[/media-credit]Event co-chair Gina Schreck, left, presents Janet Elway, Betty Lehman, Frances Owens and Emily Howell Warner
Janet Elway called herself the “champion of reinvention,” a woman who recovered from a painful and very public divorce by “allowing myself to become God’s child.” Betty Lehman said that never in her wildest dreams did she see herself where she is today: an advocate so passionate for people with developmental disabilities that she “changed laws and changed lives.”
Frances Owens also knows what it’s like to experience divorce from a public figure. The former wife of former Gov. Bill Owens forged ahead, trading a busy life as Colorado’s first lady to a busy life as a career woman and dedicated volunteer. Emily Howell Warner remembers falling in love with flying when, as a teen, she was allowed to sit in the cockpit of the airliner that was flying her home to Denver after a visit to Gunnison. “The pilot could see how excited I was and he encouraged me to take flying lessons. I replied: ‘Can girls do that?’ ”
Elway, Lehman, Owens and Warner are the Denver Rescue Mission’s Women Who’ve Changed the Heart of the City and were honored at a fundraising tea held at the Brown Palace Hotel.
They were introduced by Gina Schreck, who chaired the mid-afternoon event with Jane McDonald, and, in keeping with tradition, participated in a discussion that shed further light on their interests, activities and charitable leanings.
Also in keeping with tradition, guests enjoyed the hotel’s famed tea service: scones served with Devonshire crean and preserves, savory tea sandwiches and pastries accompanied by Crown Jewel or chamomile mint tea.
“The word that kept welling up with this year’s honorees is ‘remarkable,’ ” Schreck said. “Each of them has had their share of challenges, but each of them has given so much in so many different ways.”
Elway, a champion swimmer who was destined for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Russia until the U.S. and several other countries boycotted them because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, moved to Denver following her 1984 marriage to John Elway. They divorced in 2003. Aside from being a mom to the couple’s four children, Janet has supported Adam’s Camp, the Denver Victim’s Service Center, the Kempe Center and the Metropolitan YMCA’s summer day camp. Last year she received the Hannah Solomon Humanitarian Award from the National Council of Jewish Women and earlier this year she became engaged to Kevin Kretzmar.
“I didn’t set out to become what I am today,” Betty Lehman confessed. “I grew up Jewish in Kansas, which meant I was surrounded by lots of family and lots of good food.” She married, moved to Denver and gave birth to a son. “We knew within two weeks of Eli’s birth that something was terribly wrong,” she said, adding that the eventual diagnosis was autism. “We saw so many doctors who performed so many tests,” Lehman recalled. “At one point they sent me to a psychiatrist to see if something was wrong.”
Lehman didn’t give up, and when the correct diagnosis of Eli’s condition was made, the doctor told her it was the worst case ever diagnosed in Colorado and one of the worst cases they’d ever seen. Lehman didn’t stop there. She lobbied legislators to require private health plans in Colorado to pay for the treatment of autism, and continues to fight for quality of life issues and helping the Autism Society of Colorado grow from an all-volunteer nonprofit to a business with eight staff members. She is a Bighorn Leadership Fellow and has received numerous honors for her work.
As Colorado’s first lady, Frances Owens was instrumental in overseeing the privately funded, long-term renovation and restoration of the Governor’s Mansion. She has also given support to a wide range of charitable causes, including Anchor Center for Blind Children, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, Children’s Hospital Colorado, the colorado Historical Society, Habitat for Humanity, Denver Health’s Newborns in Need, Volunteers of America and Developmental Pathways.
“Volunteering makes me feel good,” she said.
Emily Warner is deeply involved in encouraging young people to consider careers in aviation, and though she retired as a commercial pilot in 1990, she spent the next 12 years working as an air crew program manager for the Federal Aviation Administration. Her uniform hangs in the Smithsonian Institute Air and Space Museum.
Warner is a 1983 inductee into the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame and a member of the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame. The Emily Howell Warner Aviation Education Resource Center was established in the Granby Public Library in 1994 and she became a member of the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002.
Guests at the tea included her neighbor, Joanne Schultz; pilot and children’s book author Sue Hughes; Sharon Magness Blake; Jane Buckley; Mark and Monica Owens; former state legislator Ken Gordon; Jesse Ogas; Nancy Lamb Thompson; Louise Richardson; David Alexander; Layne Fleishman; Edie Marks; LaFawn Biddle; Nancy Bugbee; Greta Walker; and Brad Meuli, the Rescue Mission’s president and chief executive officer.
Joanne Davidson: 303-809-1314, jdavidson@denverpost.com and twitter/GetItWrite