Liz Grady was “ebullient and unflaggingly enthusiastic” and there was hardly a volunteer project she couldn’t organize, said her son George Priest of New Haven, Conn.
Grady, a standard-bearer of Jefferson County Republican activities, died in Denver on Friday at age 87.
Services will be at 2 p.m. Friday at Fairmount Cemetery, 430 S. Quebec St. A reception will follow, and, as was her wish, a jazz band will play.
Whether it was chili suppers, door-to-door campaigning or cleaning the pots and pans, Grady was there.
“She never delegated,” said Priest.
But she did volunteer her son to serve the chili.
“I was the slave,” he said, laughing.
“She had a natural gift for relating to people and inspiring them,” said former Jefferson County Commissioner Pat Holloway, whom Grady inspired to run for office.
“She made you feel you were the most important person, and she was persuasive,” Holloway said. “She would have been good at anything.”
She had lifelong beliefs about duty to country. Putting “principle above romance,” she broke off an engagement with a young man who said he was going to become a conscientious objector during World War II, said Priest.
Grady, awarded the Minoru Yasui Community Volunteer Award in 2002, was a founder of the Jefferson County Women’s Republican Club and the Westernaires, a precision horse-riding club; was president of the Assistance League of Denver; and was active in the Symphony Guild, Denver Lyric Opera Guild, Lutheran Medical Center Auxiliary and Jefferson County Historical Commission.
Grady might have become a lawyer rather than an extreme volunteer, Priest said, but her mother wouldn’t let her go to college.
Instead, she went to Denver’s Barnes Business College and became a legal secretary.
“She could easily have been a lawyer. She was a good student,” said Priest, a law professor at Yale University.
Elizabeth Steinmetz was born in Denver on June 13, 1918, and graduated from South High School.
She married George Priest in 1943. He later became a state legislator, district attorney and chief judge of the 1st Judicial District in Golden.
After his death, she married Frank J. Grady, a retired Air Force officer, who is also deceased.
In addition to her son, she is survived by her daughter, Barbara Battle of Denver; eight grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; two stepdaughters; five stepgrandchildren; and seven stepgreat-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her other son, Robert Priest.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
