetime achievement award at the 26th annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 1999. He closed his acceptance remarks with the signoff: “Have your pets spayed or neutered.”

In January, Fielder donated some 6,000 photos — edited down from more than about 200,000 negatives and digital scans — he had taken since 1973 to History Colorado. His personally selected life works are archived at the state’s official historical society and part of the public domain.

“I have decided to donate my life’s work of photography to you, the people of Colorado,” Fielder said in a bylined opinion-piece published in The Denver Post on Jan. 20.

“Humanity will not survive without the preservation of biodiversity on Earth, and I have been honored to use my photography to influence people and legislation to protect our natural and rural environments,” Fielder said in the editorial. “I am humbled that these photos have spurred the passage of the 1992 Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund Initiative and Congress’ Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993 among other land protection projects across this state that I love.”

The Summit Daily News on Saturday first reported Fielder’s death.

Over the years Fielder has covered all of Colorado’s 104,094 square miles photographing varied landscapes. His art was born of a passion for the outdoors and a willingness to endure a variety of challenges, including vehicle breakdowns above timberline, rafts flipping in white water and bears bulling into his camp.

Diagnosed with cancer in 2022, Fielder focused on reviewing his life’s work and his mission: helping Coloradans respect nature, most urgently by slowing global warming and stopping environmental destruction.

Born Aug. 2, 1950, in Washington D.C., Fielder’s family moved to North Carolina in 1960, the same year he began taking photographs with a Kodak Brownie box camera. While attending Duke University, Fielder worked as a junior geologist in Colorado and neighboring states in 1969 and 1970. He graduated from Duke in 1972, moved to Colorado and initially worked in real estate. In 1978, Fielder married Virginia “Gigi” Yonkers. In 1981, Fielder left his position as manager at a May D&F store in the Denver area to begin his professional photography career, and he published his first Colorado photo calendar. Fielder founded Westcliffe Publishers in 1982, and his first book, “Colorado’s Hidden Valleys,” was published. Forty years later, he has produced some 50 photo book collections, with about 1 million copies sold.

One book — “Colorado: 1870 to 2000” — explores 19th century photos by William Henry Jackson, who was sent by the U.S. Geological Survey to photograph western territories at a time when  Colorado had 39,864 residents. Fielder photographed the sites of Jackson’s work and created a side-by-side comparison at the start of the 21st century — when Colorado had 4.3 million residents. Fielder dedicated the book to the people of Colorado, urging them to “examine our relationship with the land,” declaring “there is no more beautiful place on Earth than Colorado” and “very few places more fragile.” A second volume of the work also was published.

The photographs donated to History Colorado document 28 mountain ranges, 44 federal wilderness areas and 11 national forests, in addition to other landscapes, parks, ranches and trails in each of Colorado’s 64 counties.

History Colorado’s exhibition “REVEALED: John Fielder’s Favorite Place,” takes viewers to a location that few have experienced, a location John feels is most sublime in all of Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis, who saw Fielder at the exhibition opening in July, released a statement Saturday.

“I am saddened by the loss of John Fielder, who captured Colorado’s iconic beauty during his 50 years as a nature photographer. His unique talent and work allowed him to showcase our state to millions across the world, and he will be dearly missed,” Polis said. “My condolences to his family and friends. I hope that we can all follow his example to appreciate and preserve our outdoor lands.”

Fielder has been recognized with multiple awards, including: the Daniel L. Ritchie Award for Ethical Behavior and Social Responsibility, University of Denver, 1992; Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography, Sierra Club, 1993; Rocky Mountain National Park Stewardship Award, 1995; and Lifetime Achievement Award, Colorado Film Commission, 2007.

Fielder is survived by daughters Ashley and Katy and six grandchildren, according to the Summit Daily. He lost  Gigi to Alzheimer’s disease in 2005 and their son J.T. to suicide in 2006. Fielder had made Summit County his home since 2006.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Sierra Club, Conservation Colorado, Colorado Open Lands and Save the Colorado. A private memorial will be held in the future.