Gwyneth Keith, a veterans’ activist and advocate for adults with developmental disabilities, died June 1 at the Fowler Care Center in Fowler. She was 86.
Keith, a native of Denver, served in the Navy from 1942 until 1946, serving in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).
The WAVES was formed to free men for duty at sea. Keith was a radio operator in Key West, Fla., and Havana, transmitting ship-to-shore and shore-to-shore communication, her family said.
She lobbied for veterans, was on the Colorado Board of Veterans’ Affairs for 12 years and later served on the state Selective Service Board.
Keith and her husband, the late Vincent Keith, were longtime volunteers at Platte River Industries, an agency that helps the developmentally disabled get employment training and jobs.
One of their daughters, Nancy Keith of La Junta, is developmentally disabled, and “Mom was so devoted to her,” said another daughter, Diane Keith of Bridgewater, Mass.
Gwyneth Keith was the founding president of the board and later was one of those who started a pretzel business, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, to make money for Platte River.
“She was a creative woman with a lot of energy,” said Robert Smith, president and chief executive of Platte River Industries. Keith volunteered many hours a week during her 18 years with Platte River, raising money, doing outreach and being a liaison with government agencies.
“Some lives are ‘big’ in a quiet way,” Diane Keith said.
Keith also had an estimated 400 hippopotamus figures she had collected, in every size, material and color.
She began collecting hippos after she and her husband visited Hawaii and she saw a picture of a man holding a hippo’s head in his lap.
She always went to the zoo to visit the baby hippos. Her collection includes wood, metal, glass, concrete, plastic, ceramic and fabric hippos and salt and pepper shakers, bracelets, earrings and necklaces with hippos on them.
Her granddaughter Delaney Wendland of Massachusetts made her a purple papier-mâche hippo head, said her daughter RuAnn Keith of La Junta.
Gwyneth Imogene Collins was born in Denver on Jan. 30, 1923, and graduated from North High School.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in airline administration from the University of Denver and had a pilot’s license.
Family and friends could count on her being “slightly outrageous,” said Diane Keith, including the family story that she walked through Carlsbad Caverns wearing green cowboy boots when she was eight months pregnant.
Keith worked for Denver Public Schools in the mailroom and, after raising her family, did consumer research for 10 years, retiring in 1984.
She married Vincent Stuart Keith in 1947. He died in 1994.
In addition to her daughters, she is survived by two grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
