Tom Gavin, a former Denver Post columnist and long-time newspaper man, died Aug. 21 at his Denver home. Gavin was 91.
Gavin, who also wrote for the Rocky Mountain News, covered Denver, Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region for more than four decades, including a stint in the Post’s Washington, D.C., bureau from 1977 to 1981.
Gavin was well-known for his clear, concise copy, as well as a dogged pursuit of stories that mattered to his readers.
“He was an icon,” said Cindy Parmenter, a former Post staffer who worked alongside Gavin in Washington. “The whole region read Tom Gavin. His columns were insightful, often very funny. We looked forward to them.”
Born in Oakland, Calif., in 1925, Gavin was reared in the small San Luis Valley town of La Jara, Colo., by his paternal grandmother, Catherine McCunniff. After his grandmother’s death, Gavin, as a teenager, lived in Denver with his father, Thomas F. Gavin, an electrician, and his stepmother. Gavin attended Cathedral High School in Denver, where he met a popular girl who would become his wife.
Tensions at home caused Gavin to drop out of Cathedral and work for a time as a ranch-hand in Kremmling. During World War II, Gavin served in the Navy as an aviation machinist working on PBY aircraft. He graduated from the University of Denver, which he attended on the G.I. Bill.
In 1947, Gavin married the former Winnie Oberhauser and joined the staff of the Rocky Mountain News that same year. At the News, Gavin covered the police beat and the Statehouse. In 1961, he was hired by The Denver Post to cover politics and the Statehouse. He launched his first column, “Politics and other Diversions.”
“Tom Gavin was one of the last great practitioners of a dying art — crystallizing the viewpoint of a community,” said his daughter, Jennifer Gavin Bettelheim, like her father a journalist and former Denver Post political reporter. “Although he started out with a purely politics column in 1962, it evolved into a general column, which by turns offered consternation, humor, poignancy — he touched all bases.”
A Denver resident for most of his life, many of Gavin’s columns centered around his “fashionable South Vrain Street” abode where he and his wife, “the fair Winifred” raised three children in the three-bedroom, one-bathroom home.
During his long newspaper career — 47 years — Gavin served as assistant managing editor and managing editor of the Rocky Mountain News from 1973 to 1977 and was an associate editor/national correspondent in the Washington bureau of The Denver Post. In ’81 he and Winnie returned to Denver, where he continued writing his column for the Denver Post until 1995. Gavin was a longtime member and former president of the Denver Press Club.
“He was an excellent newspaper man,” said Virginia Culver, a former colleague of Gavin’s at The Post. “Tom could knock somebody around, but not in a mean way. He saw through people and he pegged it. He made a mark every time he wrote about somebody.”
Gavin was preceded in death by Winnie in 2006. He is survived by his son, Dennis Gavin, of Aberdeen, S.D.; two daughters, Kathy Manfred of Cimarron, Colo., and Jennifer Gavin Bettelheim of Olney, Md.; two grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
A wake will be held at the Denver Press Club at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 24.