Ted Stockmar couldn’t get a job in petroleum engineering after he graduated from Colorado School of Mines, so he became a lawyer.
The well-known attorney never got back to engineering, but he nevertheless became one of Mines’ biggest donors.
Stockmar died after a short illness Dec. 28. He was 88. Memorial service plans are pending.
“He loved the law every day of his career,” said his son Brian Stockmar of Denver.
“Ted played a major role in building Holme Roberts & Owen in the 1950s and 1960s into the vibrant firm we enjoy today,” said Phillip Clark, a colleague at the firm.
Clark called Stockmar “a giant of a man” who had “intellect, confidence, humor and a great passion for life.”
“He was a creative, imaginative lawyer,” said Paul Holleman of Denver, retired senior partner in natural resources law at Holme Roberts & Owen, the department in which Stockmar worked.
He was also a creative skier, or as Clark said, “a hellacious skier.”
He had learned to ski on barrel staves, Brian Stockmar said, and therefore didn’t know how to make turns.
“He just went bombing down the slopes,” Stockmar said. Once, he “bombed out of the trees” at Vail, did a flip and landed upside down with such force “that he blew the capillaries in his face.”
Though bloody-faced, he received only bruises otherwise.
“He was utterly fearless,” Stockmar said.
His father was just as fearless as an Army Air Corps flight trainer. The planes were old and in bad shape, and he crashed five times, his son said.
“You walked away from all of them,” Brian Stockmar said to his father.
“I ran from all of them,” replied the senior Stockmar.
For years, Ted Stockmar was on the board at Mines and the school’s foundation board. Over the years, he gave and helped raised millions of dollars for the school, his son said, as well as “winning every award they gave.”
“He basically founded our foundation,” said Mines president Bill Scoggins, “which assured the high academic stature of this institution for current and future students.”
Ted Paul Stockmar was born May 9, 1921, in Denver, graduated from South High School and earned his law degree at the University of Denver.
He married Suzanne Harl in 1947. She died in 2008.
In addition to his son, he is survived by another son, Stephen Stockmar of Scio, Ore.; his daughter, Anne Upton, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine; three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Inside.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
