Granby was a town of about 500 people in 1953 when Robert Warden pulled his car up in front of the Granby Drug Store.
His wife, Shirley Warden, was unimpressed with the looks of the town, and said, “Don’t even go in. Let’s go back to Fort Collins.”
But Robert Warden went in, and the two of them stayed in Granby for the next 50 years.
Robert Warden, who eventually became co-owner of Granby Drug and mayor of the town, died of cancer May 21 at age 77.
Shirley Warden said she and her husband soon came to love Granby. Robert Warden loved being a pharmacist, even if it meant sometimes working seven days a week, or getting up in the middle of the night to fill a prescription, his wife said.
“He loved the contact with the people,” said his son, Steve Warden of Denver. When Steve Warden chose the law for a career, his dad said, “A pharmacist is the most popular person in town. A lawyer isn’t,” recalled the younger Warden, laughing.
Unlike some Granby residents, the Wardens didn’t come down from the mountains in the winter.
“They were there 365 days a year,” Steve Warden said.
And they were there the day a year ago when residents fled an armored bulldozer driven by Marvin Heemeyer, who was intent on destroying as much property as possible.
The Wardens lived less than two blocks away from the town hall, one of 13 buildings Hee meyer destroyed or damaged.
They “sat in their car at the airport listening to the radio about what was going on,” said his daughter, Dana Warden Andrews of Denver.
Robert Warden was on the Granby Town Council, on the Sanitation District Board, the Mountain Parks Electric Board and the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Board, as well as an elder in the Church of the Eternal Hills in Tabernash.
“In a little town you end up doing everything,” Steve Warden said.
Robert Warden was an early and avid skier at Winter Park, well before the days of chair lifts, Andrews said.
“We got to the top of Winter Park on a T-bar,” she said.
The Wardens lived in Granby until October, when they moved to Denver.
Robert Rusk Warden was born Sept. 24, 1927, in Pueblo, graduated from Centennial High School there and served in the Army Air Forces.
He married Shirley Ann Wetzel of Tribune, Kan., on May 25, 1948, and two years later graduated from the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy. He was a pharmacist in La Junta and Fort Collins before moving to Granby.
In addition to his wife, son and daughter, Warden is survived by two grandchildren and a sister, Alice Marie Olsen of Iola, Kan.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
