DENVER — Kathy Willenbrecht remembers the Denver of a different era – the Denver of her youth, when Christmas decorations filled the windows of downtown department stores each December, when a special day meant a trip to the movies and an ice cream sundae.
“Going downtown was like a big occasion,” Willenbrecht said. “And of course, my mom would get dressed up in heels and white gloves and the whole bit to go downtown.”
Willenbrecht remembers her mother’s pride when she got a job at a downtown insurance agency, and the fish-and-chips restaurant she and her friends would sometimes sneak off to at lunchtime.
And intertwined with those memories are other images from her life – moving pictures flickering on a television screen in her mind’s eye.
The innocence of childhood embodied by shows like the Mickey Mouse Club, Howdy Doody and Romper Room.
The horror of political violence laid bare by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
The wonder of space exploration triggered by the moon landing.
Today is Willenbrecht’s 70th birthday – a birthday she shares with 9NEWS, which went on the air for the first time 11 hours after she was born. She grew up here, and although though she left twice – once for a few years while her husband, Gene, was in the Navy, and another time for 13 years when they lived in South Dakota – Willenbrecht has spent the bulk of her life in the Denver area.
And she’s been watching TV as long as she can remember, giving her a unique perspective on her own life and the role that television, and Channel 9, have played in it.
Early memories
Willenbrecht was born at 3:16 a.m. on that Sunday.
“I was born at St. Anthony's Hospital here in Denver when there was only one St. Anthony’s hospital,” she said.
That her arrival actually happened at the hospital brings a laugh.
Her parents were home at the small apartment they rented along Sheridan Boulevard when her mother realized the baby was coming.
“She kept telling my dad, it's getting close, it’s getting close,” Willenbrecht said.
But there was one problem.
“When it was time, he didn't have any gas,” she said, and he had to stop to fill up on the way to the hospital.
He made it, obviously, and in the ensuing years, Willenbrecht was joined by two sisters. There’s a picture of her with her two sisters, together on the living room floor in front of a television.
“We had a small, black-and-white TV for a long time,” she says. “And then we had one that was in this cabinet.”
That some of her earliest memories revolve around television might not be a surprise. TVs came into wide use during the early years of her life. By one estimate, there were between 2,000 and 4,000 sets in Denver-area homes in July 1952, when the city’s first TV station, KFEL Channel 2, now KWGN, went on the air.
Three months later, when Channel 9 debuted – and Willenbrecht was born – it was estimated that televisions were in 40,000 area homes.
“I know for sure we would always watch the Mickey Mouse Club,” she said. “I wanted a pair of Mickey Mouse ears more than anything. And I remember my mom and dad were trying so hard to find a pair for me, and I think they finally did.”
She remembers other TV shows, too, that perfectly embody the innocence of her early childhood, like Howdy Doody and Romper Room.
And she remembers the times TV was there during not-so-good times, like the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963.
“I had been sick that day, so I was at home – and it was my sister's birthday,” Willenbrecht said. “My mom never had the TV on during the day, but our next-door neighbor did. So she came running over and she said, ‘Turn on the TV, turn on the TV – you need to turn on the TV.’ ”
The news was shocking: An assassin had killed President Kennedy.
“I wasn't at school,” Willenbrecht said. “It wasn't like I heard that news at school. I remember actually watching that on the TV while I was at home with my mom.”
She remembers other similar tragedies, like the murders of King and Bobby Kennedy, and she remembers watching election results with her dad.
And there was the day in 1969 when American astronauts walked on the moon.
“That was just so amazing to be able to see that, thinking that they’re way up there on the moon and yet we're getting to see this on TV,” she said.
Denver, then and now
Sitting at her kitchen table in her and Gene’s Littleton home, Willenbrecht thumbs through mementoes of her life. A white button with red letters on it. A high school yearbook. A photo album.
“The only concert I ever went to – and I didn’t even remember I had this – but it was a Paul Revere and the Raiders concert,” she said, holding the button she bought as a souvenir at the show.
The ticket had cost $5 – a huge sum to her in 1968.
“We’re like $5 – I don't know if we can afford that $5,” she said.
But she did.
She was among the first students to attend what is now Kennedy High School, though at the time the campus also included a junior high school.
“It had just been built,” she said. “It was brand new.”
She points to a photo of her riding in a motor boat at the old Elitch Gardens.
“Elitch’s at that time had a special thing where when you got your report card, they would look at your grades and you would get a certain number of tickets for every A and for every B,” she said. “And so that would be our one day to go to Elitch’s as a family was on report card day, and we would go and get to ride the rides.”
Over her life, Denver has changed a lot.
As a child, going downtown was a big deal, like the time her mother took her and one of her sisters to see "Gone With The Wind" in a theater and then to The Denver’s tearoom for a sundae.
“I remember when I worked, I worked downtown then for a little bit after I got out of high school, and my mom was just so excited that I was going to get to work downtown,” she said. “But it had already started to change somewhat. You know, it was not like she remembered it.”
It’s really not the same now.
She and her husband recently rode a light rail train downtown.
“We were walking through downtown, and I was glad Gene was with me because I really did not feel safe there at all,” she said.
Through all those changes, there’s been one constant – the communal experience she had watching big news events that has never left her. In 1997, Princess Diana’s funeral, the image of her sons, William and Harry, walking in the procession still vivid in her mind 25 years later.
Last month, Queen Elizabeth’s.
“Obviously, we can't go over there to London, but we can watch it here,” she said.
Contact 9Wants to Know investigator Kevin Vaughan with tips about this or any story: kevin.vaughan@9news.com or 303-871-1862.
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