But Sturm never lost his work ethic, his vision for the future, his desire to help the larger community in the present, and his sense of humor, family and colleagues said.

Sturm, a mover and shaker on Denver’s business scene in the 90s and 00s, died on Saturday at age 92, overcoming his setbacks and leaving his indelible mark on Colorado.

“He was in the office every day — even until right here at the end,” said Koger Propst, CEO at ANB Bank, which Sturm strung together from a group of troubled banks he acquired during the Savings and Loans crisis in the early 1990s.

Propst said Sturm was a thoughtful and strategic thinker who even into his late 80s and 90s never stopped planning.

Sturm’s second son, Stephen, described him as an amazing father, who was kind, attentive and thoughtful. He said his father worked until late last month and when he died this weekend, he was surrounded by family.

“He clearly lived a very busy life but he always made time for his family. You learned a lot through what he said, but you learned more through how he operated,” Stephen Sturm said.

Born Donald Lawrence Sturm to an immigrant family in Brooklyn on Jan. 10, 1932, Sturm attended City College of New York before being drafted into the U.S. Army. He moved to Denver to earn his law degree at the University of Denver, and then returned to New York, where he obtained a master’s degree in taxation law.

After working as an attorney for the Internal Revenue Service, Sturm joined the engineering and construction firm Peter Kiewit Sons Co. in Omaha, eventually becoming vice chairman. In 1984, he guided the company’s acquisition of Continental Group, a multi-national conglomerate.

In 1987, Sturm, previously married, met and married Susan Morgan, who survives him, along with his four children — Robert Sturm, Melanie Sturm, Stephen Sturm and Emily Sturm Ehrens.

The Sturms began acquiring failed banks and troubled properties in the early 1990s after Don left Kiewit and moved to Denver, which was especially hard hit by the S&L crisis, to be closer to their investments. The acquired banks, owned by Sturm Financial Group, came together as Denver-based ANB Bank, which now has 30 locations and $3 billion in assets.

Sturm emphasized building local management teams connected to the local community at each bank location, and understood the important role independent banks played, Propst said.

The family enterprise, named Alder, oversees the real estate holdings and has established master-planned communities over the years, the most recent being The Meadows at Castle Rock, where 20,000 residents live.

Sturm invested heavily in Cherry Creek North, redeveloping the old Tattered Cover building and creating Fillmore Plaza, and its investment arm has funded several startups.

Sturm also was part of a group that helped Continental Airlines emerge from bankruptcy in 1993 and he helped Kiewit spin off what would become Level 3 Communications.

That telecom investment, and a significant holding in WorldCom –once the country’s second-largest long-distance provider– helped Sturm reach an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion in 1999, per Forbes.

That year, he bid $461 million for Ascent Entertainment Group, owner of the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and the soon-to-open Pepsi Center, beating a $400 million bid from Bill and Nancy Laurie, heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton.

But city officials wanted guarantees that a new owner wouldn’t move either team for 25 years, which Sturm contested. That allowed Stan Kroenke, also associated with the Walton family, to slip in and acquire the two teams and arena in 2000.

Over the years, Sturm and his foundation have supported several area groups and institutions, including Judaism Your Way, which Sturm founded after rabbis refused to marry him and Sue; the Jewish Community Center of Denver; the Denver Museum of Nature and Science; the Summit Huts Association and Arapahoe Community College.

In 2019, the Sturm Family Foundation donated $10 million for ACC’s Sturm Collaboration Campus, the largest gift in the history of Colorado’s community college system.

“Don Sturm was a visionary in imagining a fully inclusive, welcoming home to interfaith and mixed heritage families. He was steadfast and unwavering in his support of Judaism Your Way’s mission to welcome Jews and their loved ones with unconditional love. The wider Jewish world has changed and become more inclusive as a result of his dedication,” Rabbi Caryn Aviv wrote in an email.

His greatest financial generosity, however, was reserved for his alma mater, the University of Denver, where the Sturm College of Law, the classroom building Sturm Hall, and the Sturm Center, a psychology program that helps veterans and those in the military, carry his name.

“From the time he was a determined law student on our campus until the last day of his service as a trustee, Don Sturm, along with his wife, Susan, made so many contributions to the DU community,” Chancellor Jeremy Haefner in an email.

In 2016, the university awarded Don and Sue its first inaugural Founders Medal, the highest non-academic honor the university can bestow.

”You want to help people. You can’t take it with you,” Sturm said in a video accompanying his admission into the Colorado Business Hall of Fame in 2022. “You want the place where you live to be a better place because you lived there.”

The Sturm family will hold a private funeral and memorial service. Donations in Sturm’s memory can be made to Judaism Your Way, 950 South Cherry St., Suite 310, Glendale, CO 80246-2699. Those impacted by Sturm’s life are asked to share memories and stories via a letter to “The Sturm Family” at 3033 E. First Ave., Suite 300, Denver, CO 80206.

The vote Thursday was the latest to turn heads as Caraveo faces a tight reelection race in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District. While other Colorado Democrats defended President Joe Biden and Harris’ immigration record, including Gov. Jared Polis and U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette — who called the resolution a “naked political stunt” — Careveo stood out.

She argued it was part of an independent streak she’s shown as she’s represented a battleground district. But her Republican opponent, state Rep. Gabe Evans, portrayed Caraveo’s vote as part of an about-face from her past “open border record.”

Just five other House Democrats voted with Caraveo on the resolution, and all are in close races in an election cycle in which the issue of illegal immigration has become a top concern among voters. In her first election to Congress in 2022, Caraveo won in the newly formed 8th District by less than a percentage point.

The New York Times reports that since Biden took office, Customs and Border Protection has recorded more than 9.6 million migrant encounters nationwide, mostly along the southern border. Those numbers have declined sharply in recent months, but the issue has remained a point of attack for Republicans against Biden — and then, after he withdrew from the presidential race last Sunday, against Harris.

When Caraveo was a Colorado state lawmaker, she took a much more progressive stance on immigration. In September 2021, she signed a letter sent to both Biden and Harris, along with congressional leaders, requesting that Congress “divest from immigration enforcement agencies” such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The 8th District takes in parts of Adams, Weld and Larimer counties north of Denver.

Evans said Caraveo “can run but she can’t hide from her open border record.”

“Less than three years ago, she called for defunding ICE and border patrol,” he wrote in an email. “You can’t get more open border than that. She’s just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the voters in an election year.”

In response to a request for an interview, Caraveo’s campaign said Friday afternoon that the freshman congresswoman was “unable to speak on short notice.” The Denver Post first asked for comment Thursday afternoon.

“The voters of the Front Range and Northern Colorado sent me to Congress to be an independent voice who will stand up to party leaders when they’re wrong,” Caraveo said in a written statement. “That’s why I pursued my own bipartisan immigration reform package that would not only surge resources to the border, but prioritize the needs of our communities.”

The latest attempt at bipartisan immigration reform was killed by Republican lawmakers earlier this year amid opposition from former President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, the resolution Caraveo backed raised eyebrows further because it referred to Harris as a “border czar,” a term Democrats and the White House have in recent days said unfairly overstates Harris’ role in managing border issues.

Biden tapped Harris in March 2021 to “lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem,” according to reporting by the Associated Press at the time. Some media outlets earlier used the “border czar” term informally to refer to Harris, too.

Colorado State University political science professor Kyle Saunders said Caraveo, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, is “rationally moving to the center on the issue of immigration in order to try to hold or even gain back ground in the district.”

“The vote condemning the Biden-Harris administration, and specifically Harris as the ‘border czar,’ would indicate to me that Caraveo is willing to defect from what was most definitely a ‘party vote,’ ” he said. “Deviating from a party vote like that is relatively rare in today’s polarized congressional environment, unless it is absolutely necessary.”

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The local chain of scoop shops opened its fifth location — its third in Denver — on May 22 at 4022 Tennyson St.

“Tennyson had been on our radar for at least a couple of years,” said founder Bryce Licht. “It fits the demographic we’re looking for: lots of foot traffic, lots of neighboring businesses that we’re big fans of, restaurants, bars, coffee shops. It has a really good neighborhood feel to it.”

The 1,200-square-foot store took three months to renovate. Licht and his wife Giulia signed a lease in late February and started the buildout in mid-March.

The pair met in Venice, Italy, when Licht was working abroad. After marrying, Licht and his wife returned to Colorado and opened their first scoop shop on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall in 2014. The pair named the store Gelato Boy because Bryce had been nicknamed that in Italy, due to how often he discussed his dream to open up a gelato shop.

There are already two ice cream shops on Tennyson Street, but Licht isn’t concerned about competition.

“We have shops on The Pearl Street Mall in Boulder where in the summer there are 10 to12 options for frozen treats. Yet all of us do well,” he said in an email. “I think it comes down to offering customers more than one to two options in a given area. Gelato is very different from ice cream, so we feel like we are adding a unique option to the neighborhood.”

There are big differences between ice cream and gelato, Licht said. Ice cream is mostly cream with a little bit of milk, while gelato is the opposite.

“Gelato is going to be a bit healthier than ice cream because it has less fat, and you don’t need as much sugar to cut into that dairy fat taste,” Licht said. “It also means that it’s more dense, so there’s less air whipped into gelato than there is ice cream. That makes the flavors more pronounced, too, so more flavor in every bite.

“Since there’s not so much butter fat from all the cream, the flavors are more intense, it’s not covered up by all the fat. Coffee is going to taste more like coffee. Pistachio is going to taste more like pistachio.”

The shop charges $6.35 for a small gelato, up to $9.75 for a large. Other options include milkshakes, cookie sandwiches, affogato (gelato and espresso) and brownie or waffle a la mode.

Most of Gelato Boy’s locations offer 18 flavors with two limited-time flavors shuffled in and out. One of their most recent limited-time flavors was Hot Honey and Biscuits. Gelato Boy’s most popular scoop flavor is Gooey Butter Cake and Caramel. The most popular pint flavor is Salty Cookies and Cream. Pints are also sold in stores nationwide.

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“She came along when I was at a really bad mental health place,” Tom Masters, Aurora’s father, told The Denver Post in an interview Monday, explaining how Aurora had reignited his passion for life. “It felt like there was something almost magical about her.”

But on May 8, Aurora was critically injured after being strangled by a disc swing she was playing with in her backyard, an incident the Fort Collins Police Department called a “tragic accident.” She was taken to the pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, according to updates the family posted on their GoFundMe page.

Around 20 family and friends from Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas flocked to her bedside.

On May 11, an MRI revealed Aurora had permanent brain damage from having received insufficient oxygen. Aurora’s family transitioned her to end-of-life care and she died May 13.

That weekend, the aurora borealis had illuminated Colorado’s night sky in multicolored waves.

“I’ve never seen a pink aurora borealis, and when I was looking later, according to what I could find on the internet, pink aurora borealis is due to a lack of oxygen, which is how my daughter’s brain got hurt,” Krystal Masters, Aurora’s mother, said in an interview. “The aurora itself, over Aurora, the city where my Aurora was (in the hospital), and it was pink. It just felt like a little nod of like, ‘Hey, I’m OK.'”

Aurora’s magnetic personality and effervescent spirit created community everywhere she went, her parents said. In 2019, Tom brought Aurora to several open mic nights and she would dance, sing and clap along with performers, becoming affectionately known as “the music baby.” The Masters family made lasting connections at those open mics, and Tom and Krystal attribute the creation of that steadfast community to Aurora.

“It would have just been a bunch of passing ships in the night, but people stopped and kind of zoomed in because Aurora was so magnetic,” Tom said.

In the past two weeks, Tom and Krystal have been inundated by anecdotes about their little girl — the only child the two had together — as friends and acquaintances share the impact Aurora had on them.

“I’m hearing all these stories that she was like that for everybody,” Tom said. “She literally just had fun and went around and brought her light with her and gave it away for free.”

“Aurora had the biggest, warmest spirit I’ve seen. Her energy impacted everyone around her with smiles and laughter,” wrote Rachel Brady, a colleague of Krystal’s mother, on the family’s GoFundMe page.

“Aurora would always give my little boy, Charlie, hugs and was the first to recognize him as a member of the congregation, even though he was only a year old,” wrote Natalia Lynch, who attended the same church as the Masters. “I’ll miss watching their interactions and seeing her sit so proudly in the front row.”

Through the GoFundMe, organized by Aurora’s great aunt Brenda Kennedy, the community raised more than $31,000 for the Masters family. The funds will be used for an end-of-life celebration and memorial service, and any money left over will be donated to organizations in Aurora’s honor, according to updates posted to the page.

“There will be a funeral service at a church, but there will be a celebration of life that is for all of the 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds that this little one has touched, and even older kids,” Krystal said. “It will hopefully involve the Ghostbusters and Star Wars cosplayers in town, some princesses. Dance parties were her favorite thing. There wasn’t a day we didn’t dance.

“And we’re just going to celebrate everything that Aurora was and let these children have a good time and remember her,” she added.

In the midst of their grief, Krystal and Tom wanted to remind parents to cherish every moment with their children.

“We got the disc swing because it was very safe,” Krystal said. “I guess what I would say to parents is: Love your kid every minute, have a dance party and just live life. Because you never know when it’s going away.”

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The city leader announced his mom’s passing in a LinkedIn post on Saturday.

“Yesterday we said the final good bye to my mom,” Johnston wrote. He depicted her as selfless, joyful and “a tireless force for goodness.”

Sally Johnston grew up in Port Leyden, N.Y., alongside three sisters. Her father worked as a school principal, while her mother was an arts and music teacher, according to a 2010 article in the Vail Daily.

She followed in their footsteps — teaching music in Boston in the 1960s, her son Mike recalled in his social media post. There, she spearheaded a Head Start program, the Vail Daily reports.

She married her husband, Paul Ross Johnston, in 1970 — the former mayor of Vail, who passed away in 2015. The pair bought a boutique hotel in Vail in 1976.

With her experience in education and psychology, Sally Johnston served as a board member at Third Way Center, a nonprofit that helps youths resolve trauma. She also had a spot on the Vail Mountain School Board and was involved with the Vail Religious Foundation.

“She loved people for their beauty and their brokenness alike, which always had the power to make each of us feel unafraid, unashamed, perfect again — the way we were once before the world taught us to doubt,” Johnston wrote. “She changed my world, and she convinced me with a ferocity I will never surrender that we can all change the world, because I watched her do it every day.”

Kilzer’s career spanned newsrooms across the country and world, including stints at the Fort Collins Triangle Review, Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Korea JoongAng Daily and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

He was most recently a novelist and investigative consultant for The Colorado Springs Gazette.

“He was very much a reporter’s reporter, a journalist’s journalist,” said Henry Dubroff, former Denver Post business editor.

Former Post reporter Robert Kowalski was close friends with Kilzer for nearly 40 years, starting when Kowalski joined the Post in 1986 and Kilzer quickly became his mentor.

A shoe-leather reporter who loved combing through records at city hall or the courthouse, Kilzer was known for a “Columbo” approach to interviews, modeling the 1970s television detective’s style of knowing far more about a topic than he let on, Kowalski said.

“His legacy will certainly be as one of the finest and most accomplished investigative reporters and editors in the country, without question,” he said.

Kilzer won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for public service alongside Post reporters Diana Griego and Norman Udevitz for their series on missing children, which debunked the idea that most missing children are abducted by strangers and found that the majority are runaways or involved in custody disputes.

Kilzer won his second Pulitzer at the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1990 for investigative reporting with reporter Chris Ison for uncovering a network of local citizens with links to the St. Paul Fire Department who profited financially from fires.

Kilzer worked at the Post as a reporter and assistant city editor from 1983 to 1987, returning as investigations editor from 1994 to 1996.

Kilzer was staunchly devoted to the truth, introducing Kowalski and other reporters to line-by-line edits during Kilzer’s time as investigations editor.

Kilzer would require reporters to go through every line of a story and prove, through interview transcripts or other documentation, the facts they contained. The process took weeks, Kowalski said.

Kilzer was understated and relatively quiet, Kowalski said, while still uniquely capable of homing in on the core of any issue.

“As low-key as he was, he had a real powerful sense of outrage at wrongdoing, and I think that motivated him,” he said.

Louis Charles Kilzer was born on Feb. 10, 1951, in Cody, Wyoming, to Robert and Marjorie Ann (Harkins) Kilzer.

Lou Kilzer graduated cum laude from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1973. He married his wife, Elizabeth Kovacs, in front of a justice of the peace in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1975.

Outside of the newsroom, Kilzer could be found traveling to Costa Rica, Moscow and Seoul. He wrote two nonfiction books about World War II and co-authored a two-book mystery thriller series.

He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Kovacs, son Alex and daughter Xanthe.

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Williams died Tuesday after a short illness, according to colleagues at the Denver-based Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, where he launched the legal program in 1997 upon graduation from law school.

A quadriplegic paralyzed from his chest down following a diving accident at age 19, Williams steadily increased access for disabled people by filing lawsuits — pressing for enforcement under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and the Fair Housing Act.

He began this work as a third-year law student at the University of Denver. Shortly before his graduation, he sued his law school. The issue was compliance with the ADA. He prevailed, leading to required improvements, including a wheelchair-accessible graduation venue.

Often serving as the plaintiff, Williams repeated that feat again and again, expanding access for Coloradans with disabilities in stores, restaurants, public transit systems, theaters, arenas and travel pathways around the state. For example, his litigation compelled the operators of Red Rocks Amphitheatre to provide accessible parking, seating and ticketing.

He also led other lawyers into disability rights work.

Williams grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland.  He made Colorado his home in 1990, the year President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law. He enjoyed drives in the mountains, attending concerts and visiting local breweries and distilleries.

Friends this week remembered him as passionate in his pursuit of civil rights.

“Kevin was contemplative, thorough and certain not to leave any stone unturned, especially in litigation,” said Andrew Montoya, who worked in the coalition’s legal program as an assistant and then was inspired to attend law school.

“Even seemingly mundane legal issues could occupy hours of lively discussion ranging from interpretive case law to contemporary and historical politics to litigation strategy to the meaning of life, and back again,” Montoya said. “His passion for civil rights, both in general and specifically those of people with disabilities, clearly animated his work, both in the courtroom and in the rest of the world.”

He also had a knack for making light of difficulties. Friends recalled his adaptation of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” — a rendition that he titled “Let Us Pee.” (“When I find myself in times of trouble; The bathroom door is two-foot-three; Whisper words of wisdom; Let us pee, let us pee.”

“He was intense, passionate, focused and very analytical. What kept him motivated was seeing people with disabilities face discrimination and knowing that the laws that are supposed to protect us are being violated,” said Julie Reiskin, co-executive director of the coalition.

“What bothered him was the blatant violation of the law, especially by those who should know better, such as courts and lawyers that made excuses rather than working to fix the problem.”

Story was updated at 4:47 p.m. Sunday to reflect that paralysis resulted from a diving accident.

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It’s no secret how the longtime Denver Post reporter earned himself the nickname Kirk “Cold Case” Mitchell following years of dedicated coverage of unsolved criminal investigations across Colorado, along with writing about the state’s most sensational murders and other mayhem.

Mitchell, who retired from The Post in 2020 after 22 years at the newspaper, died this week in Pennsylvania after battling prostate cancer since 2016. He was 64.

His byline can be found on stories about subjects ranging from the Aurora theater shooting to therapy dogs in prisons to the drug kingpin “El Chapo.”

Oldest son Vance Mitchell said his father was never afraid to meet with convicted killers or interview someone from any walk of life.

“He seemed like he approached it as helping people tell their story in their own words,” Vance Mitchell said.

Friends, former coworkers and family members were eager to return the favor, sharing Kirk Mitchell’s story in the pages his byline once graced.

Kirk’s story

Kirk Vance Mitchell Sr. was born in Peru, Indiana, where his father was stationed with the U.S. Air Force. After moving around with the service, the Mitchells settled in Keene, New York, where Kirk’s parents, who were accomplished painters, moved the family into a bed and breakfast they had bought.

The young Mitchell played football, basketball and soccer at Keene Central School, from which he graduated in 1977. Throughout his professional career, Mitchell’s resume boasted that he graduated in the Top 10 in his senior class. There were only nine students, daughter-in-law Debbie Mitchell said.

“He literally put that on all of his resumes,” she said.

After high school, Mitchell served two years in Quito, Ecuador, on his mission with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After returning, Mitchell earned his journalism degree from Brigham Young University.

Mitchell began his journalism career at the Associated Press in Salt Lake City, then worked at newspapers in Twin Falls, Idaho, and Mesa, Arizona, before joining The Post in 1998.

At The Post, Mitchell spent years as a crime reporter, covering some of the most notorious murders in Colorado, including the 2013 assassination of Colorado Department of Corrections executive director Tom Clements by a parolee who was a member of a white supremacist gang in the prison system.

Mitchell was most proud of his contributions to two of the Pulitzer Prizes won by The Post’s newsroom — the 2000 and 2013 awards in the breaking news category for coverage of the Columbine High School and Aurora movie theater massacres, respectively.

“He was a dogged reporter,” said Vikki Migoya, a former Post editor who now works as a public affairs specialist with the FBI. “He would get hold of something and dig and dig.”

Migoya noted Mitchell, who she edited while she worked at the paper, never turned down a story and would give it his all whether a short crime item, a holiday feature or a special investigation.

“He could find people that nobody else could find,” Migoya said. “If we were trying to locate someone — the subject of a lawsuit or a relative of someone we needed on the phone — Kirk was the one who would dig in and be able to find that person.”

For years, Mitchell wrote The Post’s cold case blog, which garnered some of the highest readership on the newspaper’s website. His fascination with unsolved crimes earned him the nickname “Cold Case” from his colleagues on the paper’s city desk.

“A person who spent so many years writing about crime could become hardened and cynical but that didn’t happen to Kirk,” said Lee Ann Colacioppo, The Post’s executive editor. “There was an optimism to him that you could actually see in the way his eyes twinkled and a desire for justice that found its voice in his devotion to writing about cold cases. He was a diligent and sensitive reporter and a proud and devoted father. The newsroom just felt right when he was hunched over his computer.”

Sometimes his blog posts would generate tips that would help detectives solve the crime, Vance Mitchell said.

“The thing he was most passionate about was trying to solve the mystery,” he said.

While covering so much tragedy, Kirk Mitchell was also riveted by finding the light in people.

Post photographer R.J. Sangosti recalled Mitchell repeatedly writing stories about people in prison training therapy dogs behind bars and finding joy in watching them interact with the animals.

“He was enthralled by how someone could be a cold-hearted criminal at one point of their life and, at a different point, they could share their bunk with a dog and teach it to love and care for a child with severe autism,” Sangosti said. “Kirk saw people at their worst, but somehow he always was able to find the best in that person and included that in his stories.”

Kirk Mitchell was a voracious reader, enjoying — you guessed it — mystery novels.

He authored a nonfiction book, “The Spin Doctor,” about the 2002 death of Nancy Sonnenfeld, explaining how her husband Kurt Sonnenfeld became the primary suspect before escaping to Argentina and fighting extradition back to Denver.

The Sonnenfeld case was one of many in which Mitchell was called to appear on true-crime television shows to talk about his coverage. He continued to appear on those shows even into his retirement.

Despite the sometimes difficult subject matter, Mitchell had a sense of humor about his work.

“Often we’d ask him, ‘How was work?’ And he would say, ‘Well, I was in prison,'” Vance Mitchell said. “He thought it was funny to tell people he went to prison.”

A family man

Loved ones described Mitchell as a family man, epitomized by his close companionship with his son Jonathon Mitchell, who has Down syndrome.

The two enjoyed superhero movies and Kirk Mitchell sometimes volunteered at an ARC Thrift Store in Aurora where Jonathon worked so the two could spend time together.

“Kirk was so involved with him and so proud of him,” Migoya said. “It always touched me, the relationship he had and the fact that he was so supportive of his son.”

Mitchell was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in 2016 and fought it until his death.

He died Monday at his home in Lititz, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his wife Robin Ritchey. They married in 2022.

After retirement, Mitchell enjoyed traveling around the United States to visit his large family. He attended concerts and sporting events that his grandchildren participated in, Debbie Mitchell said.

Kirk Mitchell is survived by his wife and five children: Kirk Vance Mitchell, Jr., Jonathon James Mitchell, Jennifer Noelle Marler, Stacy Ann Amador and Michael Jensen Mitchell. He had eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Saturday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The family asks that memorial donations be made to the Rocky Mountain Down Syndrome Association or the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation.

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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.”

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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.