More than 1,500 people paid their respects to Leslie Fishbein, the popular and inspirational woman known throughout the metro area as the spokeswoman for Kacey Fine Furniture.
Fishbein’s memorial service Friday was at Temple Emanuel in east Denver. She died Wednesday, two weeks after suffering a severe reaction to a routine injection for chronic back pain.
Mayor John Hickenlooper, who rented one of Fishbein’s warehouses 20 years ago to start his first successful microbrewery and restaurant, jokingly referred to her as the “empress of fine furniture.”
“Leslie was always encouraging people to live their dreams,” Hickenlooper said. “She was filled with humor. She loved life, she loved her family, her business, her friends, her community. . . . So many people in the community said they knew her although they had never met her.”
Fishbein was best known for her frequent television ads for the furniture company she ran with her husband, Sam Fishbein, and her parents, Jack and Shirley Barton, who started the company in the 1950s.
Mike McPhee, The Denver Post
