Barbara Young was a landscape architect, did paintings and worked for an arts journal, but she never worked in economics, in which she had a degree.
Young died at a care center Sept. 12. She was 83.
A memorial is planned at 2 p.m. Nov. 10 at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, East 13th Avenue and Clarkson Street. A reception, at which many of her paintings will be displayed, will follow at the Mayfair Community Building, 6890 E. 12th Ave.
Young designed gardens for the governor’s mansion during the late John Love’s administration, worked for the Denver parks department and designed gardens at the Auraria campus and for many huge homes in east Denver, said her daughter Betsy Sweeney of Aurora.
One of her first jobs, in the 1940s, was sketching advertising for The Denver Post, where her future husband, Allen Young, worked as a music critic. He died in 2007.
Barbara Young sketched women’s fashions and real-estate ads at The Post.
They married June 24, 1950.
She took classes to get a license as a city planner and did that work for Englewood. While there, she designed a 12-mile bicycle path going from southeast Denver to Englewood.
For several years, she worked for Jane Silverstein Ries, a well-known local landscape architect.
Young and her husband also published a small weekly journal called The Lively Arts, in which he reviewed musical and theatrical performances and she did the sketches.
The family sometimes staged musicals in the basement of their home with neighbors as the audience. The Youngs’ son Andy, of Oakland, Calif., recalled of “A Christmas Carol,” “We loved it.”
“She was very creative,” whether it was cooking, the variety of books she read or the art she did, said her daughter Sarah Young of San Francisco.
Barbara Jean Stroup was born in Monte Vista on Dec. 13, 1924.
She graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
She spent a year as a self-described “ski bum in Aspen,” said Sarah Young.
A lifelong amateur artist, she studied art after retiring from landscape architecture and joined Blake Street Studios, now the site of Coors Field.
Her work included landscapes, the human figure, abstract paintings and some sculpture. She displayed at the Blake Street location as well as several Denver galleries, the Littleton Arts Depot, Colorado History Museum and a gallery in Buena Vista.
In addition to her son and daughters, she is survived by another son, David Young of Petaluma, Calif.; three grandchildren; and her sister, Dorothy Stroup of Berkeley, Calif. She was preceded in death by her grandson David D. Young.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
