Barbara Johnson Hartley, former chairwoman of the Helen K. and Arthur E. Johnson Foundation, died at her home June 27 after a long illness. She was 88.
A service is planned at 1 p.m. Wednesday at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, East 13th Avenue and Clarkson Street.
The Denver-based Johnson Foundation, founded by her parents, annually gives away about $7 million to charities, said Jack Alexander, foundation president.
The foundation gives money to many social service agencies and community services, including money to help feed and shelter the homeless and help victims of abuse, as well as money to local universities, he said.
Barbara Hartley was given the Heart of Gold Award by the Food Bank of the Rockies in 1993 and was named one of the 100 First Ladies of Charity in America in 1985.
“She was a classy person, with an offbeat sense of humor,” said her granddaughter Berit Campion of Salt Lake City. “We were staying at her place one night and before bed she said, ‘If you need anything in the middle of the night, don’t call me.’ That was really against type,” Campion said.
Campion said her grandmother “was always a keeper of secrets,” including secrets Campion would share about a current boyfriend.
Hartley played the card game Spite and Malice every day from 5 to 6 p.m. She played for only pennies or dimes, but she’d always win a “giant horde of money,” Campion said.
Barbara Hartley loved animals, and her family gave the Denver Zoo one of its two hippos — Bertie, now pushing 53.
“She loved Bertie and went to visit him even after her eyesight failed,” said her daughter Lynn Campion-Waddell of Hailey, Idaho.
“She never flaunted her place in life and quietly gave to organizations by herself, outside the foundation.”
She volunteered with the USO, Visiting Nurses Association, Children’s Hospital and the Red Cross.
Barbara Johnson was born in Denver on Aug. 5, 1920, and graduated from Kent School and Bennett College in Millbrook, N.Y. She attended the New York School of Fine Arts and worked as an instructor at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio, often giving ballroom dance demonstrations at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
An avid horsewoman, at age 10 she was named princess for the National Western Stock Show, riding her horse, General Pershing. A few years later, she was named Best Girl Rider of the West.
She married Gerald Ryan Hillyard in 1941. He died in 1976. She later married James R. Hartley, president of Hartley House Interiors.
In addition to her daughter Lynn and granddaughter Berit, she is survived by another daughter, Laurie Hillyard of West Valley, Utah, another granddaughter, Ashley Campion of Portland, Ore., and three great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her second husband and her son, Gerald Ryan Hillyard Jr.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
