Gov. John Hickenlooper welcomed his four predecessors and supporters of a fund to maintain the governor’s residence into the stately Boettcher Mansion on Friday night.

“It really does add real value and promise to the institution of the governor of Colorado,” Hickenlooper told some 200 gathered at a fundraiser for the Governor’s Residence Preservation Fund inside what has been dubbed Colorado’s Home. “It is important that this building be preserved, and not just preserved but be able to function.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper shares a story about living in the governor’s mansion with his four predecessors, former Govs. Bill Ritter, Roy Romer, Bill Owens and Dick Lamm, at a fundraiser for the Governor’s Residence Preservation Fund on Nov. 20.

Photo by Ernest Luning/The Colorado Statesman

Part of that function, he said, is to provide a stately venue for important discussions. Referring to the state’s first-ever water plan, which was unveiled just a day earlier, Hickenlooper said it all began at the mansion.

“The water plan was birthed in this building. The first organizing meeting was down in the carriage house,” he said. “That would not have existed without this building. If you want to do something that hasn’t been done before, you bring people together. They pay a little more attention. Their defenses are down, they listen, you listen, and good things happen.”

Hickenlooper was introduced by CBS4 weatherman Ed Green – he provided a quick forecast for the holiday week – and Nicole Bopp, executive director of the nonprofit Governor’s Residence Fund. The event, which also included a catered dinner in the restored carriage house, attended by about 100 supporters, raised some $75,000, about one-fourth of the fund’s annual operating budget, she said.

While Hickenlooper doesn’t reside full-time in the mansion – he called it a “fishbowl” soon after winning his first term in 2010 – the four previous governors who joined him, Democrats Bill Ritter, Roy Romer and Dick Lamm, and Republican Bill Owens, all raised their families at the mansion and had plenty of stories to share.

“I figure, four Democrats and one Republican, that’s about even odds,” Owens said to guffaws and some cheers.

Former state Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, visits with Dean Singleton, founder and executive board chairman of MediaNews Group, at a fundraiser to support the governor’s mansion on Nov. 20. Romer spent some of years growing  up in the mansion during the dozen years when his father, Roy Romer, was governor.

Photo by Bernard Grant/The Colorado Statesman

Owens thanked those in attendance for helping keep the mansion in good shape.

“The state of Colorado is pretty conservative in terms of its expenditures, and it’s been a challenge for any governor to go and ask for expenditures for a mansion that looks as spectacular as this one does,” he said.

“You can’t go to the Legislature and ask for a million dollars to upgrade the mansion, it just doesn’t work that way,” Owens continued. “So we’ve done it privately as a team, and we are continuing to do it privately as a team. Let me thank all of you for helping to make this beautiful mansion so beautiful.”

Former first lady Frances Owens who also spoke, raised millions of dollars in private funds to restore the mansion’s interiors and gardens, as well as saving the carriage house from demolition. After that, her successor, former first lady Jeannie Ritter, organized the Governor’s Residence Preservation Fund.

Recounting some of his favorite stories of living in the mansion, former Gov. Ritter pointed to Lynn Bartels, communications director for Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams and a former Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post reporter. Bartels was interviewing the Ritters, sitting across from them on the ornate couches in the great room, he said.

Former Gov. Bill Ritter visits with Lynn Bartels, the communications director for Secretary of State Wayne Williams and a former reporter for the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, at a fundraiser to support the governor’s mansion on Nov. 20. Ritter recalled an interview conducted by Bartels when he and his wife, first lady Jeannie Ritter, were accompanied by an unusually aggressive cat.

Photo by Ernest Luning/The Colorado Statesman

“And we had brought a cat to the mansion, thinking, well, public officials love these little pets. But this cat was so mean – it just wasn’t really like a cat you should have in a mansion. It came and started scratching at us, and Jeannie and I were kind of swatting it away, while Lynn was trying to have this story, like, this is a lovely couple with a cat. The cat moved out to a farm in Eaton, Colorado,” Ritter said with a grin.

He also recalled a time when his mother, who grew up in humble circumstances and raised 12 children on her own, turned a chair around, sat and looked out through the south-facing window. “What a great country America is, that a woman in her circumstances could sit and look out at the landscape through the windows of the governor’s mansion,” Ritter said.

Lamm noting that his children were just 4 and 7 when he and his wife, Dottie, moved into the mansion in 1975, told the crowd that the first event they held was a party to thank supporters. But once the party was under way, neither he nor his wife could find his 4-year-old daughter, Heather, he said with a smile. “We came down to find our daughter, nude, with her friend, nude, playing in the fountain,” Lamm said, adding that she later wrote her college essay and titled it, “I Grew Up in Public Housing.”

Romer took the opportunity to tell a favorite story about the Summit of the Eight, a meeting of world leaders held in Denver when he was governor. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton were arriving at the mansion, Romer said, Clinton wiped his feet on what turned out to be recently rented rugs.

Former Govs. Dick Lamm, Bill Ritter, Bill Owens and Roy Romer flank Gov. John Hickenlooper, representing four decades of Colorado’s chief executives, at a fundraiser for the Governor’s Residence Preservation Fund on Nov. 20 at the governor’s mansion in Denver. The private nonprofit fund brought in an estimated $75,000 at the event.

Photo by Bernard Grant/The Colorado Statesman

“‘Mr. President, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to return these rugs,'” Romer recalled telling Clinton, who broke up with laughter. “At that moment, Boris Yeltsin walked in. You don’t laugh in front of the premier of Russia. But then, through an interpreter, the president of the United States was explaining, ‘Romer had to rent rugs.’ Boris Yeltsin broke into laughter. We had a cocktail party on the first floor, and the whole conversation of the Big Eight was, ‘Hey, be careful about Romer’s rugs.’ I want you to know that the furnishings of the mansion helped break the ice.”

Bopp called the fundraiser a resounding success.

“We often get an opportunity to sit in a room with a governor, but to have these gentlemen speak so candidly about their personal experience and the importance of the residence was really wonderful,” Bopp said. “It really belongs to the people of Colorado.”

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com