The family legend is that Jim Jordan was painting his parents’ house in Denver one day in the 1940s and he heard a new ski area had opened in Aspen.
He hung the paint bucket on the ladder, went to Aspen and didn’t return until spring.
Jordan, who died Feb. 12, never lost his love for skiing and built a house in Morrison so he would be nearer the slopes.
A private service for Jordan, who was 82, will be held at the family home at 1 p.m. Saturday.
He worked as a waiter at the Jerome Hotel that season. One day a skier walked through the lobby, and Jordan noticed he had his ski boots on the wrong feet. Jordan told the man about his boots. Actor Gary Cooper laughed and switched his boots.
Learning to ski was “mandatory” for Jordan’s seven children, said his son Jim Jordan Jr. of Idledale.
Jim Jordan Jr. can recall his father, mother, all the kids and usually friends of the kids loading a nine-seat Ford station wagon on weekends and heading for the slopes. There were only rope tows, T-bars or poma lifts — no chairs.
In the 1950s, Jordan bought a lot in view of Red Rocks Amphitheater for $750, and a friend loaned him $8,500 to build a house. Banks thought “Morrison was too far away” to merit a loan, said Jordan’s wife, Mary Jordan.
Jordan, an electrician, traded skills with friends who had different talents, and together they got the Jordan house built in 1957.
Jordan was an early member of an international organization for companies that test electrical equipment in huge buildings. He owned Jordan Electric.
Jordan was an early town volunteer: on the town board, on the volunteer fire department and as mayor in the early 1990s.
Jordan’s friends praise him as about the nicest guy they ever met, but Mary Jordan said a lot of people in Morrison didn’t like him because he was so direct with people.
“He always told the truth,” sometimes with the line, “the truth is the truth, dammit,” said his wife.
“He didn’t suffer fools gladly,” said golfing friend E. C. Johnson of Aurora. “He had a great sense of humor, and sometimes it could be caustic. He was good at measuring people.”
William James Jordan was born Sept. 28, 1926, and was reared in east Denver. He joined the Navy at 17 and served in the Pacific.
His first wife, Helen McGrath, the mother of his children, died several years ago. He married Mary Denton, who brought two children to the union.
In addition to her and his son, Jordan is survived by daughters Kathy Jordan of Morrison; Cindy Jordan of Hayden; Peggy Berrada, Patricia Jordan and Julie Spacek, all of Idledale; Leslie St. Louis of Littleton; and Jessica Dover of Portland, Ore. His son Steve Jordan preceded him in death.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
