Jack Warren, who died at home Feb. 13 at age 76, was a psychiatrist and a lawyer and had a string of racehorses.
But his late father, Ralph Warren, once remarked: “If Jack had just stuck with rodeoing, he could really have amounted to something.”
As a young man, Jack Warren tried to impress Hanna McDowell, whom he had just met, with his bulldogging abilities. But he slid off his horse too early and scraped his forehead across the steer’s horn. He and Hanna later married.
“Mom knew, from that point forward, she was in for the ride of her life,” their daughter Carrie Warren-Gully said at her dad’s service.
Warren was an outgoing man who loved charades, camping out and finding the best parking spot in a lot, said Warren-Gully, who lives in Centennial.
He was so totally focused that when he listened, “you would walk away feeling better,” said his daughter Rebecca Moraja of Englewood.
One of his philosophies was that if you didn’t like the situation you were in, “you should get out, change it,” Moraja said at the service.
Warren also believed many illnesses were psychosomatic and that there was a connection between a person’s mental and physical health, his wife said.
Warren had answers that made sense and sometimes took the edge off a situation, said Warren-Gully. Once when she complained to him about her children, he said, “You should skip having kids and go right to the grandkids. They are so much fun.”
Warren owned about 300 acres near Franktown, where he raised and bred racehorses, owning 50 to 100 at a time, said his son, Sean Warren of Littleton.
He acquainted his children with the horses, but none of them wanted “to spend too much time in a saddle,” Warren-Gully said.
Ralph Jack Warren was born Oct. 25, 1929, in Silverdale, Kan., and earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Kansas. He married McDowell, a lawyer, June 6, 1955.
After doing his residency at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, he moved to Colorado to work as a psychiatrist at Fort Logan Mental Health Center. He earned his law degree at the University of Denver in order to lobby for changes in the health-care system but continued his medical practice.
“We thought about practicing together, kind of like Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn (in the movie ‘Adam’s Rib’), but it didn’t work,” said Hanna Warren, laughing.
In addition to his wife, son and two daughters, he is survived by another daughter, Laurel Warren of Englewood; eight grandchildren; and his sister, Vicki Churchman of Wichita, Kan.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
