Hal Shroyer, once described as a “persistent and full-throated” Republican activist, died in a Commerce City care center Friday. He was 88.
A service is planned at 10 a.m. Saturday at Horan & McConaty funeral home, 9998 Grant St. in Thornton.
“He was a rare breed of being bombastic and tough on the exterior” but kind on the inside, said former longtime legislator Ted Strickland of Westminster.
Strickland recalled Shroyer getting Strickland to go with him on a Sunday to help a family en route to California that had been stalled in Denver. They had been sleeping in their van, and their two boys had been overcome by carbon monoxide.
Shroyer bought new tires for the van and paid for the couple to stay in a motel overnight.
“Don’t tell anyone we did this,” Shroyer cautioned. “I didn’t do a thing,” Strickland said. “You did it all.”
Known as someone who could get things done, Shroyer once bragged to the Adams County Republicans (of which he was chairman for years) that he could get presidential candidate Ronald Reagan to come to the county to speak at a Lincoln Day dinner. No one believed him, but Shroyer went to Washington, made his plea and produced Reagan at the dinner. “After that, he was ‘Mr. Republican,’ ” said Strickland.
“He was a formidable opponent,” said Freda Poundstone, former lobbyist and Republican activist. “He was always able to deliver the votes.”
“He was a stickler for honesty,” said Strickland, “If you weren’t honest with Hal, you were dead meat.”
Shroyer was a moderate Republican, said his daughter, Indy Blaney-Brown of Westminster. “He never told us kids we had to stand up for what we believed. We just watched him do it.”
“He was mainly interested in electing good people and keeping the government out of our lives,” Blaney-Brown said.
In 1998, Shroyer became involved in a protracted dispute with the state Republican chairman, who he felt had led the party too far to the right, and, for a time, Shroyer was barred from the GOP headquarters because of the feud.
In one Denver Post editorial, Shroyer was described as having a “bare-knuckle style and ironclad integrity.”
Harold Bowman Shroyer was born in Peru, Ind., on Feb. 1, 1921, and graduated from high school there. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
He married Maxine Fullerton on April 6, 1945. She also was a Republican activist, and the two made “one of Colorado’s most effective political partnerships,” according to a Denver Post editorial written at the time of her death in 1995.
His entire career was with International Carbonic Inc., for whom he sold ice machines and soft-drink dispensers.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two sons, J. Michael Shroyer of Denver and Harold Douglas Shroyer of Minot, N.D.; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
