Denver newspaper reporter Penny Parker loved people and journalism, and used the influence of columns she wrote for the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post to make the big city seem a little smaller, and feel like a place where people cared about each other and celebrated success, her former colleagues said Monday.
“There was certainly a ton of opportunity to embarrass or shame celebrities and politicians with ‘gotcha’ stories, but at the end of the day, that is not what drove her. If it was a good story, she’d be all over it,” jazz musician and former political spokesman Andrew Hudson recalled in a Facebook post, “she was more interested in the complex and colorful fabric of our community.”
Parker, 62, died in her Denver condominium Saturday at 12:30 p.m., said her husband, Greg Henry. The cause of death hasn’t been determined.
As word spread Monday of her death, hundreds of the people she worked for and with shared photos and memories on her Facebook page, where she had close to 5,000 friends.
“I don’t think you realized your power and how many small businesses you helped in Denver,” posted Denise Snyder, owner of Mariel clothing boutique.
“Thoughts and prayers to Penny’s family and lots of smiles on my face thinking back to all my ‘Penny moments,’ ” wrote restaurateur Troy Guard.
Parker joined The Denver Post as a features reporter in 1993, when Denver was still a two-newspaper town. The next year, she moved to the business news department, covering retail, restaurants, marketing and tourism.
“I think she had a way of connecting her personal passions and her journalism that was off-the-charts high,” said former Post business editor Henry Dubroff. “She knew what made a good story, knew how to write it and had a great feel for people. When she had to, she could mix it up and play the old-boy game. She really was a treasure as a journalist.”
WATCH: Former colleagues, friends reflect on Penny Parker
She romanced leasing agents and mall managers, and quickly became the reporter to beat in Denver, so influential that phrases in her stories stuck – like the tag “retail resort” for Park Meadows mall, which remains in use by its owner today, Dubroff said.
“She was a force,” said former Rocky Mountain News editor John Temple, who hired Parker in 2000 as the paper’s “On The Town” columnist, a high-profile position covering Denver’s social scene. “When she was a reporter at The Post, she was constantly breaking stories, on top of all the news. We couldn’t get an edge. It was obvious from the way she covered her beat, she was having a ball.”
As a columnist, she found a broader platform that allowed her to help people by sharing her personal experiences. That was never more evident than after she was diagnosed with breast cancer a decade ago, Temple said.
“The response to her columns and sharing of her experience with breast cancer taught her about the power of the column and the meaningful role she could play in so many lives,” he said. “She had so many connections as a result and a sense of being a part of the life of the city and making it a better place.”
Parker was generous with her time and energy, raising money for Sense of Security, a nonprofit group that helped people being treated for breast cancer with non-medical expenses. She also used her finely honed skills to help connect people in the business world as she reported the news.
“She had a great sense of who should meet whom because she was so intertwined with the business community,” said commercial real estate broker Mary Beth Jenkins, president of the The Laramie Company.
Jenkins, who moved her business to Denver from Houston in the early 1990s, said Parker helped her meet people in the business with whom she ended up working with on projects.
Parker was also competitive . “She wanted to grab the headline and get the story first,” Jenkins said. “She didn’t wait for it to come to her – she was out there finding it and reporting it. I remember her camping out at Park Meadows mall before it opened so she’d be the first” when the doors opened in 1996.
When she joined the Rocky Mountain News as a columnist, she changed the license plate on her BMW convertible to say “Tell me 1st,” – a response to the plate Post columnist Bill Husted’s car: “Tell me.”
Husted said Parker kept him on his toes. “She was a fierce competitor,” he said. “I’d get so mad if she scooped me.”
She also made it a point to know everyone on her beat – and not just the swells, said her former Post and News colleague Lynn Bartels, who sometimes served as Parker’s wingwoman at events.
“I remember once she had her birthday party at Capital Grille, and she knew every waiter there,” Bartels said. “And not just the big-wigs who walk through. She knew the people who poured the water.”
Bartels said Parker was especially devoted to her son, Mackenzie Parker Harden.
After the Rocky Mountain News closed in 2009, Parker returned to The Post, where she worked as a business columnist until 2012, when she was laid off.
“She was vivacious and funny and smart,” public-relations executive Wendy Aiello said. “She loved being a reporter. She knew what she wanted to do from the minute she got into college. She said, ‘I always want to be in a newsroom.'”
Parker grew up in Palo Alto, Calif. She studied journalism at San Francisco State University and worked as a feature writer at The Everett (Wash.) Herald before moving to Colorado. She loved the New Orleans Jazz Festival, golfing and the Denver Broncos (her dog was named for former wide receiver Ed McCaffrey.)
But it was Parker’s “sheer love of journalism” and “newspapers, old school newspapers and basic good reporting” that impressed her close friend Westword editor Patty Calhoun.
After 2012, Parker went to work for BlackTieColorado.com, where she continued her “On the Town” column and worked in marketing. The column still appears weekly in Colorado Community Media newspapers. Most recently, she was working in customer service at Macy’s and Dillard’s stores.
Parker loved interacting with people at the department stores, Henry said.
“It suited her personally,” he said. “It wasn’t what she was meant to do. She wanted to be a writer. It’s tough. You lose your identity a little bit. That was the hardest part.”
In lieu of flowers the family suggests contributions to Sense of Security, Denver Dumb Friends League or The First Tee of Denver.
