GRAND JUNCTION — Tilman “Tillie” Bishop doesn’t want to talk in any nostalgic elder-statesman terms about his soon-to-end 38 years in elected office. No. When asked to sum up a career that made “Tillie” a well-known name across Colorado and a synonym for decency in politics, the 78-year-old Bishop wants to talk details.That shouldn’t be a surprise.
Attention to detail is one in a long list of attributes longtime cronies mention when describing why the Republican Bishop has been such an effective politician over a career beginning with the John Love administration and continuing through the John Hickenlooper administration.
In the 28 years he spent in the Colorado legislature — four in the Colorado House of Representatives and 24 in the Colorado Senate, with the last six of those as president pro tem — Bishop introduced 736 bills. Four hundred fifty-six of those were signed into law.
Add to that 147 resolutions and 32 memorials and Bishop has a legislative success rate of 65 percent.
Bishop flips through a listing of all those measures as he sits in his kitchen sipping hot cocoa, made by Pat, his wife of 59 years. The woman he calls one of his best political advisers and “the speaker of my house” has slipped a doily under his cup and floated marshmallows on the top.
“Oh, here’s a good one,” Bishop says, pointing to a 1979 bill that relieved ski areas of most liability for skier injuries but also placed certain safety requirements on the ski companies. This bill became a template for ski areas across the country.
Two pages later, there’s another one that makes him pause and smile. It is a measure that made it possible for Colorado’s then fledgling wine industry to get off the ground — a true measure of nonpartisanship for a man whose drink of choice is beer on ice.
The finger he drags down the list moves across laws that have helped define Colorado today.
Bishop’s name is attached to energy severance taxes, radioactive mill tailings removal, the creation of the Colorado Department of Transportation, the use of lottery funds for Great Outdoors Colorado projects and the inception of the Colorado Tourism Board.
A host of measures relate to the expansion of Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. He spent seven years teaching in public schools and was in a variety of administrative positions at Colorado Mesa University for 31 years beginning back when it was still a junior college.
There are lesser matters that still have constant impacts: the setting of a grace period for renewing driver’s licenses, building a veterans retirement home, locating a Colorado Welcome Center in Fruita, increasing penalties for big-game poaching, reforming child-welfare laws.
“Tillie never was someone whose goal was personal gain or ideology. He was doing good for his district and good for his state,” said Morgan Smith, who as a Democrat in the legislature and a former head of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs worked closely with Bishop on many issues.
Bishop barely has time to scratch the surface of all those issues in a two-hour interview that must end because he is driving across the Continental Divide for a University of Colorado Board of Regents meeting. He doesn’t have time to go into details of the challenges of his six-year term on that board or the four years he spent as a Mesa County commissioner and his role-reversing four-year stint as a local TV news reporter.
He has announced he won’t seek re-election as a regent at the end of this term. He suffered through bone cancer two years ago — it nearly killed him — and pain in one leg has him fearing he is headed for a relapse. A scan scheduled in several weeks will confirm or dispel that.
He admits worry keeps him awake nights. And the lingering effects of the chemotherapy he underwent have bent his tall, lean frame at the waist and robbed him of some balance. Hearing aids are threaded over both ears. His always carefully combed hair is gone.
But that first bout of cancer couldn’t stop his long run of political service. He continued to participate in regents meetings and to show up as a volunteer leader on many Mesa County boards and civic organizations. Friends say he would be leaning on a cane and in obvious discomfort. But he was there and ready to talk business, not illness. In the middle of his cancer treatment, he managed to stay a top seller of fundraising raffle tickets at his Lions Club.
“He is such an example of work ethic and tenacity,” said Paula Anderson, who serves on a Mesa County volunteer board chaired by Bishop.
That has been recognized many times over the years. Bishop was named Legislator of the Year by 11 entities during his time in office. He had the longest-running tenure on the Audit Committee. He has been given awards and official accolades by everyone from bow hunters and snowmobilers to retired teachers and older American volunteers.
He even received a freedom award from a Russian Jewish group in Massachusetts after his political muscle helped in the release of three political prisoners in Leningrad.
The Unified Technical Education Campus in Grand Junction — commonly called “Tillie Tech,” is named for him.
Those awards get short shrift in his recounting of legislative successes. He acknowledges many of them wouldn’t be possible in today’s divisive political climate.
“It’s a disgrace to the American people. It has created a dysfunctional government,” he says. “It’s no longer about doing best for your constituents. It’s about getting re-elected.
“That’s not my mode of operation. I still think decency is important.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
