Wellington E. Webb is schooling the next generation of black business leaders in Denver. Work hard, he tells them. Make connections, not excuses. Serve others. Seize opportunities.
“One of the biggest issues in the African-American community is wealth-building,” says Webb, 65, looking prosperous in a dark pinstripe suit and gold tie.
He stands 6-foot-4 in a meeting room at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library – a $16 million project he championed as Denver’s mayor. Listening to him are 30 members of the inaugural class of Chamber Connect, a leadership program sponsored by the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce, which Webb heads.
“Each of you are creating your history now,” he advises the group. “Each of you are creating your reputation now. And the best way to protect your reputation is before you have one.”
Left unsaid by the former schoolteacher is that one way to make history is to write it yourself. Which he has done. His autobiography, “Wellington Webb: The Man, the Mayor, and the Making of Modern Denver” (Fulcrum, $28.95), hits bookstores next month, timed to coincide with Black History Month.
The book reflects on, and reopens, the issues of race, politics and power that simmered and sometimes boiled over during the Webb administration.
Is Webb’s time in office judged differently than that of Federico Peña, who preceded him, and John Hickenlooper, who succeeded him?
“In some ways, he’s judged differently,” said Mike Dino, a key Webb staffer and now a senior policy adviser for Patton Boggs in Denver. “Some of that is because he’s black. Some of it is his own doing. Some of it was manufactured by others.”
Eric Sondermann, a political consultant, is a longtime critic.
“The first term of the Webb administration offended me personally and struck me as a descent into big-city machine politics that Denver had not previously seen,” Sondermann said.
He assisted Webb’s campaign for city auditor in 1987 but by 1995 helped run the mayoral campaign of Mary DeGroot, who lost to Webb.
The successes and struggles of the Webb administration from 1991 to 2003 were trumpeted in the media, with which Webb had a famously prickly relationship. In his book, he tells tales on himself. Among them:
During the Clinton administration, a black usher at the White House came to the Lincoln Bedroom to awaken Webb, who had stayed overnight. Writes Webb: “I lay back in Lincoln’s bed and asked the usher, ‘How does it look for a black man to be lying in Lincoln’s bed?’ He started to laugh but caught himself.”
Webb defends wife Wilma, a former state representative and advocate for the arts and social issues, throughout the book. “She often was either cropped out of the photographs or shuttled to the side during interviews,” writes Webb. He adds that “I wish Wilma would have challenged (Diana) DeGette” for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District seat in 1996 and notes that “Wilma wanted me to run for the U.S. Senate” in 2002. Neither one did.
Webb, who had prostate cancer surgery 10 years ago, muses that his recovery hinged on assuring that his bowels were working properly: “I thought about how I would have to write that I survived my brush with death because I passed gas.”
Now in the private sector, Webb writes: “Once out of office, I finally understood why business people complained about paying taxes when I became a private businessman.”
Webb launched Webb Group International in 2003. Former Denver Post reporter Cindy Brovsky, who co-wrote Webb’s autobiography, works for the firm. Its clients have included the National Education Association and the city of Birmingham, Ala. Webb is part of a group redeveloping Dahlia Square Shopping Center in Park Hill.
Webb says he has no plans to run for elected office but remains involved in local and national politics. He made an unsuccessful bid to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Last year, he became president of the Colorado Black Chamber.
“I tend to look at the elders of our community, like him and Wilma, as the trailblazers,” said Makisha Boothe, 30, owner of Ya Ya Spa in the Golden Triangle and a member of the Black Chamber’s leadership class. “He was saying ‘No excuses’ and that we need a new generation of leadership. I think we won’t let him down.”
Excerpts from “Wellington Webb: The Man, The Mayor, and the Making of Modern Denver”
I arrived in the Mile High City in 1953 as a sickly 100-pound 12-year-old with asthma. Few people thought I would grow into a political activist and fight for a number of social issues.
I learned as a child to conceal any weaknesses in my life. I read a lot about the Roman heroes and the governing techniques of the Greek and Roman cultures, but I didn’t tell anyone. They’d think I was a square. As a teenager, when my mother relocated to Denver with my four brothers, I didn’t talk about the open bottles of liquor in our home or when her glass of “ice water” smelled like gin.
Some of my Manual High School classmates recall me as a leader among the student body and a basketball star. Political success has a way of clouding people’s memories. I was the introverted kid who sat in the back of the classroom – when I showed up.
I nearly flunked out of high school, and I quit the basketball team as a senior because I didn’t like the coach. During the graduation ceremony, only my grandmother knew that the leather folder designed to contain my diploma held a meaningless certificate.
My summer-school quest to get my diploma was nearly derailed when my grandmother let me sit in the city jail for a few days. My girlfriend had crashed my grandfather’s car through a building while I was giving her a driving lesson. I unwisely lied to police about who was behind the wheel.
My grandmother introduced me to politics through her work as a Democratic district committeewoman, but, candidly, I initially got involved with political programs to help feed my family. The public schools didn’t hire many African American male teachers in the mid-1960s.
I had a college degree and was working in a potato chip factory. I supplemented my income by working with programs that addressed social issues and pushed for more job opportunities for minorities.
Wilma has been my partner in life and politics. Wilma’s own successful political career was unfairly minimized after my election as mayor. Our young adult children also faced the burdens of their father being mayor, such as having to turn down jobs because of perceived conflicts of interest and our son Allen’s public battle with substance abuse. There were times when I hurt and my family cried. Politics is not for the weak.
I was elected as the forty-second mayor of Denver against all odds and reelected in 1995 without the support of Denver’s two major daily newspapers. In that reelection race, I faced the most vile, vicious, unprecedented attack on me and my family.
Some would say that being scrutinized comes with the job of being mayor. But there are some glaring contrasts to how the media viewed my administration and the one that immediately followed.
After living in Denver for my entire adult life, I hired competent people whom I trusted and admired; the media called that cronyism. When Mayor Hickenlooper appointed some longtime friends to cabinet positions, they were referred to as his “brain trust.” This is just one example of what minority politicians face.
It may sting to hear that those stereotypes and racial attitudes still exist in Denver and cities nationwide. But ignoring these realities or shrugging them off as an old politician’s sour grapes won’t make things better for future generations.
Lessons in racism, and the family’s beginnings in Denver
My father was working on the railroad when I was born. Aunt Frances picked up my mother and me from the hospital and took us home to my Aunt Vernadette’s house, where my mother and father were living.
My early years were spent in Chicago, going back and forth to the South on family vacations, to the home of Grandfather Williams, my mother’s father, in Moss Point, Mississippi, and to my grandmother’s family in Pascagoula.
Like most people who relocated to Chicago, Grandfather Williams kept his property in Mississippi, to which he returned following his divorce. I remember the trips to see him in my youth. We would gas up in Chicago and plot our route so that we wouldn’t have to stop for gas in segregated, unfriendly places. There was always fear until we got to our destination because of how many black people would disappear on trips between Chicago and Mississippi.
The night before the trip, my mother would make a meal of fried chicken and put it in a shoebox because we couldn’t stop anywhere along the route to eat. We also never knew if we could use the restrooms at the gas stations or if we’d be greeted with “No Colored” signs.
After I moved to Denver to live with Grandmother Helen, I often returned to Chicago to visit. During one of my summer visits, I remember seeing the newspaper headlines about a missing Chicago boy named Emmett Till. He lived right on Sixty-Third and Lawrence, which was a block from Grandmother Gertrude.
Till disappeared while visiting relatives in Mississippi. When he was reported missing, everyone in the neighborhood – many who had relocated to Chicago from Mississippi because it was the last train stop – feared the worst. They later found Till’s unmercifully tortured and mutilated body. He was killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. I thought that just as easily could have been me.
As I grew older and looked back on Till’s death, I think that tragedy really raised the consciousness of America to the injustices experienced by blacks, especially those in the South. Till’s mother was very brave to allow her son’s beaten, bloated, unrecognizable face and body to be displayed in an open casket.
Every black family I knew sat down their children and grandchildren and warned them of the dangers of traveling to other parts of the country, especially the South. But as a child growing up in Chicago, I was sheltered from most of the racial problems of the 1940s and early 1950s.
Time with my father was scheduled around his trips running the railroad. Some of those trips would require overnight stays in Denver. The black railroad workers stayed in the area of Denver that now houses the $16 million Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library. The neighborhood, near downtown Denver, is known as Five Points because of the intersection of major and neighborhood streets that form five points.
The Points neighborhood was made up primarily of black residents and had a national reputation for having some of the best jazz clubs in the country.
Grandmother Helen was about 51 and basically living alone (in Chicago when) her house burned down and she lost everything. She thought this was a good time to start over outside of Chicago. Before my dad told her about Denver, she had never heard of it. He explained that it was a really clean city and seemed like a nice place to live. If she wanted a fresh start in a new place, he told her Denver would be a good choice.
Denver had its own version of segregation when my grandmother arrived. An invisible line kept blacks from owning homes in primarily white neighborhoods. At one point, the line was drawn at Downing Street; then it moved to Race Street.
Grandmother Helen bought a home in northeast Denver at 3220 Williams Street, and later another home at 3224 Williams Street. She was proud to be the second black resident in a neighborhood comprising primarily Italian and Irish immigrants and some Hispanic families.
Grandmother was well known in the area because she served as a Democratic district committeewoman. She did the job Chicago-style, which meant that she knew everyone personally in the precinct. Grandmother also continued her work as a dressmaker. My brother Joe recalled that a wealthy family offered to buy her some stock in a start-up hamburger restaurant in gratitude for sewing their daughter’s wedding dress.
“My grandmother told them to just keep their money because it didn’t sound like something to spend good money on,” Joe said. “She felt that good money should be spent on shelter and food and not to take a risk. The stock turned out to be in McDonald’s.”
My parents moved to Gary, Indiana, after World War II and got a home on the GI Bill. I left Denver and joined them in Gary. After 10 years of being an only child, my brother Joe came along, and we settled in as a family. My father was still working for the railroad, and my mother did what many women did in those days: she was a homemaker.
I was about 10 years old when something happened that would change my life forever. I was asleep and suddenly woke up gasping for air. “It sounds like he’s having an asthma attack,” a nurse told (my mother). “You can bring him into the hospital tomorrow.”
All that night, I sat in my mother’s lap, struggling to breathe. When future asthma attacks got worse, I had to go to the hospital to get shots that were given to me 10 minutes apart. Sometimes I had to be placed in a hospital bed draped with plastic with oxygen pumped in to help me breathe. The asthma affected my whole life.
Inheriting the plans – and pains – of DIA
City planners first started talking about Denver’s need for a larger airport in 1974. Stapleton had to close often because of the weather and got a reputation as the worst airport in the country next to Newark, New Jersey.
Denver and Adams County reached a preliminary agreement in 1985 on a 53-square-mile plot for the new airport. Adams County voters approved the annexation in 1988. A year later, Mayor Federico Peña put the issue before Denver voters, who approved the new airport.
Mayor Peña had the vision to put the airport on the northeastern border of Denver and Adams counties, which spurred development in that area but included enough open space for future airport and economic growth. It was a masterful decision. Ground was broken in September 1989 with Mayor Peña’s initial optimistic opening of 1992.
(After taking office in 1991,) I delayed the opening to December 19, 1993. Then the December 19 date got pushed back to March 9, 1994. The baggage system was a major reason for the delay. When I announced the airport would open February 28, 1995, I still had doubts we could meet the date because of my historical struggles with the project.
The first hurdle I faced was with United Airlines dragging their feet to sign an agreement as the airport’s main carrier. Mayor Peña’s administration did not get the contract signed before he left office.
Vicki Braunagel, who became the codirector of aviation, recalled one of my first conversations with United CEO Stephen Wolf, whom I liked.
“It was one of the mayor’s classic conversations,” Braunagel said. “He told Wolf either your people come to town and stay until negotiations are done or the whole $45 million deal is off. I could imagine Wolf thinking, ‘Oh my God. This guy is in street- fighting mode.’ ”
I told Wolf I was too new in office to know better. We later met for dinner in Denver at a restaurant called Strings. We both arrived with our attorneys, and we all had a dinner of soup, salad, and New York strip steaks. After our attorneys left, Wolf, who is about my size, ordered another full meal, so I did the same. We sat in a back room at Strings fighting our machismo with food.
Our staffs worked round-the-clock, and we locked in a 30-year commitment. The one stipulation from United was that the city had to accept the automatic-baggage system, which they claimed had been successfully tested in Texas. We had no choice but to agree, because United was the largest carrier and we needed to get the airport opened.
What many people don’t realize is that we had to expand the terminal, at an additional cost of $65 million, just to accommodate the $193 million automated baggage system that United wanted. We built a larger airport than Mayor Peña envisioned, and it was a build-as-you-go project.
The most difficult aspect for me with the baggage-system failure was realizing that United didn’t care if the new airport opened. As far as they were concerned, the longer they stayed at Stapleton, paying lower rent, the better off they were. United adjusted schedules and had fewer flights into Denver. They did everything they could to slow down the process. United always threw their weight around because they were the largest carrier.
I felt like one of those cartoon characters on a bucking Brahma bull. I was hanging on for dear life, trying to meet another deadline, while the press and public were waiting for me to fall off. I had never before been in a situation where we continually missed deadlines. Some people told me to fire the people in charge, but it wasn’t their fault. They were thrown into a situation, just like me.
The television footage of luggage being mangled on a test run showed very clearly that the $193 million automated system was a bust.
“Then the question became ‘What do we do?’ ” Braunagel recalled. “Do we try and require United to do a tug-and-cart? United threatened to cut back the number of flights to Denver and just provide the minimum. Or do we build a new system? Who was going to blink on the issue?”
United officials, now minus Wolf, who had gone to U.S. Air, came to Denver and wanted to meet over dinner at The Brown Palace. That was the shortest dinner in history for me and city attorney Dan Muse. They told me United made a corporate decision and wanted to delay the opening of the airport until 1996. I bluntly reminded them that I was up for reelection in May 1995. “If the airport is not open by then, I wouldn’t even vote for myself,” I said. “Delaying it another year is totally unacceptable.”
Then Muse and I got up from the dinner table and left the men to eat their meal alone.
We had $3 billion already invested in the airport, and it couldn’t open because of the botched baggage system. The business community was getting nervous, and I knew I needed their help to move forward with an alternative baggage system.
The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce said they could do a better job at the airport, so I welcomed the members to help. They weren’t thrilled that our meetings were in public, with the press present, but then they began to have a deeper appreciation for what we faced.
When I called a press conference to say we would not delay the airport’s opening, the chamber board members were there supporting me.
The best thing we did was hire German consultant Mattias Franz of Logplan to first inspect the automated system and then design a new system. When United balked at the Franz plan, we invited United officials to hear another plan. What the airline didn’t know was that our city engineer presented a fictional plan that was so convincing it scared the airline.
The bluff worked. We needed another $63 million to build the new baggage system, but we were finally headed in the right direction.
A month before the airport opened, United announced a $40 fare increase to help cover its share of the increased baggage-system cost. It wasn’t until 2005 that United finally admitted the automated system was a failure and sold much of the machine for scrap.
Slings and arrows of the 1995 re-election campaign
The 1995 campaign was the ugliest, nastiest political fight of my life. As the race approached, I assumed City Councilwoman Mary DeGroot would run for auditor. Then my staff joked that DeGroot might run for mayor because she suddenly was wearing makeup and dressing in a red suit jacket. (She did run.)
The press knew DeGroot and I didn’t care for each other. She called me a crook and a criminal, with absolutely no evidence to support her libelous statements. She questioned my integrity and the integrity of members of my family. She threw out the words cronyism and corruption.
Her husband later wrote me a note apologizing for calling my administration the most corrupt in the country. Corrupt? Based on who and what? His wife was part of the city council that approved every contract that also was reviewed by the auditor.
DeGroot tried to paint my inclusion program as something dirty, when in fact my administration reflected the city. No one was left out – whether white, black, brown, yellow, straight or gay, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Baptist or Muslim.
During my first term, people tried to make an issue of whether I would accept the traditional free membership to Denver’s Country Club that was given to all mayors. In 1991, there were no black members at the club, but instead of buying into any controversy, I accepted the membership, which at the time cost $25,000.
“I said I was going to be mayor of the entire city; that includes the rich as well as the poor,” I said.
Still, DeGroot tried to form a rift in the community, even though she couldn’t get along with her colleagues on the council. Only three of DeGroot’s 12 council colleagues endorsed her in the runoff.
“The Queen of Mean, as I like to call Mary DeGroot, was the absolute worst person on the council,” said former councilwoman Cathy Donohue, who left her council seat in 1994 to head my Regulatory Reform Department. “She couldn’t get a bill passed.”
As the incumbent mayor, I found that the campaign money was a little easier to raise. In 1991, my campaign generated less than $300,000, and that was money from mostly unknown residents. In 1995, I was able to raise $1.1 million, compared to DeGroot’s $528,824, from a contribution list that looked like the Denver Chamber of Commerce.
Denver’s upper crust made it very clear that they were concerned about some of the contracts that were awarded. They were not looking at the bigger picture of how I was the first mayor to open the process to everyone.
“This country was brought up on the Good Old Boys Club,” said Mike Dino, who managed the 1995 run-off campaign. “Wellington brought new good old boys and women to that club who looked different than folks in Denver were used to.”
I was campaigning against a very slick candidate who tried to play the race card and divide the city. I kept reminding voters of what we accomplished during our first term: a successful opening of DIA, building a new central library, addressing the “Summer of Violence” and gaining positive press from World Youth Day. I knew I was in trouble (on election day) when I checked in with one of my supporters who was waving campaign signs on a street corner.
“Mayor, I don’t feel good about the election,” Samuel, who was from Nigeria, explained to me. “I keep waving, but they don’t wave back.”
It stung to lose by 97 votes to DeGroot. She garnered 42.8 percent of the vote to my 42.7 percent. We were headed to a runoff. I had to shake off all my concerns about being a 6-foot-4 black man going head- to-head with a white female candidate. The gloves came off.
My campaign was split on whether we should address DeGroot’s charges of corruption and cronyism.
“Given everything I’ve read in the newspaper or heard on television, I wouldn’t even vote for myself,” I told my family members. I knew I had to offer a mea culpa for my mistakes and also dispel the untruths. In a 64-point letter, I said I didn’t do some things well, but that I was going to do better the second time. We also listed the many things that we had done well.
We mailed it during the runoff, primarily to voters south of Colfax Avenue because we knew these were mostly white conservative voters. My base north of Colfax was still strong, but I couldn’t rely on the minority vote. I had to build coalitions.
“The message was, he got it, and most people accepted that because they liked him. Voters were looking for a reason to stick with Mayor Webb. Mary did not give them a reason to leave,” said Briggs Gamblin (the mayor’s spokesman).
This time, on Election Day, Samuel brought me good news. “Mayor, I think we did pretty good today because I’m out there waving and people are waving back,” he told me.
Our supporters were not complacent in the runoff. I got 54 percent, or 66,884 votes, compared to Mary’s 45.9 percent, or 56,725 votes.
This is your life
Wellington Webb timeline/milestones
Feb. 17, 1941: Born in Chicago to Wellington Marion Webb and Mardina Williams Webb.
1953: Relocated to Denver when he was 12 years old to live with his maternal grandmother, Helen Williams Gamble, in northeast Denver. Denver’s dry climate helped get his asthma under control.
1958: Graduated from Manual High School. He also attended Cole Junior High School.
1962: Graduated from Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, where he had a basketball scholarship.
1964: Graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley with a degree in sociology and a teaching certificate. Went on to teach in Adams County before taking a job teaching children at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan.
1971: Married Wilma Gerdine Thomas.
1971: Received a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Northern Colorado.
1972: Elected to the Colorado legislature as a representative for House District 8 and served three terms.
1976: Managed Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in Colorado.
1977: Appointed by President Carter as a regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
1981: Appointed by Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm as executive director of regulatory agencies.
1987: Elected as Denver’s auditor.
1991: Elected as Denver’s 42nd mayor, re-elected in 1995 and 1999.
2003: Founded Webb Group International consulting business.
2005: Formed a development group, Alliance, with his brother, Joseph, developer Jim Sullivan and former Denver Office of Economic Development director Ron Bernstein to redevelop the Dahlia Square Shopping Center in northeast Denver.
Source: Webb Group International
Local book tour
Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb is scheduled to discuss his autobiography at these local public events next month:
