John Davoren, a former state legislator who opposed the site for Denver International Airport, died Nov. 2. He was 84 and had suffered from stomach cancer.
Davoren, who represented Adams County in the state House, opposed the DIA site, saying the air traffic would inflict high noise levels on nearby neighborhoods. Adams County “is being sold down the river of noise,” he told a reporter at the time.
His choice for the airport was farther east and north, said his daughter, Cindy Nowak of Aurora.
He acknowledged he was viewed skeptically.
“I’m kind of a fanatic. But it’s for the people of these communities,” he told a reporter in 1986.
“He was an inventive and creative man,” said Phil Goodstein, a Denver historian and author.
The two became friends because of their concern about DIA and their mutual interest in Denver history. Davoren was a third-generation Denverite. He provided the title of one of Goodstein’s books, “From Soup Lines to the Front Lines.”
While a state representative from 1978 to 1984, Davoren worked to get his colleagues to set up a comprehensive water policy that would protect Colorado water rights.
Twice he tried to get the legislature to pass a bill that would require residents to remove metal-studded snow tires from their cars in summer to protect the roads.
Davoren pushed for a hazardous-waste facility and the monitoring of waste disposal.
“He had a way of leading you to a conclusion that was conversational rather than confrontational,” said JoAnn Groff of Westminster, who served with Davoren in the legislature. Groff is now Colorado property-tax administrator.
The legislature was the only elective office Davoren ever held or ran for, Nowak said.
Davoren, a Democrat, never pushed political discussion at home, his daughter said, adding, “When I registered as an independent, it really sent him into a tizzy.”
John B. Davoren Jr., was born on an Indian reservation near Globe, Ariz., where his father had a job. The family moved to Denver in 1929, and John Davoren graduated from Regis High School. He attended Western State College in Gunnison.
He served with the Marines in the 1940s and in the Army during the Korean War.
He married Patricia Lee Turner Jones in November 1954. She died in 2003.
He was a reporter for International News Service (now part of United Press International) and KOA radio and TV. One of his prize pictures, Nowak said, shows Davoren with then-Sen. John F. Kennedy, whom he had interviewed on KOA.
For several years, Davoren did public relations for the National Farmers Union Insurance Co., and during part of that time he was in the legislature.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two sons, Mike Davoren of Wheat Ridge and Tom Davoren of Aurora; five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
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Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
