When Denver financier and philanthropist William Stanfill went to Congress a few years ago, he told lawmakers not to give people like him special treatment.
It isn’t fair, he testified, that the bonuses venture capital, private equity and hedge fund managers make are taxed at a preferential rate.
Even his own partners had implored him not to testify. They took Stanfill’s name off a company website.
But a tax hike on executives’ carried-interest income passed the House, though it later was defeated.
Stanfill died Nov. 7 at home in Denver. He was 79. He was battling cancer.
He grew up mostly in rural Craig, northwestern Colorado, around movies. His father managed the local theater. He and his brothers helped run the place, sometimes carrying signs promoting the next film. These included the likes of the Lawrence Olivier version of Hamlet.
Stanfill also worked in forests fighting wildfires. After the family moved to Texas, he attended Texas Tech University and joined the Air Force, training as a pilot. He graduated from the University of Colorado and went to Chicago. He moved about 1967 to Denver, his base for a career in finance, venture capital and equity lending, most recently as a principle with Montegra Capital Resources.
Stanfill chose finance, he recently told a young entrepreneur, so that he could consume arts and give back to the community.
“Bill was an extraordinary person — urbane, loving, intuitive and complicated,” said Susan Barnes-Gelt, his partner for nearly 25 years.
On Stanfill’s 65th birthday, he took his daughter, Whitney, and sons, Derek and David, to Paris and London. They walked a lot. “He believed the best way to learn about a city, get a feel for it, was to walk its streets,” Whitney Stanfill said. “He had humble roots. Growing up, they didn’t have a lot of extra money. He had intelligent parents who instilled great values.”
Mountains and movies were lifelong passions.
And business trips sometimes became adventures, darting across cities, lacking language skills abroad, seeking odd restaurants, said Jack Tankersley , a business partner for more than a decade in Larimer Venture Management. Stanfill’s fiery testimony in Congress “was classic Bill,” Tankersley said. “He felt it was important to do that.”
Stanfill served on boards for Colorado Public Radio, the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, Colorado Outward Bound, Denver Health Foundation, Denver Silent Film Festival and Denver University’s Korbel School of International Relations.
He’s survived by Barnes-Gelt; brothers Stan and Shelton, his children and three granddaughters.
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700, bfinley@denverpost.com or @finleybruce
