“This is an example of a life well-led….”

The Colorado State Senate on Wednesday memorialized the life and service of one of the titans of the state Senate in the 20th century, former Sen. Regis Groff, who passed away in October at the age of 79.

Groff served 20 years in the Senate, from 1975 to 1994, including four years as minority leader.Wednesday’s memorial saw a long line of current and former legislators eager to share their memories of Groff and the impact he had on Colorado.

Among his most notable accomplishments were the Legislature’s passage of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, divestment from South Africa during the apartheid era, and several voter registration bills, all while serving in the minority in the Senate. Groff was lauded as a skilled orator — at one point, legislators recalled, he stopped a heated debate with just one sentence.

Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Denver, who now represents Groff’s district, noted that Groff originally ran for the House in 1974. However, Johnston said, “God’s hand was at work” and when Sen. Sam Brown was elected lieutenant governor, Groff won appointment to replace him.

The lengthy, bipartisan list of former lawmakers who honored Groff included former Sens. Gloria Tanner, Bob Hagedorn, Joyce Foster, Bill Schroeder, Steve Durham, Dennis Gallagher, Paul Weissman, Dorothy Rupert, and Regis Groff’s son Peter, who was the first African-American president of the Colorado Senate.

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and his wife, Wilma, who both served in the General Assembly at the same time as Groff, sent a letter of tribute for the memorial.

“His legacy leaves us with great joy,” the Webbs wrote, calling Groff a great statesman of Colorado.

“My father loved, loved this building,” said former Senate President Peter Groff. “He loved every minute and moment of his service, because it was so improbable.” Groff told how his father grew up in a segregated town in Illinois, a great-grandson of slaves. Regis Groff’s father was a potter and veterinarian’s assistant and his mother was a housekeeper who cooked meals for the people of Monmouth and then came home and did the same for her family.

For 20 years, said Peter Groff, his father pushed for noble ideas, such as the King holiday. Groff said with a smile that that his father was the only person to work for the holiday celebrating a champion of non-violence by choking Sen. Bob Beattie in the senate president’s office.

His father also loved debate, Peter Groff said, adding that he could be very partisan at times but never shrunk from his ideals or noble ideas. “What I learned about leadership from him is that you fight for what you believe in.”

Several former lawmakers remembered Regis Groff’s love of baseball and music. Gallagher said he was going to ask for a “memorial standing spot” at the Denver jazz club El Chapultepec as a memorial to Groff.

Hagedorn lauded Groff’s debate skills, recalling how he would join other members of the House to go over to the Senate to watch Groff debate a bill. “You want to learn from the best,” he said. Hagedorn noted he was the only member of the Legislature to have served with both Groffs.

Durham also spoke of Groff’s gift of oratory and the legacy he left for Colorado, calling his career “a lesson in how much can you advance the cause of justice, if you’re willing to stand up, even by yourself, free from the fear of personal consequences.”

“What made him powerful and effective,” Durham said, is that Groff was “the most outstanding orator of the last three or four decades in the Senate. He had the ability to change votes by what he said. … In my current profession, I hate that, but at the time it was something to admire,” the lobbyist added. “You don’t wake up one morning a bad person. It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest,” Durham said. “He never surrendered to those self-interests.”

In one of the newest traditions of the Senate, the former senators who came to the Capitol to pay tribute to Regis Groff voted with the current members in a unanimous vote in favor of the memorial, Senate Memorial 15-001.

— marianne@coloradostatesman.com