Waves of deep sorrow — personal and professional — have been rolling over the members of our Citistates Group and indeed all of civic America, mourning over the entirely untimely death of our friend and colleague, John Parr.
John was killed, with his wonderfully creative journalist wife Sandy and daughter Chase, in an automobile accident in Wyoming the Saturday before Christmas. Their daughter Katy was injured but is recovering.
John’s passing has been a special blow to the Denver and Colorado communities, where he made such a special contribution, in political and civic life, through his career. Five hundred people gathered to mourn quietly at a candlelight park event for John and his family.
But John also registered immense accomplishments on the nationwide scene. He was president of the National Civic League for a decade starting in 1985 and later led the Alliance for Regional Stewardship that had been inspired by his friend and mentor John Gardner. He was a charter member of our Citistates Group. John also helped many communities, and widened his amazingly broad national network, through Civic Results, his consulting firm with Peter Kenney. Most recently he worked with our colleague Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, on an approach for regions of Louv’s Children and Nature Network.
A John Parr and Sandy Widener Civic Leadership Award has been established by the Denver Community Foundation. In addition, the Citistates Group, the National Civic League and others are looking into the possibility of a national conference to honor John’s memory and consider long-term ways to continue his tradition of civic leadership.
A remembrance of John appears below:
REMEMBERING JOHN PARR — By Curtis Johnson
Remembering John Parr is easy. It’s getting him out of your mind in the wake of his tragic passing – that’s hard.
Author Mitch Albom’s best-selling For One More Day imagines what one despairing, aging, suicidal former athlete might have learned about life from his mother, had he been granted just one more day to talk with her, after she was gone. John’s life journey, while rich and full, abruptly ended December 22 way too soon. Many of us now wish for that one more day – with John. A day to drill down for that core DNA of his artful way of working with people. A day to ask him what he believed really mattered most – both in individual fulfillment and the betterment of communities. A day to tell him how much he meant to all of us who were privileged to work with him.
As former Colorado lieutenant governor Gail Schoettler would put it in a Denver Post column, “It takes only an instant to end a life, whether it’s an explosive in Iraq, or a loose rock on a Colorado fourteener, or an icy road in Wyoming.” In life John’s work was a constant reminder of higher possibilities. He could raise your expectations without ever raising his voice. Time and again, groups would testify in some amazement after a series of sessions with John that they never believed they could come together on contentious issues, but John managed to get them to see that what they shared was bigger than what divided them.
In testimonials appearing on the Denver Post website, colleagues and friends have described John as a domestic diplomat, a conciliator, a superb strategist, a power in both politics and civic life who never made much noise about himself. He was content to make things happen for others.
John and his irrepressible, talented wife, Sandy Widener, were called a “prominent couple.” Later the stories would say they were a “power couple.” They were – but only in the special sense of being transmitters of power, rarely receivers. Long after John’s early Colorado days as an insurgent who defied the state’s power brokers claim to the 1976 Olympics, his and Sandy’s inspiration and insight launched a generation of leadership in Denver and Colorado’s halls of public service. John’s work with the 31 mayors of the Denver region would be widely seen as a national model of informal, voluntary governance that showed major impact.
Our Citistates community first encountered John shortly before he became the president of The National Civic League in 1985 and transformed a tired and thinning network into a vibrant and visible presence on the national scene. Inspired, as we all were, by the last big visions of John Gardner, John would, years later, sign on to shepherd the formative Alliance for Regional Stewardship. But the ARS work quickly reminded John that he didn’t want to spend his life on airplanes and lonely hotels. Home was where he wanted to be – the Rocky Mountain range of communities, his beloved Denver region, his devoted wife and daughters. He and Peter Kenney created Civic Results, through which John could exercise his passion for making better communities, and keep one stirring and steering hand in the political life of Colorado. His was a good life and a large lesson in living one for all of us. It just ended too soon.