Regina Black, who worked to save historical places, died Jan. 1 at her Denver home. She was 89.
Black spearheaded the drive in 2002-06 to raise $2 million so the Hotel de Paris Museum in Georgetown could be a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The property is still owned by the Colonial Dames, of which Black was a longtime member.
“She took it upon herself and never stopped until she had raised the money,” said Barbara Pahl, regional director of the National Trust, which in 2007 gave Black the annual preservation award.
Black and her late husband, Robert, also founded the Grand County Historical Association.
Black “was always rather formal,” said her daughter, Bea Hoverstock of Boulder.
“She could be tough, and she went by the rules,” she said.
But Black, known as Reggie, and as Dodeda to family members, was as comfortable dressed for the symphony or opera as she was on the family ranch.
She loved to ride horses, drove a Jeep around the ranch and drove cars from the time she was 11 years old. She taught her six children and many of her grandchildren to drive early too.
She recently told Hoverstock that if it had been the “acceptable” thing to do in the 1930s, she would have tried her hand at car racing.
Though she wore jeans at the ranch, they were ironed with a crease in each leg, said her granddaughter Molly Hoverstock of Boulder.
She would cook for the ranch crew or pack lunches for visiting relatives, don her ranch hat and work gloves and take them to check the wells.
Her grandson Joe Hoverstock of Boulder said she “was a petite and perfect lady with a ranch hand’s toughness.”
Regina Maleham was born in Denver on Sept. 21, 1920.
She graduated from Kent School and attended Wellesley College. She married Robert C. Black III in 1939. They lived in Atlanta; Troy, N.Y.; and Hartford, Conn., where he had college teaching jobs, before returning to Colorado in 1966.
When she had two of her six children at home, she returned to college and earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Denver. Robert Black died in 2001.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by five sons: Maleham Black and John N. Black of Boulder; R. Clifford Black IV of Washington, D.C.; Peter N. Black of Louisville; and James A. Black of Kensington, Md.; 14 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and her sister, Bebe Sheehan of New York.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
