Willis McFarlane, a Denver champion of business, civic involvement and personal style, died Thursday after a long struggle with cancer. He was 75.
A native of Cleveland, McFarlane was chairman of Denver-based Associated Inns and Restaurants Co. of America Hospitality Services, known as AIRCOA, a company he founded in 1958 that grew into one of the largest management hotel chains in the world.
He sold the company in 1989 for $52 million. At about the same time, he started a new venture, the Denver Buffalo Co., a restaurant and “trading post” to serve bison from his 14,000-acre ranch in Elbert County.
He also engineered the resurgence of the embattled and financially troubled symphony in Denver. McFarlane served on the steering committee that merged the Denver Symphony into a newly created Colorado Symphony Orchestra in 1990 and then served as CSO chairman.
McFarlane had been sick for a long time, including a lung transplant five years ago, said his wife, Sue, Thursday evening. He died about 3 p.m. from a combination of effects from his illness, she said.
He would want to be remembered as a good businessman, but he was so much more, she said.
“He was a larger-than-life kind of guy,” she said. “He did so much for the community. He was proudest of what he did with the symphony.”
McFarlane was far from the white-tux-with-tails type, she said.
In a 1992 article in The Denver Post, McFarlane described his personal style.
“For the most part, I dress in bolo ties, cowboy boots, traditional Levi’s, a buffalo buckle and white duster — except when I have to look like a three-piece-suiter in pinstripes to raise money for the Colorado Symphony.”
McFarlane had many interests: He rode horses, skied, sailed, played tennis and ran his ranches with the same gusto he had for business, his wife said.
“He was a renaissance man,” she said. “He was an innovator. He was positive, optimistic. He loved his family and friends. He just tackled life.”
John Moritz of Boulder, McFarlane’s friend of 25 years, visited McFarlane at Porter Adventist Hospital on Thursday morning, just a few hours before McFarlane died.
He could not speak, but his eyes lifted when Moritz told him that soon his friends would be leaving for an annual tarpon-fishing trip in the Florida Keys.
“He was a remarkable man,” Moritz said. “He was the only guy I knew who could ride a horse, cook a souffle, shoot a shotgun extremely well, build a grandfather clock and inspire others to do good things for their community.”
McFarlane also is survived by five children, Scott, Peter and Geoff McFarlane, Sara Armstrong and Anne Nichols.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
