When Henry Strauss turned 90 recently, there was no shortage of top Colorado politicos happy to raise a glass to the businessman, philanthropist, politico and friend.

His bio as board chairman of an international adoption network tells you much of what you need to know to appreciate Strauss:

Henry Strauss has had a distinguished career in business and government. He is the founder and chairman of Strauss Enterprises a property investment and Management Company. He served as Regional Administrator of the Small Business Administration under President Carter and as Chairman of the Colorado Real Estate Commission under Governor Lamm. In addition he has had extensive international business experience serving on the District Export-Import Council and on the Board of the World Trade Center. We are fortunate to have his insight to organizational operations as part of our team!

About 200 people attended a dinner to honor Strauss at The Palms restaurant in Denver, attendees tell Colorado Politics. U.S. Jared Polis draped Strauss with an American flag that had flown above the U.S. Capitol that day. He called Strauss a friend.

The crowd included Lamm, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Arvada and other members of the state’s political class.

Strauss is a Colorado-brown benefactor to the state. He got his degree in pharmacy from the University of Colorado in 1951 and was one of the first major importers of Chinese herbal medicines, as well as real estate investment and development.

He has been a generous donor to CU, but Strauss also served on the Metropolitan State University of Denver Foundation Board of Trustees from 1988 to 2010.

He is the namesake of the Guldman-Strauss Endowed Scholarship for Metro State students studying integrative therapeutic practices who have a financial need.

The school notes Strauss “has a strong interest in the integration of all the medicines of mankind. He was one of the early progenitors of the integrative medicine program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He contributed many of the Auraria library books which are used by students taking these courses. Also he started with twenty books and built the Florence Strauss Indigenous Medicine Collection now known as the Strauss-Wisneski Collection.”

The collection now includes more than 2,400 volumes on alternative and indigenous medicine from all over the world, the school says.

Strauss, a Democrat, didn’t have much luck on the ballot, however. He lost to Tom Tancredo in 1998 in the 6th Congressional District and came up short in the 1974 state treasurer’s race. Strauss has been a behind-the-scenes opinion leader in the party for decades, friends said.