When I conceived of this publication I never envisioned it would continue to serve Capitol Hill this long.

Those many years ago I was sitting at the kitchen table in my very small buffet apartment at 16th & Williams (now a residence for seniors), writing copy, assembling ads and preparing the layout for the first edition of Life on Capitol Hill, which hit the streets March 15, 1975.

I had lived on Capitol Hill for a scant six months but had already observed that the people of the much-maligned neighborhood had a real sense of community. Regardless what others said about crime here, the varied and interesting peoples of this neighborhood had an especially strong pride in their community, a sense of living in a special place.

A month before that first edition I visited the president of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN) and told her of my plans. She was pleasant, but she said something along the lines of, “You have spent the last dozen years living in Lakewood, and you plan to publish a newspaper for our neighborhood?”

That was Rhonda Knop. She went on to become one of Denver’s top Realtors. Her question was well-founded, but I quickly immersed myself in the life of my new-found favorite neighborhood.

I soon learned that Capitol Hill has more organizations (neighborhood, lifestyle, religious, education-related, civic, service, etc.) than any other community in the state.

LIFE began as a weekly with a 15¢ price tag. I quickly learned that that wasn’t going to work. I needed to get as many readers as possible so I could sell ads. Ultimately, advertising is what was going to pay the bills.

We started printing by 20,000 copies. My kids, the kids of friends, and several neighborhood people were our delivery crew in those early days. We delivered the papers to the doorstep of every home, apartment and condo we could get to in “Greater Capitol Hill” (a term we coined for the area between Broadway and Colorado Blvd. from Speer Blvd. to 20th Ave.).

By the following July my new wife-to-be had arrived from rural northern Illinois. She and her daughters joined our door-to-door delivery effort. At the end of that weekend she asked how much money we had made. I had to tell her that we really hadn’t even made enough money to cover that edition’s costs, and I had a few thousand dollars of debt.

She wisely counseled me to not put out another edition until I had enough advertising money in hand to pay for it. LIFE suddenly became a monthly publication.

Over the years that followed a large number of writers, would-be-writers, photographers and cartoonists chose to contribute their work to produce a better neighborhood newspaper. I couldn’t pay them much, but they wrote, photographed and drew anyway.

Early contributors included City Councilwoman Cathy Donohue, State Sen. Barbara Holme and State Reps. Jerry Kopel and Jack McCroskey.

We covered the efforts of legitimate and less-than-legitimate developers as they sought to make their mark on our neighborhoods. Most importantly, we covered the diverse and wonderful people of Capitol Hill, and their efforts (big and small) to make this the best community in the state.

I observed many people as they made a variety of personal contributions to our community, including: Colorado Free University (CFU) founder John Hand, former DA Dale Tooley, Mike Henry, Jack Robinson (former leader of Colfax on the Hill), Tom Knorr (long-time community activist & executive director of CHUN), Sally Kurtzman, Walt Young, and Grandma “A” (Anderson), who used her life to support many neighborhood efforts while helping numerous young people.

They are just a few of the many special people I count it a privilege to have known and worked with.

Capitol Hill has also always had its share of characters too, of course, many of whom I have known. One example: Sid King, who operated the Crazy Horse Bar years ago at Colfax & Marion. Most of the Capitol Hill characters I met over the years shall go un-named, however.

When finances finally allowed, I hired editors to make their mark on our little publication. I always had other entrepreneurial activities that divided my time.

One of the early editors was Dwight Filley. He went on to take a leadership role within Colorado’s Independence Institute, and continues to be a “Fellow” with them. John Kadlecek also spent a few years editing LIFE. He later edited a variety of other newspapers and magazines, including the once-successful glossy Peak To Peak.

Pat Pasco followed John. At the time, Pat’s husband Monty was a Colorado legislator. After editing LIFE, Pat went on to make her mark on the political scene, too, first as a state representative and then as a state senator.

Rory Seeber was my last editor. After working together for a couple of years, I sold LIFE to Rory and his wife Hilleary Waters in 1995. They are still LIFE’s publishers and continue its tradition of serving the people of Capitol Hill.

Read the continuation in 1995 to 2015