The four Women Who’ve Changed the Heart of the City are as different as they are remarkable. Hearing each of them share advice and little-known facts about themselves added humorand heart — to an afternoon tea held at the Brown Palace Hotel.
Linda Alvarado, LaFawn Biddle, Arlene Hirschfeld and Lily Nie are the second group to be given this title; the inaugural edition was in 2009.
As 300-some guests nibbled on scones and sweets, Gina Schreck, who chaired this benefit for Denver Rescue Mission with Jane McDonald, sat down with the honorees, TV talk-show-style, to toss out questions that brought some informative and amusing answers.
Describing herself as “A woman, a vegetarian, an Hispanic,” Alvarado acknowledged that while “I have helped open doors, especially for women, I’ve also been amazed by the number of women who’ve asked me what I’m trying to prove.” The president/CEO of Alvarado Construction also is part-owner of the Colorado Rockies, a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame and a former commissioner of the White House Initiative for Hispanic Excellence in Education.
Biddle, whose daughters were born with profound hearing loss, has focused her volunteer efforts in the health care and child welfare arenas, holding local and national leadership positions in causes ranging from the Colorado Oral Deaf Preschool Project to Tennyson Center for Children. But, she confided, “The reason I become a life member of groups like Friends of Nursing is because I can never remember to pay my (annual) dues. When you are a life member you only have to make that one payment.”
A past president of the Junior League of Denver and 2006 inductee into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame, Hirschfeld is a Denver native and former teacher who believes “Everyone has gifts; whatever we do, big or small, counts.” And the best way to get people involved? “Ask them.”
Hirschfeld was particularly touched that Graland Country Day School, from which her two sons graduated and on whose parent council she served, bought a table for the tea. “Graland has been a very big part of our family for so many years,” she said, “and the fact that (head of school) Ronni McCaffrey was at the tea with Tom Rice, Phil Hickey and Kathy Kosal, who had taught my sons, was so very special.”
Like Hirschfeld, Lily Nie believes that every good deed counts. “If all we do is a little, we are doing a lot,” she maintains.
Nie, founder of the Centennial- based Chinese Children Adoption International, was raised in China during the Cultural Revolution. She has a law degree from Fushun University and worked as an attorney in China before coming to the United States in 1987 to marry Joshua Zhong, who had been allowed to leave China to attend Bible college in South Carolina.
The couple moved to Colorado and worked as janitors while continuing their education at Colorado Christian University and the University of Phoenix.
Joanne Davidson: 303-809-1314 or jdavidson@denverpost.com; also, and GetItWrite on Twitter
