She was a housekeeper in a hotel. She did this for 46 years, or since the time I was in first grade — vacuuming, making beds, cleaning tubs, sinks and toilets. Forty-six years.
I wanted to know about Martha Lopez Gallegos.
I met with her husband, Sylvian, and her children, Kathy and Larry, at a Westminster funeral home as they made arrangements for the service Friday at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
“It was her life,” Sylvian said.
It was 1963, she was a mother of three and newly divorced. She needed a job.
She would not be like her parents, who, the day their east Denver home burned to the ground, took her and two siblings to St. Clare’s Orphanage. It was supposed to be for a short time.
Her parents visited often in those first days. And then days, weeks and months passed before they showed. Soon, they never did again.
She applied for jobs everywhere, stopping at the Brown Palace Hotel after getting turned down at the Savoy. Sure, they would hire her, but she had to run the elevator, they told her.
She hated it. Within a week, she had negotiated her way onto the housekeeping staff. The pay was $1 an hour. The babysitter was charging $5 a day. But she would make it work.
She studied the old-timers intently, how to make things just so. Soon, she was skilled enough to make it to the eighth- and ninth-floor rooms and suites, “the fancy rooms,” Larry remembered.
“She met every president, almost every star,” Sylvian said. “She loved Clint Eastwood. Neil Diamond once left her a $200 tip. Oprah, on the other hand, didn’t give her a penny.”
She and Sylvian, then a maintenance worker at the Brown, met there 21 years ago.
During the Denver Summit of the Eight in 1997, she was on the top floor when she came around a corner and saw President Bill Clinton. He immediately called her over, summoned a photographer.
“The staff promised they were going to send it,” Sylvian, 62, said. “They never did. She always wanted that picture.”
She knew every room in the Brown. If there was a question, staff called her.
“I always told her she should take the promotions they were offering, but she always said no, that she would then have to be mean to the other girls,” her husband said.
Marcel Pitton, the managing director, nearly cried when speaking of Martha Gallegos. He and his wife live on the ninth floor. Martha, he said, was like family.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone of such a pleasant disposition. It is more than the 46 years. She was just a wonderful person.”
She was diagnosed with colon cancer five years ago. Doctors gave her maybe two years to live.
She worked every shift, catching the bus in Thornton for the ride into Denver, no matter the weather.
“I got her a car. She tells me she doesn’t like to drive,” Sylvian says, shrugging.
Pitton saw her deteriorating this summer. Finally, on July 1, she told him she could do no more, and went home.
He wanted to host a retirement party in one of the ballrooms. Could it wait until she was off oxygen? she asked. People shouldn’t see her like this, she said.
He scheduled it for July 15.
“She couldn’t do it,” Sylvian said.
Martha Gallegos died Sunday, a month and one week after completing her last shift.
She was 69.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
