Colorado Open Lands
The George E. Cranmer Award
The 2007 Awardee
More About the Award
Previous Honorees
Our 2007 Awardee: Chips Barry
Chairs: Dan Luecke & Harris Sherman
Every year since 1992, Colorado Open Lands has awarded the George E. Cranmer Award to someone who has distinguished themselves in open space preservation. Award recipients are individuals who have gone above and beyond what others have done and often get things completed through determination and force of personality. They leave behind a legacy that will be valued and enjoyed for generations to come. This year’s winner is just such a person.
Chips Barry has been involved in natural resources and water issues since 1969, as either a practicing attorney or as a state or city official. Prior to becoming Manager of the Denver Water Department, he was in Governor Romer’s cabinet as Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. That Department concerns itself with water, mining, parks, wildlife, geology, and oil and gas. He began his tenure as Manager of the Water Department in January 1991.
A Denver native, Barry attended the Denver Public Schools and graduated from George Washington High School in 1962. He graduated cum laude from Yale College in 1966 and obtained a law degree from Columbia University Law School in 1969.
According to Barry, however, his real education began after law school where he was in succession, a Vista volunteer in rural Alaska, a law clerk to Judge Robert McWilliams on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and a legal services lawyer in Micronesia. He returned to Colorado from the Marshall Islands in 1975, resuming a career in western water and natural resources matters.
In the last 30 years, Chips Barry has made several hundred public presentations on western water policy, water development, public land management, mining, and the interaction of state, local and federal government in western resource issues.
Barry has been involved in community and public activities since his return to the Denver area in 1975. He has been a grader for the Colorado Bar examination, and a member of the Board of Governors for the Colorado Bar Association. He has been a member of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board, and the Energy Impact Advisory Board and was a Trustee of the Colorado Chapter of the Nature Conservancy.
Presently, he is a member of the Inter-Basin Compact Committee; Treasurer and Board Member for Water for People; Secretary of the American Metropolitan Water Association; a member of the Water Utility Council of the American Water Works Association; and Treasurer of the Western Urban Water Coalition.
Chips Barry enjoys tennis, squash, skiing and golf. He is a collector of old Saabs, foreign paper money, and books about Micronesia and Alaska. His favorite fish with which he identifies closely – probably because of his current job – is the flannel mouth sucker. He has one of those remarkable fish on the wall of his office, and says that it is the only vertebrate in the building with which his looks compare favorably.
He is married to the former Gail Nelson, a landscape architect in Denver. He has two sons, Pennan, age 33, an MD-MPH Epidemiologist, and Duncan, age 26, an instructor at the University of Maryland.
The Cranmer Award
The award is a replica of the sundial in Cranmer Park placed near the terrazzo silhouette of the mountains of the Front Range. As a symbol of the vision, courage, and leadership of George E. Cranmer, the sundial is a logical choice for Colorado Open Lands to present to an individual who visualizes the future and acts to direct its course so we may have places for recreation, for refreshing the human spirit, and for the preservation of the natural world.
The sandstone of the sundial in Cranmer Park came from Lyons, Colorado. It is 5'5" thick and extends two feet below the pavement. In his inimitable style, Cranmer wrote in 1950 that "the sundial is only seventeen seconds of time east of the 105th Meridian on which Mountain Time is based, and since the whole setting is so accurate, one can set his watch by it." Erickson Monument, makers of the original sundial, have created the award replica.
Previous Honorees
Cranmer 2006
Honoree: Phil James
(The Nature Conservancy, Colorado Wildlife Commission, Nebraska Wildlife Federation)
Chairs: Mark Burget, Russell George, and Tom Swanson
Cranmer 2005
Honoree: Bill Vollbracht
(Colorado Open Lands, Land Title Guarantee)
Chairs: John Freyer and Ray Baker
Cranmer 2004
Honoree: Elizabeth H. Richardson
(Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts, Colorado Open Space Council, Colorado Open Lands, The Greenway Foundation, New Mexico Land Conservancy, South Metro Land Conservancy, Thorne Ecological Institute)
Chairs: Congressman Scott McInnis and Congressman Mark Udall
Cranmer 2003
Honoree: Sydney Shafroth Macy
(The Conservation Fund, Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust, Wilderness Land Trust, The Nature Conservancy)
Chairs: Chips Barry and Joe Blake
Cranmer 2002
Honoree: Joanne Ditmer
(Columnist with the Denver Post, founder of Historic Denver)
Chair: Dean Singleton
Cranmer 2001
Honoree: Stuart Dodge
(Palmer Foundation, Pike's Peak Greenway)
Chairs: Judy Fisher and Ellen K. Fisher
Cranmer 2000
Honoree: Bill Trampe and Susan Lohr
(Board of Gunnison Legacy Conservation Fund)
Chairs: Sue Anschutz Rodgers and Edward Callaway
Cranmer 1999
Honoree: Joy Hilliard
(Well-known philanthropist, TNC and Outward Bound Board member, fly fisher)
Chairs: Harry Lewis, Tom Swanson, and Michael Wilfley
Cranmer 1998
Honoree: George Beardsley
(Early COL Board member, former GOCO Board member, developer)
Chairs: George S. Writer, Jr.
Cranmer 1997
Honoree: John Fielder
(Photographer, former GOCO Board member)
Chairs: Tom Barron and Bill Vollbracht
Cranmer 1996
Honoree: James M. Robb
(Former state representative from Grand Junction, visionary and consensus builder for the Riverfront project, formerly on State Parks Board)
Chair: Hamlet "Chips" Barry
Cranmer 1995
Honoree: Betty Feazel
(Southwest Land Alliance)
Chairs: Harris Sherman and Morley Ballantine
Cranmer 1994
Honoree: David Harrison
(GOCO, The Nature Conservancy)
Chair: John Scully
Cranmer 1993
Honoree: Joe Shoemaker
(South Platte River)
Chairs: Mayor Wellington Webb and Mayor Bill McNichols
Cranmer 1992
Honoree: Chuck Froelicher
(Gates Foundation Executive Director)
Chairs: Charles Gates, Tom Stokes, and Tim Schultz