The 60th Denver Debutante Ball was a magical evening filled with touches that recalled special moments from years gone by while saluting the next generation of leaders — the 32 young women preparing for careers that range from medicine and special education to fashion merchandising and hotel management.
Chairwoman Meg Nichols and her committee offered the 983 guests at the Brown Palace Hotel an evening filled with what she described as “lots of surprises.” Included among those was a 1 a.m. hat toss that had been a signature of the late Lester Lanin, whose New York-based society orchestra had provided dance music for the ball well into the 1980s. The red, white and blue canvas hats that Jerry Barnett and members of his Jerry Barnett Orchestra sent flying were embroidered with the inscription “Cheers to 60 Years.”
“And right before that,” Nichols added, “the orchestra is going to play songs that were popular over the years … period pieces, if you will, that maybe none of the young people will recognize but the rest of us sure will.”
Dinner tables were centered with arrangements of red roses and carnations, the latter being a tip of the hat to the blossoms that were used in the inaugural year. The three-course meal ended with chocolate eclairs, the dessert served in 1956, the year the first Denver Debutante Ball was held.
The presentation began with a six-trumpet fanfare, a number selected to represent the ball’s six decades, and the introduction of all of the living past chairs: Katie Stapleton, Judy Grant, Dawn Wood, Lise Bellmar, Ginny Freyer, Amy Whalen, Sharon Martin, Sally Rippey, Betty Lynn Jackson, Barbara Danos, Nancy Wimbush, Mary Lou Barnhart, Pam Bansbach, Diane Hickerson, Jane Yale and Barbara Knight.
Rippey, the retired executive director of the Adolph Coors Foundation, was in the first class of debutantes, and her husband, Gordon, preceded Grant’s husband, Newell, as the ball’s master of ceremonies.
Gordon Rippey recalled that he met the former Sally Lou Winters the year she was presented. “I wandered into the Brown Palace that night as a young bachelor — yes, you could say that I crashed the party, but at least I was wearing a suit. And when I saw Sally, I said I had to meet her. Four months later we had an opportunity, which I probably arranged, and we hit it off. We’ve been married for 55 years now.”
“I’m excited to be a part of this and to carry on a family tradition,” said 2015 deb Madeline Hantman in the moments before she descended the hotel’s grand staircase on the arm of her father, Peter Robert Hantman of Cherry Hills Village. Her mother, Linda Kinney Hantman, was presented in 1985, and aunt Nancy Kinney Holst was a deb in 1982.
A graduate of Cherry Creek High School, where she was captain of the varsity field hockey team and a member of the National Honor Society, Hantman is midway through her freshman year as a business major at Southern Methodist University.
The Class of 2015 also included Burgandi Owens and Karen Nichter, the great-granddaughters of the late Janet Phipps, one of the ball’s early-day chairs; Natasha Crawford, granddaughter of preservationist Dana Crawford; and two sets of twins, Jennifer and Jordan Trigg and Alexis and Kienan Linhardt.
Others curtsying at the Dec. 22 event were McKenna Adams, Abigail Clark, Anne Clinton, Sarah Dinegar, India English, Caroline Gallagher, Adeline Glass, Jessica Grewe, Tempel Haifleigh, Grace Imhoff, Nicole Kerman, Lindsay Magill, Hannah McDaniel, Ralsey Miller, Nina O’Brien, Alexandra Pruter, Caroline Raeder, Grace Rainaldi, Caroline Reisch, Laura Robinson, Eliza Samuelson, Elizabeth Smedley, Marigny Strauss and Grace Wilkins.
More online:Joanne Davidson has additional information about each debutante, and the 60th anniversary festivities, in the Mile High Style blog: .
