2019 Dana Crawford Award goes to Bart Berger
Dana Crawford presented the 2019 award to Bart Berger on May 13th, 2019. Courtesy ColoradoPreservation.org
From the CPI website: Bart Berger presenting his Dana Crawford Award acceptance speech on May 13, 2019. Courtesy ColoradoPreservation.org
“Dana Crawford, the evening’s namesake, presented Mr. Berger with the award for his work with the Denver Mountain Parks Foundation and his work with Colorado Historical Foundation. Bart shared some remarkable comments at the event stating,
“it is our job to promulgate an understanding of our underlying Colorado ethos and imbed it in all the decisions we make as we go forward…
the Proactive Preemptive Preservationist in me looks to preserve the essential Colorado-ness, the Denver-ness… amid the fray of this impending development and growth to communicate what it is. The best application of my personal effort is to accept growth, but not let it come at the expense of the basic social values that enabled it in the first place.” —W. Bart Berger
With HistoriCorps as a partner, the Foundation ensured rehabilitation of the historic Benedict wellhouse at Little Park in 2018.
“we’ve increased funding, we’ve restored a number of historic structures, we’ve restored trails, and we’ve changed the entire attitude of the department of the Denver Department of Parks & Recreation and we’ve changed the whole attention paid to the Mountain Parks from one of benign neglect to one of active interest and excitement.”
—W. Bart Berger
Much of Bart’s speech was also published in Westword recently.
Event photo album at CPI website.
Read Bart’s entire speech here.
“It was so thrilling to be in a huge room, filled to bursting, with people who share our values about preserving Colorado. I had a few minutes to chat with Bart and John Fielder and they both recalled our book fondly.” — Erika Walker