For innumerable festival fans, Tom Johnson Knorr, who died Jan. 13 at age 70, personified the comfortably funky People’s Fair, the annual spring rite he groomed into one of the nation’s most successful arts- and-crafts fairs.
He cut a distinct figure with his pale blond hair and singular sartorial style, exemplified in a photo on the online memorial page (www.chundenver.org/home.shtml) created by Capital Hill United Neighbors, an organization he directed for 12 years. In the picture, Knorr wears a black hat, a matching cape and a sly grin as he strides down Denver’s Colfax Avenue.
He came of age in Colorado Springs, where he graduated from prestigious Fountain Valley Academy before earning a business degree from the University of Kansas and then joining the U.S. Air Force. He commanded a squadron at Lowry Air Force Base and served as an Air Force chaplain in Vietnam.
Knorr also was an ordained Episcopal priest who led several churches in Wichita before returning to Denver, where he went into private practice as a psychotherapist.
His vocations shaped a compassion that combined optimism and pragmatism. Knorr needed both for the staggering amount of volunteer work he performed with CHUN and other organizations serving neighborhoods, at-risk youth, the homeless and community-policing advocates.
His volunteer work prompted the Denver City Council to declare Oct. 28, 2004, “Tom Knorr Day in Denver,” with a resolution citing the “innumerable times” Knorr had appeared before the City Council, public hearings and other meetings “of every sort, kind and description (more times) than any citizen cadre, let alone one individual, could ever imagine or hope to brave and abide.”
Knorr became an inextricable part of the Capitol Hill People’s Fair, which began in 1972 as a giant block party on Capitol Hill’s Clarkson Street and burgeoned over the next decades into an extravagant two-day pageant attracting crowds of 250,000. He took pride in watching people in tie-dyed tank tops and flip- flops sauntering alongside well- heeled collectors inspecting the juried art exhibits.
Knorr believed firmly in maintaining high standards for the art, judged by a 16-member panel of artists.
“It’s the quality of workmanship and how much the original materials have been altered,” he told The Denver Post in 2004, explaining the judging criteria. “In other words, if somebody buys some beads at the Merchandise Mart and puts them on a string, the jury doesn’t look very kindly at that.”
Knorr also chaired and helped design the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative and maintained close ties to the groups serving the poor and displaced.
His marriage to Mary Kay Knorr ended in divorce.
Survivors include partner David Cook of Denver; sons William Knorr and Tom Knorr Jr., both of Boulder; daughter Katherine Cole of Louisville; and four grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
