Hal Weber Makes Kids’ Birthdays Special

by Mark Smiley | Nov 23, 2015 | Main Articles

50-Year Park Hill Tradition Lights Up The Neighborhood

by Megan Carthel

Between 19th and Montview Boulevard on Leyden Street is an average Park Hill neighborhood. Trees line the block while the sounds of children playing fill the air. But, this neighborhood has a unique tradition.

For every child’s birthday on the block, 86-year-old Hal Weber grabs his ski poles, a pouch full of cards and makes the march around Leyden, placing a personalized birthday card on all of the 15 homes, specific for each of the 23 children and one dog. He then lights up a “celebration tree” in honor of each birthday, a tradition he’s had since 1965.

The tradition began after Hal and his wife, Lois, purchased a pine tree and planted it in their yard. During Christmas of 1964, they colored the tree with lights — the first of many lightings of the celebration tree. Though they didn’t know it at the time, this would become an important tradition for the whole block.

“We like celebrating. We like color. We like lights. We like fun,” Weber said. “So after Christmas, it seemed foolish to me to have to wait another 11 months before we got that tree lit up out there.”

So the Webers decided to light the tree up any time their family was celebrating an occasion. When their daughter’s friend, Wendy, had a birthday in February 1965, Hal decided to light up the tree. Since then, Hal has made sure every child on the block has a special birthday.

“It was all by accident,” Weber said. “It pretty much just evolved.”

His accident has touched the hearts of many of his neighbors, including Chris Wester who has three kids. Weber has lit the tree every year for each child. Wester has kept every single card Weber has given her children. Weber normally stops the cards at age 16, poking fun at the new teen drivers, but for Wester’s youngest child James, Weber has kept the tradition alive. James has a mental disability and does not understand the concept, but Weber makes his day special every year.

“I have to believe that somewhere inside of him, that is just a warm fuzzy for him,” Wester said. “It has to be.”

James loves basketball and plays every year in the Special Olympics with the Denver Parks and Recreation Department. Weber personalized his last birthday card with a basketball theme.

“Hal is just the most humble man, but he is so special, thoughtful, kind and gentle,” Wester said.

Wester recalls a special moment when her daughter Annie was 10. The family walked down to the celebration tree the evening of her birthday and sang happy birthday to her.

“It was so cool. I mean, how sweet can that be,” Wester said.

Wester said Weber is like a grandfather on the block — an extension of the family. Weber keeps a categorized list of every child on the block. The children are divided by months and a note on the side indicates the year they were born. However, Weber and his wife moved out of the neighborhood this fall and into a senior living facility — difficult news for many on the block. Weber broke the news in typical Hal fashion, a note placed on each door.

“It just kind of broke my heart,” Wester said with tears in her eyes. “I am sure he heard from every single one of us how important this has been to us. Every time I see that card on the door, I just smile.”

But Weber does not plan on ending his tradition. He plans on surprising the neighborhood with his birthday cards, ensuring that the memory of the celebration tree is still glowing bright. The tree is gone now, but he’s premade many of the birthday cards, halfway through January.

“In December it’s going to be Luke, he was born in ’99. It’s going to be his last year. He’s going to be a driver,” Weber said. “Then Jack who’s a baseball fan, so I’ll have something relative to that, then his sister. Then it’ll be Rebecca, Becky.”

Weber’s simple act of celebrating birthdays has brought the entire block together.

“There’s just something about if your kid is celebrating a birthday, and I’m driving down the street, I’m going to wave and go happy birthday,” Wester said.

The entire block has a list of each other’s names, phone numbers and email addresses. Many families have lived on Leyden for over 10 years. The new family on the block has been there for three.

“I don’t think there’s another block in Park Hill like this,” Wester said. “It’s the nicest feeling of family in a neighborhood that I could ever imagine.”

Indeed, Weber has seen many of the kids grow up.

“I’ve seen them when they were a pouch of water in their mother to a point when several of them are in college and maybe out of college by now,” Weber said.

Weber has worked and been around kids his entire life. Working as a pediatric audiologist, he started the Colorado Department of Health’s state-wide hearing program, which helps kids with hearing loss solve their problems. In a way, Weber said, overcoming obstacles has always been his direction.

“I love life,” Weber said.

Weber has made sure the card and celebration tree continued, even after having two hip replacements and a pinched nerve in his back. To this day, Weber has a recumbent bike he still rides.

“He just makes me want to be a better person and keep going,” Wester said.

And for his birthday, how does he celebrate?

“Nothing special,” Weber said.

INC And Larry Ambrose Become Key Players In Denver’s Future

by Mark Smiley | Nov 23, 2015 | Main Articles

Neighborhood Groups Begin To Flex Their Muscles

by Charles Bonniwell

As the Denver City Council is increasingly looked at by some as a tainted and dishonest political entity that ignores the concerns and wishes of residents in favor of powerful real estate developers, many people in Denver have increasingly turned to neighborhood associations and Denver’s Inter-Neighborhood Cooperative (INC) to represent their interests.

INC is the umbrella organization for Registered Neighborhood Organizations (RNOs) which have special legal status in the City and County of Denver. Under the Denver Municipal Code starting in 1979, RNOs have been statutorily required to be notified of and given participation opportunities related to proposed zoning amendments, landmark designation applications as well as planning board and board of adjustment hearings.

Established in 1975 INC was a part of the national neighborhood movement of the 1970s which was originally formed to help revive and conserve older neighborhoods by demanding the right to participate in governmental decisions which affected those neighborhoods.

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit INC is also engaged in charitable as well such as educational activities. The organization was a relatively benign group for many years perhaps best known for its Neighborhood Awards and its awards dinner held every year. But that began to change in the spring of 2012 when Larry Ambrose became the group’s president. A few months earlier Mayor Michael Hancock began his term as 45th mayor of the City and County of Denver with his election orchestrated by real estate developer Pat Hamill and his business associates.

Ambrose, a businessman and lawyer, is today an affiliate faculty member at Metropolitan State University of Denver teaching classes in marketing and advertising. He is the owner of Ambrose Consulting, LLC which advises businesses in small business development and related fields.

It soon became apparent that Hancock was little more than a figurehead mayor while Hamill and his real estate developer friends assumed control. Hamill installed Janice Sinden as Hancock’s chief of staff so he could know everything that was going on in the mayor’s office without having to ask Hancock himself. Sinden had been Hamill’s executive director at the business advocacy group Colorado Concern when he was chairman of the board.

Neighborhoods began to be overrun by high density projects with developer friends of the mayor seizing land with the help of the city including parks, open space and even church properties. Neighborhood destroying projects were moved through the

planning process as well as final City Council approval with incredible rapidity one after the other including Lowry Vista, Hentzell Park, City Park Zoo Gasification Project, Sloan’s Lake, Mount Gilead/Crestmoor Park, Buckley Annex and West Highlands.

City Council meetings would go late into the night with citizen after citizen begging the Council to take a closer look at the effect of these projects on their neighborhoods only to get vapid bored looks from councilmembers and overwhelming votes in favor of the developers.

INC became the one place families could go to have their concerns at least heard and Larry Ambrose became a hero to many who felt the system to be corrupt and unresponsive.

Ambrose began to give real voice to the citizens’ concerns. When Brad Buchanan, the highly controversial executive director of Denver’s Community Planning and Development Department (DPCD) went to The Denver Post to extol the virtues of these high density projects, Ambrose declared to The Post, “It’s very easy for Brad to come into the city and shove this high density down our throats and then drive home to his ranch.” The embarrassed and humiliated Buchanan was unable to publicly respond.

In the case of a gasification plant that the Denver Zoo wanted to build at City Park, Ambrose wrote a letter on behalf of INC demanding the City Council hold a hearing on many of the concerns that it had failed to address in its previous unanimous approval. This resulted in a scathing editorial by The Denver Post calling the opposition “misguided and, frankly way too late.” Ambrose wrote a stirring rebuttal that was published by The Post.

Less than two-weeks later to the absolute mortification of The Post’s editorial board the Zoo announced, in effect, that the opponents of the project had been right all along and the project was being ditched. The editorial board groaned in a follow-up editorial — ”What a fiasco.” Ambrose’s reputation and standing reached new heights among Denver residents.

Ambrose and INC have come up with an eight page 2,769 word platform document whereby residents and RNOs would have a great deal more to say in how the city is developed including having the mayor and other city officials appoint representatives of RNOs to city boards and commissions.

Among other major reforms the platform envisions is that higher density zoning would not be approved unless any adverse impacts on traffic or parking can be mitigated.

The degree of increased influence that INC has achieved is reflected by the fact that

Buchanan’s DPCD publicly declared that it had reached out to INC to ask for the final zoning/planning platform document and that it shared “INC’s overreaching goals of transparency, partnership and meaningful public involvement … all toward our shared goal of building community.”

The statement of DPCD bought gales of derision from resident activists. Jennifer James noted, “Buchanan and his believably sleazy co-horts at DPCD think they can placate Larry and INC with some verbal jujitsu. There would have been no need for the platform in the first place if DPCD was not a moral and ethical cesspool. The adoption of the platform by INC is itself a repudiation of what the mayor and Buchanan have done to our neighborhoods. If there was any justice in the city there would be a full and thorough criminal investigation of the planning process in the City and County of Denver. Maybe someday there will be, but it will probably be too late to save many portions of the city.”

As for Ambrose himself he claims no overriding ambitions. “I just want to give voice to the residents that the government of the City and County of Denver is ignoring,” said Ambrose. “The average citizen is the last person the city listens to unfortunately.”

But many other people note that he garnered over 2,300 write-in votes in the 2015 mayoral election which is said to be the highest number of write-in votes in the history of the city. This is all the more remarkable in that Ambrose did not participate in the effort or campaign and all the work was done by admirers of Ambrose.

Members of INC, in their individual capacities, helped elect four members to the Denver City Council in the election this last spring who they believe will not be co-opted by real estate developers. Some of those hard-charging individuals want to look at electing a new mayor in 2019.

Mayor Hancock had no organized opposition in 2015 but already there are increasing numbers of politically savvy people in Denver who are stating that “Ambrose for Mayor 2019” is making more and more sense.