Preservationist Barbara Sudler Hornby, who died Sunday at age 80, revitalized the Colorado Historical Society during her 10 years of leadership there.
Services will be held at 3 p.m. Friday at St. John’s Cathedral, 1350 Washington St.
Her elfin looks belied a tenacity that provoked fear as well as respect. Hornby compared herself to the stage manager in “Our Town,” a role Thornton Wilder invented to operate outside conventional limits.
At the Colorado Historical Society, Hornby transformed the organization’s skeletal exhibits collection.
She was the eldest of three children born to U.S. Navy Commander Leo Welch and Barbara Petrikin Welch, and granddaughter of Great Western Sugar Co. chief executive Will Petrikin.
When she was 3, her father taught her to read by reciting lines from Shakespeare. He also expected her bedroom to pass a weekly white-glove test. This exasperated Hornby as a child but inculcated the exacting standards she later demanded from her staff.
She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1944. Six years later, following a brief marriage that ended in divorce, she married Denver architect James Sudler II.
During her mid-40s, she began working at Sudler’s architectural office, learning management skills and grooming connections that served her so well during her five years as director of the nonprofit Historic Denver.
Hornby became executive director of the Colorado Historical Society in 1979 and later its president. She supervised the development of the $4 million Georgetown Loop Historic Mining and Railroad Park.
She married former Denver Post senior editor Bill Hornby in 1983, following her second husband’s death.
Survivors include husband Bill Hornby of Denver; James Sudler III of Denver; daughter Eleanor Sudler of Concord, Mass.; and three grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
